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I  l.()()144 


aJ^arpefs  Magazine 


VOLUME  188 


December,  1943 May,  1944 


100144 


HARPER     &     BROTHERS,     PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

19  4  4 


CONTENTS 


Allen,  Frederick  Lewis — Notes 

on  an  English  Visit,  117 
American  Way  in  War,  The — 

D.  W.  Brogan,  491 
Americans  in  Battle — Fletcher 
Pratt 
Campaign   for    the    Solomons, 

The,  348,  467,  564 
Caribbean  Command,  232 
One  Destroyer,  183 
AMG,  54,  106 

Arctic,  Oil  Fields  in  the,  107 
Argentina,  377 
Army,  The 

Army  Quits  the  Colleges,  The, 

419 
Army     Specialized     Training 

Program,  419 

Preparation  for  Invasion,  246 

What    Soldiers    Are    Thinking 

About,  68 

Army    Quits    the    Colleges, 

The— Robert  G.  Hawley,  419 

Arnason,  Harvey  H. — Cultural 

Utopia,  553 
Art 

What  About  Modern  Art  and 
Democracy?,  16 
Auden,    W.    H.— Herod    Con- 
siders   the    Massacre    of   the 
Innocents,  64 
Aurelio:  The  People's  Choice 
— Ferdinand  Lundberg,   129 
Aviation 

Future    of    International    Air- 
ways, The,  97 
Horses  in  the  Sky,  450 
Axis,    The    Five    Fatal    Mis- 
takes OF  THE — Albert  Carr, 
219 
Azine,      Harold — Bougainville 

Landing,  289 
Banks,  Capt.  William  D.— Tar- 
get: Ploesti,  299 
Basic  English?,  How  Basic  Is 

—Rudolf  Flesch,  339 
Beems,    Griffith— The    Stage- 
coach, 370 
Beetle,    David     H.— Lavender 

and  Old  Torsos,  500 

Before  the  Men  March  Home 

—Bernard  Iddings  Bell,  113 

Bell,   Bernard   Iddings— Before 

the  Men  March  Home,  113 

Ben-Horin,  Eliahu— The  Soviet 

Wooing  of  Palestine,  413 


Bolles,  Blair— The  Future  of 
International  Airways,  97 

Booth's  Body,  It  Was — Dale 
Clark,  210 

Boston  Mobs  a  Book,  525 

Bougainville  Landing — Har- 
old Azine,  289 

Boyd,  James — Horses  in  the 
Sky,  450 

Brogan,  D.  W. — The  American 
Way  in  War,  491 

Brooks,  Van  Wyck — The  Won- 
drous West,  1800,  554 

Brynes,  Asher — A  Badly  Needed 
Definition,  134 

Business  Thinks  About  Post- 
war America,  What,  199 

Campaign  for  the  Solomons, 
The— Fletcher  Pratt 

1.  Bloody  Island,  348 

2.  Tokyo  Express,  The,  467 

3.  Decision  by  Night,  564 
Canada  Swings  to  the  Left — 

William  Henry  Chamberlin,  1 
Caribbean  Command — Fletcher 

Pratt,  232 
Carr,  Albert— The  Five  Fatal 

Mistakes  of  the  Axis,  219 
Chamberlin,  William  Henry- 
Canada  Swings  to  the  Left,  1 

Information,    Please,    About 

Russia,  405 
Chicago  Area  Project,  502 
China 

The    Dentist    Who    Changed 
World  History,  40 
Clark,    Dale— It    Was    Booth's 

Body,  210 
Coast  Guard  ^ 

The    Strange    Cruise    of    the 
Yawl  Z^ida.     Part  II,  86 
Davis,    Burke— Senator    Bob 

Reynolds:  Retrospective 

View,  362 
Davis,    Stuart— What   About 

Modern   Art  and   Democ- 
racy?, 16 
Delinquency,  A  New  Attack 

ON,  502 
Dentist  Who  Changed  World 

History,  The — Maurice  Zo- 

lotow,  40 
Destroyer,    One— Fletcher 

Pratt,  183 
DeVoto,    Bernard— The    Easy 


Chair,  36,  141,242,344,426, 
525 

Geopolitics  with  the  Dew  on  ' 
It,  313 
Dewey:  The  Man  in  the  Blue 
Serge   Suit — Richard  H. 
Rovere,  481 
Dos  Passos,  John — San  Francis- 
co Looks  West,  328 
Three  Hundred  Acres  and  a 
Tractor,  538 
Dublin,  Louis  I.— Our  Health 

in  Wartime,  224 
East  by  Southwest.     Stories  of 
the    Pacific — Christopher    La 
Farge 

The  Known  and  the  Unknown, 
167 
Easy     Chair,     The— Bernard 
DeVoto 

Boston  Mobs  Strange  Fruit,  525 
Fear  of  the  Coming  of  Peace, 

344 
Lindbergh,     Mr.     and     Mrs. 

Charles  A.,  141 
"Lost    Generation"    of  World 

War  II,  426 
Review  of  New  Books,  242 
Washington,  D.  C,  36 
English  Visit,  Notes  on  an — 

Frederick  L.  Allen,  117 
Fillers — See  Less-than-a-Pagers 
First  War  with  Japan,  Our 

—Kurt  Steel,  513 
Flesch,  Rudolf— How  Basic  Is 

Basic  English?,  339 
Ford,  The  U.S.S.  John  D.,  183 
Freedom  We  Need,  The  Kind 

OF— John  B.  Voris,  324 
Future  of  Intep national  Air- 
ways, The— Blair  Bolles,  97 
Garage,  He  Runs  a— John  A. 

Kouwenhoven,  175 
Geopolitics  with  the  Dew  on 

It— Bernard  DeVoto,  313 
Gilpin,  William,  313 
Gold  Conspiracy,  The  Great 

—John  B.  Martin,  438 
Grattan,    C.    Hartley— What 
Business  Thinks  About  Post- 
war America,  199 
Postwar    Migration:    A    Mi- 
rage, 24 

Japanese   Mandates,   Those, 
145 


lOOJ  44 


Great  Britain 

Notes  on  an  English  Visit,  117 

Soviet  Wooing  of  Palestine,  413 

Hawley,  Robert  G. — The  Army 

Quits  the  Colleges,  419 
He  Runs  a  Garage — John  A. 

Kouwenhoven,  175 
Health  Card — Frank  Yerby, 

548 
Health  in   Wartime,   Our — 

Louis  I.  Dublin,  224 
Herod  Considers  the  Massa- 
cre   OF    THE    Innocents — 

W.  H.  Auden,  64 
High  Schools,  Look  at  Amer- 
ica's, 516 
Horses    in    the    Sky — James 

Boyd,  450 
Housekeeping  After  the  War 

— Priscilla     Robertson     and 

Hawley  Jones,  430 
Information,     Please,     About 

Russia — William   Henry 

Chamberlin,  405 
Invasion,     Preparation     for 

the  Allied,  246 
Japan 

First  War   with  Japan,    Our, 
513 

Occupy  Japan?,  385 

Those  Japanese  Mandates,  145 

Tokyo  Since  Pearl  Harbor,  271 
Japanese  Mandates,  Those — 

C.  Hartley  Grattan,  145 
Johnson,  Josephine  W. — Night 

Flight,  253 
Jones,   Hawley — Housekeeping 

After  the  War,  430 
Kind  of  Freedom  We  Need, 

The— John  B.  Voris,  324 
Known    and    the    Unknown, 

The — Christopher  La  Farge, 

167 
Kouwenhoven,    John    A. — He 

Runs  a  Garage,  175 
Kramer,  Dale — What  Soldiers 

Are  Thinking  About,  68 
LaFarge,    Christopher — The 

Known   and   the   Unknown, 

167 
Lavender  and  Old  Torsos — 

David  H.  Beede,  500 
Less-th  AN  -a-Pagers 

AMG,  The  Case  for,  162 

Civilian  Effort  in  the  War,  283 

Democracy,  134 

Emigrants,  Advice  to,  140 

English,  Learning,  480 

Iceland,  553 

Latin  American  Consular  Serv- 
ice, 304 


Paper  and  Grow  Thin,  Save, 
270 

Radio  Commentators,  75 
Letter  to  the  Editors,  A — 

Wendell   Willkie,   Following 

page  480 
Lindbergh,  Charles  A.,  141 
Look    at  America's   High 

Schools — Dan  Stiles,  516 
Lost  Generation,  The,  426 
Lundberg,F'erdinand — Aurelio : 

The  People's  Choice,  129 
MacArthur  and  the  Censor- 
ship—The  Editors,  537 
Margarine,  10 
Marcantonio,  Vito:  Machine 

Politician,    New    Style — 

Richard  H.  Rovere,  391 
Martin,    George    W. — Preface 

to  the  President's  Autobiog- 
raphy, 193 

Preface  to  a  Schoolmaster's 

Biography,  156 
Martin,  John  Bartlow — Great 

Gold  Conspiracy,  The,  438 

Inept — Not  Apathetic,  283 

Master  of  the  Murder  Castle, 

The,  76 

New  Attack  on  Delinquency, 

A,  502 
Master  OF  THE  Murder  Castle, 

The — John  Bartlow  Martin, 

76 
McCune,    Wesley— The   Oleo- 
margarine Rebellion,  10 
McLarney,  P.  J. — Of  Mice  and 

Military,  75 
Migration,  Postwar,  24 
Moment    of    Attack:     Two 
'  First-hand  Reports 

Bougainville  Landing,  289 

Target:  Ploesti,  299 
Money,  284 
Morris,      John — Tokyo     Since 

Pearl  Harbor,  271 
MosLEY,  Sir  Oswald,  Strange 

Story   of — William   Zuker- 

man,  257 
Motherwell,  Hiram — The  Three 

R's  of  Postwar  Europe,  54 
MuDGETT,  Herman  W.,  178 
New  Attack  on  Delinquency, 

A — John     Bartlow     Martin, 

502 
Night  Flight — Josephine   W. 

Johnson,  253 
Notes  on  an  English  Visit — 

Frederick   Lewis   Allen,    117 
Novels,  What  Has  Happened 

TO  Our— Diana  Trilling,  529 


Occupy  Japan? — Nathaniel 

Peffer,  385 
OFEA,  54 
Oil  Fields   in   the  Arctic — 

Wallace  E.  Pratt,  107 
Oleomargarine    Rebellion, 

The — Wesley  McCune,  10 
Palestine,  Soviet  Wooing  of, 

413 
Peabody,  Endicott,  156 
Peffer,  Nathaniel — Occupy  Ja- 
pan?, 385 
People   at  War,   The — John 

Dos  Passos 

Three  Hundred  Acres  and   a 
Tractor,  538 

San  Francisco  Looks  West,  328 
Ploesti,  299 
Postwar  Planning 

Housekeeping  After  the  War, 
430 

How  Tariffs  Can  Free  Trade, 
163 

Kind   of  Freedom  We   Need, 
The,  324 

Postwar  Migration:  A  Mirage, 
24 

Three  R's  of  Postwar  Planning, 
The,  54 

What  Business  Thinks   About 
Postwar  America,  199 
Postwar   Migration:    A   Mi- 
rage— C.    Hartley   Grattan, 

24 
Pratt,  Fletcher — Campaign  for 

the  Solomons,  348,  467,  564 

Caribbean  Command,  232 

One  Destroyer,  183 
Pratt,  Wallace   E.— Oil   Fields 

in  the  Arctic,  107 
Preface   to    the    President's 

Autobiography — George  W. 

Martin,  193 
Preface  to  a  Schoolmaster's 

Biography — George  W. 

Martin,  156 
Preparation    for   Invasion — 

C.  Lester  Walker,  246 
Race  Clash — Thomas  Sancton, 

135 
Religion 

Before  the  Men  March  Home, 
113 

Religion  and  the  Public  Schools, 
458 
Religion     and     the     Public 

Schools — Vivian  T.  Thayer, 

458 
Reynolds,  Senator  Bob:  Ret- 
rospective   View — Burke 

Davis,  362 


J 


Robertson,       Priscilla — House- 
keeping After  the  War,  430 
Rodell,    Fred— Wendelf   Will- 

kie:  Man  of  Words.  305 

Letter   to    Wendell    Willkie, 

Following  page  576 
Roosevelt,  Franklin  Delano, 

193 
Rovere,   Richard   H. — Dewey: 

The  Man  in  the  Blue  Serge 

Suit,  481 

Vito  Marcantonio:  Machine 

Politician,  391 
Russia 

Information,    Please,   About 
Russia,  405 

Soviet  Wooing  of  Palestine,  413 
San  Francisco  Looks  West — 

John  Dos  Passos,  328 
Sancton,  Thomas — Race  Clash, 

135 

Silver  Horn,  The,  264 

Tall  Man,  The,   399 
Schmidt,    Karl   P. — Attention: 

Department  of  State,  304 
Setaro,    Ricardo — Some    Real 

Trouble  in  South  America, 

377 
Silver   Horn,    The — Thomas 

Sancton,  264 
Smith,  Bernard  B. — How  Tar- 
iffs Can  Free  Trade,  163 
Soldiers  Are  Thinking  About, 

What,  68 
Solomons,  Campaign  for  the 

—Fletcher   Pratt,    348,   467, 

564 
Some  Real  Trouble  in  South 

America — Ricardo  Setaro, 

377 


After  Christmas — W.  H.  Au- 
den,  154 

Auden,  W.  H.— After  Christ- 
mas, 154 

Fourth  Dimension — Martha 
Keller,  437 

Gettysburg  Address,  The — 
Gilbert  Maxwell,  209 

Keller,  Martha — Fourth  Di- 
mension, 437 


South   America,    Some   Real 

Trouble  in,  377 
Soviet  Wooing  of  Palestine, 

The— Eliahu  Ben-Horin,  413 
Stagecoach,  The — Griffith 

Beems,  370 
Steel,    Kurt— Our    First    War 

with  Japan,  513 
Stiles,  Dan — Look  at  America's 

High  Schools,  516 
Sun  Yat-sen,  Dr.,  40 
Tall  Man,  The — Thomas 

Sancton,  399 
Target:    Ploesti — Captain 

William  D.  Banks,  299 
Tariffs     Can     Free    Trade, 

How— Bernard  B.  Smith,  163 
Thayer,    Vivian    T. — Religion 

and  the  Public  Schools,  458 
Thompson,  Lawrance — Strange 

Cruise    of  the    Yawl   ^aida, 

Part  H,  86 
Three  Hundred  Acres  and  a 

Tractor — John  Dos  Passos, 

538 
Three   R's   of   Postwar   Eu- 
rope, The — Hiram  Mother- 
well, 54 
Tokyo  Since  Pearl  Harbor — 

John  Morris,  271 
Touch  of  Midas,  The — G.  R. 

Walker,  284 
Trilling,    Diana — What    Has 

Happened   to    Our   Novels?, 

529 
Voris,  John  B. — The  Kind  of 

Freedom  We  Need,  324 
Walker,  C.  Lester — Preparation 

for  Invasion,  246 


verse 

Lincoln  Memorial,  360 
Massacre,  515 

Letters  from  the  Aleutians 
— Erwin  Spitzer,  524 

Lincoln     Memorial — Martha 
Keller,  360 

Massacre — Martha  Keller,  515 

Maxwell,  Gilbert — The  Gettys- 
burg Address,  209 


Walker,    George    Richmond — 

The  Touch  of  Midas,  284 
War,  The 

Bougainville  Landing,  289 

Campaign  for   the   Solomons, 
The,  348,  466,  564 

Caribbean  Command,  232 

One  Destroyer,  183 

Target:  Ploesti,  299 
West,  1800,  The  Wondrous — 

Van  Wyck  Brooks,  554 
What    About    Modern    Art 

and       Democracy? — Stuart 

Davis,  16 
What  Business  Thinks  About 

Postwar  America — C.  Hart- 
ley Grattan,  199 
What  Has  Happened  to  Ouk 

Novels? — Diana  Trilling. 

529 
What  Soldiers  Are  Thinking, 

About — Dale  Kramer,  68 
White,  Paul,  175 
William,  Dr.  Maurice,  40 
Willkie,   Wendell:   Man    ob 

Words— Fred  Rodell,  305 
Willkie,    Wendell — Letters    to 

the  Editors,  Following  pages 

480  and  576 
WooLLCOTT,  Alexander,  500 
Yerby,  Frank— Health  Card,  54g 
^aida,  Strange  Cruise  of  the 

Yawl.     Part    II — Lawrance 

Thompson,  86 
Zolotow,   Maurice— The  Den- 
tist   Who    Changed    World 

History,  40 
Zukerman,     William — Strange 

Story  of  Sir  Oswald  Mosley. 

257 


Pudney,    John — Song    of    the 
Chances  of  War,  174 
War  in  the  Air,  34 

Song  of  the  Chances  of  War 
—John  Pudney,  174 

Spitzer,    Erwin — Letters    from| 
the  Aleutians,  524 

War  in  the  Air — John  Pud- 
ney, 34 


BUY  WAR  BONDS  AND  STAMPS 


// 


No   scraps  for  me,  any  more!^^ 


"It's  funny.  Used  to  be  lots  of  stuff  left  on  the 
plates  for  me.  But  no  more.  D'ya  suppose 
they're  giving  my  scraps  to  some  other  dog?'* 

•  •  • 

No,  Mike.  You're  still  the  family's  favorite 
pup.  The  reason  you  don't  get  juicy  left-overs 
now  is  because  there  just  aren't  any ! 

Food's  gone  to  war  like  everything  else  these 
days.  Folks  eat  more  as  they  work  harder. 
Soldiers  eat  a  lot  more.  Friends  in  other  coun- 
tries need  our  help. 

That's  why  plates  go  back  to  the  kitchen 
clean.  That's  why  there  are  no  extras  for  you 
— or  your  folks.  You'll  all  get  enough  to  eat, 
but  there  won't  be  any  to  waste. 

We  know  something  about  food,  here  at 
National  Dairy.  We've  been  working  with 
Nature's  most  complete  food — milk — for  years 
and  years.  We've  made  many  nourishing  food 
products  from  it. 

Right  now,  our  laboratories  are  busy  with 
new  developments — new  products  for  wartime 


use^ — new  ideas  for  after  the  war — ^when  but- 
ter, cheese,  ice  cream  and  other  things  are 
plentiful  agaiuo 

Meantime,  Mike,  stay  right  on  the  job  pro- 
tecting your  family — and  we'll  do  the  same  I 

Dedicated  to  the  wider  use  and  better  under- 
standing of  dairy  products  as  human  food  .  .  . 
as  a  base  for  the  development  of  new  products 
and  materials  ,  ,  .  as  a  source  of  health  and 
enduring  progress  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
towns  and  cities  of  America. 


NATIONAL   DAIRY 

PRODUCTS   CORPORATION 

AND    AFFILIATED    COMPANIES 


LISTEN : 


DEOEMBER  1,1943 


CBS  was  the  first  radio  network  to  or- 
ganize its  own  news  service.  After  10  years 
experience  there  is  no  news  service  in  all 
radio  so  extensive  or  so  efficient  as  CBS 
World  News.  Columbia's  reporters  are  at 
the  fighting  fronts,  in  foreign  capitals,  in 
NewYork  — in  Washington. 

From  London:  Edward  R.  Murrow,  Larry 
Lesueur,  George  Moorad  and  Paul  Manning. 

From  the  Mediterranean:  Winston  Burdett,  John 
Daly,  and  Farnsworth  Fowle. 

From-  Australia:  William  J.  Dunn. 

From  Honolulu:  Webley  Edwards. 

From.  Neiv  Delhi:  Eric  Sevareid. 

From  Chungking:  James  Stewart. 

From  Moscoiv:  Bill  Downs. 

From  Berne:  Howard  K.  Smith. 

From  Stockholm:  Bernard  Valery. 

From  Cairo :  James  Fleming. 

From  Buenos  Aires:  Hugh  Jencks. 

From,  Rio  de  Janeiro :  John  Adams. 

From  Neijo  York:  William  L.  Shirer,  Quincy 
Howe,  Bob  Trout,  Charles  Collingwood,  Major 
Georg-e  Fielding  Eliot,  Everett  Holies,  Ned  Calmer, 
Elizabeth  Bemis,  Doug-  Edwards  and  Don  Pryor. 

From  Washington:  Bill  Henry,  Albert  Leitch, 
Robert  Lewis  and  William  Costello. 


During  the  first  648  days  following 
Pearl  Harbor,  CBS  broadcast  26,110  pro- 
grams of  War  Matter.  Of  these,  12,387 
were  sustaining— that  is,  their  cost  was  vol- 
unteered and  borne  by  the  network  itself ;  the 
balance  — 13,723  War  Matter  programs— 
were  bought  and  paid  for  by  U.  S.  advertisers 
on  this  particular  network. 


And  coming  back  to  the  question  of  sound- 
effects  on  the  air,  we  take  up  now  the  subject 
of  the  kiss.  What  is  the  best  way  to  make  a  kiss 
sound  like  a  kiss,  instead  of  like  the  drawing 
of  a  cork,  or  the  sipping  of  hot  consomme, 
or  the  losing  of  a  gumshoe  in  soft  ground,  or 
the  snap  of  an  impatient  woodpecker?  You 
may  be  sure  that  everything  has  been  tried. 
The  expert  CBS  sound-effecters  who  noodle 
round  with  hardware  and  milk-bottles  and 


broken  glass  have  tried,  just  as  a  matter  of 
pride,  to  out-gimmick  each  other  in  evolving 
the  Osculation  Authentic.  And  what  do  you 
think  actually  makes  the  best  kiss  on  the  air? 
You  are  correct.  A  genuine  kiss  is  correcty 
and  you  get  sixty-four  dollars,  and  isn't 
rehearsal  wonderful?  And  what  is  more,  a 
sigh  is  just  a  sigh . . . 

Three  ships  of  mercy  sailed  out  of  Gote- 
borg,  Sweden,  early  on  October  2 1  to  effect 
the  first  exchange  of  American  military  pris- 
oners of  war  for  Nazi  prisoners.  On  board 
were  4,300  United  Nations  captive- 
wounded,  of  whom  17  were  Yanks.  Bernard 
Valery,  regular  CBS  Stockholm  correspond- 
ent, had  covered  the  242  miles  to  Goteborg 
in  time  to  interview  14  of  them.  At  8:07:40 
a.m.  EWT  Valery  went  on  the  short  wave  to 
the  USA  and  told  the  audience  of  90  CBS 
stations  about  those  14  boys.  He  was  the 
first  correspondent  to  broadcast  the  story  to 
America. 

• 

Sunday  evening,  December  12,  will  be 
observed  as  some  sort  of  unofficial  national 
holiday  because  Fred  Allen  comes  back  on 
the  air  that  night  over  the  full  CBS  network, 
at  9:30  in  the  East,  8:30  in  the  Midlands, 
7:30  in  the  Mountains  and  6:30  on  the 
Coast.  Huzza. 


This  is 


CBS 


ttie  COLUIVIBIA 
BROADCASTING  SYSTEM 


THE  New  Books  n(lhMj  c!km\h(^m 


lOME  time  ago  Bernard  DeVoto  con- 
tributed to  the  pages  of  this  magazine 
a  thoroughly  dehghtful  article  on  the 
lures  of  New  England.  To  anyone  who  has 
ever  driven  through  Smugglers  Notch  in 
Vermont  or  stood  on  the  rim  of  the  Great 
Gulf  to  the  north  of  Mount  Washington,  Mr. 
DeVoto's  words  were  eloquent  with  under- 
standing. But  Mr.  DeVoto,  who  came  from 
Utah  to  settle  down  in  the  cozy  little  world  of 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  seemed  to  have  the  queer 
notion  that  New  England  doesn't  include 
Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  Martha's  Vine- 
yard, and  Cape  Cod.  Well,  it's  true  that 
the  Adams  family,  the  Concord  school,  the 
Abolitionists,  the  Boston  Unitarians,  the  Har- 
vard philosophers,  the  Salem  mariners,  and 
the  late  George  Apley,  all  of  whom  made  a 
lot  of  history,  hailed  from  north  of  Mr. 
DeVoto's  own  personal  New  England  Mason- 
Dixon  line.  But  southern  New  England  has 
its  own  flavor  and  character,  as  Wilbur  L. 
Cross,  ex-Dean  of  the  Yale  Graduate  School 
and  ex-Governor  of  Connecticut,  reminds  us 
in  his  pawky,  dryly  humorous  autobiography, 
Connecticut  Yankee  (Yale,  $5). 

Defining  a  Yankee 

Just  how  does  a  Connecticut  Yankee  differ 
from  other  Yankees?  One  could  work  at  the 
problem  of  definition  as  Hamilton  Basso 
works  at  the  larger  problem  of  understanding 
the  American  character  as  a  whole  in 
Mainstream  (Reynal  and  Hitchcock,  $2.50). 
Mr.  Basso's  method  is  to  take  a  number  of 
representative  citizens,  ranging  from  Jefferson 
to  John  Calhoun,  and  from  Phineas  T. 
Barnum  to  Henry  Adams,  and  then  relate 
them  to  the  ideas,  the  preconceptions,  and 
the  emotional  biases  of  an  average  smalltown 
American,  John  Applegate.  A  group  of 
representative  Connecticut  Yankees  would 
include  John  Fitch,  the  inventor  of  the  steam- 
boat, and  Eli  Whitney,  and  Samuel  Colt, 
who  fathered  the  American  system  of  mass 
manufacture  of  interchangeable  parts  for 
standardized  machines.  It  would  include  the 
legendary  figure  who  once  supposedly  deliv- 
ered a  cargo  of  wooden  nutmegs  to  the  British 


in  what  was  distinctly  not  a  lend-lease  trans- 
action. It  would  include  Professor  WilUam 
Graham  Sumner,  who  believed  the  proper 
place  for  a  drunkard  was  the  gutter  and  who 
spent  a  lifetime  trying  to  rescue  his  indus- 
trialist friends  from  the  ultimately  disastrous 
consequences  of  their  protectionist  credo.  It 
would  include  Josiah  Willard  Gibbs,  who 
ignored  human  society  to  work  out  the  ther- 
modynamic equations  that  can  be  used 
indiscriminately  to  blow  the  world  to  bits  or 
waft  it  into  an  alchemist's  idea  of  heaven. 
The  least  common  denominator  of  these 
Connecticut  Yankee  souls  was  an  intense 
interest  in  the  law  of  the  conservation  of 
energy.  None  of  them  believed  that  you 
could  get  something  for  nothing,  unless  a 
wooden  nutmeg  is  properly  to  be  defined  as 
nothing.  (For  that  matter,  even  Mr,  Basso's 
P.  T.  Barnum,  who  was  a  Connecticut  Yankee 
of  sorts,  had  to  work  hard  at  the  trade  of 
humbugging  the  public.)  But  all  of  these 
representative  Connecticut  Yankees  believed 
in  the  inspired  short-cut,  in  doing  things  as 
quickly  as  possible  in  the  quietest  and  most 
efficient  way. 

Wilbur  Cross,  who  comes  from  the  Yankee 
town  of  Mansfield  in  the  northeastern  part 
of  Connecticut,  is  not  an  inventor.  His  own 
field  has  been  English  literature,  particularly 
the  English  novel  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 
But,  reading  his  autobiography,  one  is  struck 
by  his  spiritual  affinity  with  the  great  Con- 
necticut inventors.  Out  of  a  meager  back- 
ground he  has  fashioned  the  work  of  art  that 
is  his  own  character.  The  young  Wilbur 
Cross,  offspring  of  millers  and  farmers  and 
seafaring  men,  went  at  the  job  of  creating  a 
career  and  personality  for  himself  with  all 
the  ingenuity  of  an  early  Connecticut  clock 
maker  fashioning  a  timepiece  out  of  the  cop- 
per and  zinc  stripped  from  an  abandoned 
building. 

Economy  of  method  and  the  full  utilization 
of  given  materials  mark  every  move  of  Wilbur 
Cross's  life.  As  a  young  man  he  raised 
chickens  to  get  some  money  for  schooling. 
The  Cross  method  of  decapitating  broilers 
and  roasters  en  masse  would  have  done  credit 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


By  Arthur  Koesth 


Author  of  Darkness  at  Noon,  Dialogue  With  Deatl  e 

IlTofT'"'  ''"'"'^  '"'^  f """«  ^'"'"  '''  *'^  *""'«g  ««--!  -'"  ''weep  vox  „ 
^eL  A  F  "°"  "'""'  '*'"'''"«  ""'^  '^"'"^'"^'^  unforgettable  stories'^oT;  ^ 
years  A  European  c.ty  swarming  with  refugees  is  its  setting:  how  men  decide'  I 
they  thmk  .right,  and  why  they  are  willing  to  die  to  back  up  theirlSot  ' 
theme.  A  truly  great  book.  "c<-ision,^  j 


Arrival  and  Departur 


High  noon 

set  in  ^^^r^^S:£t^^^&^^ 
the  story  o  ««JX  fife  than  that  pro- 
aspirations   or  a  f« "^  "     ^^^n.  An  ex- 

Out  .S'.  Silent  Planet 

Bv  C.  S.  Lewis 

Honrv  Ponsonby 

By  Arthur  Ponsonby 

j„  this  schol-ly  and  -^Pt^^^^^^^^^ 
life  of  his  fa*«':,w  sheds  much  new 
Uitten  a  biography  that  M^  ^^^ 

light  on  the  man,  his  time  ^^_^^ 

'  herself. 


Sjtf^  tf«  <»  7(fmU'<i€  Ti/eift 


1 


LAST  FLIGHT  FROM 
SINGAPORE 

By  Atfhur  G.  Donahue 

The  author  of  Tally -Ho  here 
tells  the  thrilling,  youthful  and 
typically  American  story  of  his 
experiences  with  the  R.A.F.  in 
the  East.  (Tent.)  $2.50 


ONCE  TO  SHOUT 

By  Agnes  Stigh  Turnbutl 

Author  of 
T^e  Day  Must  Dawn,  etc. 
Courage,  comfort  and  solace 
come  from  the  pages  of  this 
short  but  deeply  moving  story 
of  a  GoldeStar  mother  and 
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FROM  HELL    3 
BREAKFAST 

By  Carl  Olssoi 

This  collection  of  shori  c 
told  mainly  by  men  whc  n 
ing  some  of  the  war*s  1  j 
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graphs.  c 

THE  CAPTAI 
WEARS  A.  CR< 

By  Capt,  Wm,  A.  Mc  | 

The  author  of  Rig  for 
here  continues  the  thrillj 
wajmly  human  story  of 
as    a    navy    Chaplain     f 
Pacific. 


Queen 


JANE'S  FIGHTING  SHIPS:   1942 

Edited  by  F,  E.  McMurfne 

InX^lnZ.A'''^  T^t^"^  ^"^.^'^^^  ^*  ^^^  ^^^^  complete  and  au  i 
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By  Richard  LlewelH 

Author  of  How  Green  Was  My  V 
written.  Its  tremendous  and  wonderful  fun  on  a  dozen  levels."-^.  C  Specto'> 

Itane  But  ihejc^ndy  H^ 


I  Gladys  Hasty  Carroll 

iJ  ,r  of  As  the  Earth  Turns 

U  ;  the  story  of  stalwart  New  England  people  and  of  the  Maine  commu- 


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'A\ 


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IE  USES  OF 
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Author  of  Let  the  Earth  Speak 

An  excitingly  different  novel  in 
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WONDERINGS 

By  John  Masefield 

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'^A  beautiful  book." 

— N.  Y.  Herald  Tribune 

Book  Review 


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'"  '-'«'o„  to  our  own  Cn ,     "^'  ^^^^ 


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Today,  finding  herself  unexpectedly  a 
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to  Eli  Whitney  himself.  When  he  was  finally 
ensconced  in  the  Yale  Sheffield  Scientific  School  as 
a  teacher  of  English,  Wilbur  Gross  got  his  way  by 
methods  that  verged  on  slyness.  After  announcing 
a  graduate  course  in  the  history  of  the  English 
novel,  Cross  ran  up  against  the  scruples  of  President 
Timothy  Dwight  the  Younger,  who  considered  the 
English  novel  too  "sexy"  for  university  consump- 
tion. Cross  immediately  acquiesced  to  Dwight's 
request  that  the  course  be  dropped,  but  added 
that  Yale  had  no  business  teaching  the  Odyssey 
and  the  Iliad,  each  of  which  included  a  few  stories 
of  sexual  irregularities.  The  next  year  the  ban  on 
the  study  of  English  fiction  was  lifted. 

Cross,  Fielding,  and  Sterne 

Wilbur  Cross's  own  claim  to  a  place  in  English 
letters  rests  on  his  studies  of  Henry  Fielding  and 
Laurence  Sterne.  Why  did  he  single  out  these 
Eighteenth-Century  worthies  for  concentrated  at- 
tention? Wilbur  Cross  doesn't  tell  us  very  much 
in  the  pages  of  his  autobiography  about  his  life 
as  a  biographer.  But  it  is  easy  to  imagine  that 
Sterne  and  Fielding  appealed  to  him  primarily 
because  they  didn't  think  it  worth  while  to  fuss 
and  fume  over  the  permanently  unregenerate 
aspects  of  human  nature.  New  England  has 
turned  out  its  full  quota  of  idealists,  men  who  have 
stormed  heaven  for  the  unattainable.  One  of 
these  idealists,  John  Brown  of  Harpers  Ferry,  was 
actually  a  native  of  Connecticut.  But  the  Con- 
necticut Yankee  in  Wilbur  Cross  observed  quite 
early  in  life  that  a  good  bit  of  steady  infighting  is 
usually  more  productive  of  results  than  the  hay- 
maker swing  of  the  zealot.  Cross  got  his  first 
lessons  in  politics  when  he  clerked  in  his  brother's 
country  store.  He  learned  that  men  have  frailties. 
And  he  learned  that  the  way  to  get  things  done 
was  to  appeal  to  the  self-regarding  instinct  that  is 
in  practically  everybody.  But  Cross  never  for  one 
moment  became  a  cynic.  The  definition  of  a 
sophist  is  that  he  makes  the  worse  appear  the  better 
reason.  Cross  has  turned  the  sophist  upside  down : 
he  achieved  results,  as  professor,  as  dean,  and  as 
the  four-term  governor  of  a  great  State,  by  making 
the  better  reason  sometimes  appear  the  worse. 

When  he  first  ran  for  governor,  in  1930,  the 
Republican  opposition  tried  to  laugh  Cross  off  as 
a  nice  old  academic  gentleman,  a  bit  absent- 
minded  of  course,  but  otherwise  respectable — 
and  useless.  Cross  immediately  countered  by 
making  burlesque  speeches  about  the  Republicans 
who  voted  dry  and  drank  wet.  By  the  time  elec- 
tion day  came  around  Cross  had  succeeded  in 
convincing  the  whole  State  that  he  was  a  cracker- 
barrel  character,  a  smart  boy  from  the  country 
who  seldom  wasted  time  washing  behind  his  ears. 
The  image  of  the  professor,  the  man  whom 
Republican  Boss  Roraback  referred  to  as  "Dean 
Somebody,"  was  entirely  forgotten.  The  fame  of 
Cross,  the  campaigner,  traveled  as  far  as  Milan, 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


\  National  Debt  of  300  Billion  Dollars 


Will  it  mean  RUIN  or  RECOVER 
to  postwar  America^ 


^ 


STUART  CHASE 

gives  his  incisive  answers  to  the  hotly-debated  question 

WHERE'S  THE  MONEY 
I     COMING  FROM? 


WHEN    ' 
THE  WAR 
ENDS 


How  can  we  achieve  full 
employment  of  our  men 
and  machines? 

Can  we  make  the  nation- 
al debt  work  for  us,  in* 
stead  of  against  us? 

Must  we  have  general 
inflation  ? 

Can  we  provide  decent 
living  standards  for  all 
Americans  without  run- 
ning the  risk  of  economic 
collapse? 


RIGHT  now,  says  Mr.  Chase,  the  United  States  is  like  a 
Flying  Fortress  .  . .  we  must  maintain  a  given  speed  or 
crash.  Our  economy  is  geared  to  a  national  output  in  goods 
•and  services  of  around  $150  billions.  Our  national  debt,  by  the 
end  of  the  war,  may  run  between  $200  and  $300  billion.  So 
long  as  output  stays  high,  we're  all  right.  But  suppose  we 
should  crash! 

How  can  we  make  sure  of  keeping  up  high  employment  and 
high  production?  How  can  we  pay  interest  on  the  debt,  taxes, 
and  still  keep  our  economy  expanding?  Where's  the  money 
coming  from? 

Stuart  Chase,  in  his  third  report  to  the  Twentieth  Century 
Fund,  gives  his  own  brilliant  answers.  He  looks  money 
squarely  in  the  face — tells  what  it  is,  how  it  works.  He  suggests 
how  we  can  check  inflation,  service  the  debt,  and  bring  our 
full  productive  power  into  play — how  we  can  build  and  pay 
for  a  richer,  finer  postwar  America. 

This  is  a  lucid,  strikingly  worded  dollars-and-cents  view  of 
tomorrow's  world  for  the  private  citizen.  Get  your  copy  today. 


t  all  Booksellers  or  Attach  a  Dollar  Bill  to 
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ose  $1.00.  Please  send  WHERE'S  THE  MONEY 
ING  FROM?  By  Stuart  Chase. 


HM-12 


o 


STUART  CHASE 

is  writing  his  own  explora- 
tions of  postwar  issues  in  a 
series  of  six  striking  volumes. 
If  you  haven't  already  read 
the  first  two  reports,  get  them 
at  once: 


THE  ROAD  WE  ARE 
TRAVELING:  1914-1942 

GOALS  FOR  AMERICA 

A  budget  of  our  needs  and 
resources.  Each  vol.  $1.00 
The  set  of  six  Cwhen  readv) 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


"Free-flowing  and  witty, 
pithy.. •  one  of  the  pleas- 
antest  autobiographies  of 
the  season.^'— T/ie  New  Yorker 


The  story  of  the  statesman-scholar  known  as  Uncle  Toby 

"This  is,  by  heck,  the  real  thing."— /V.  Y. 
Times  Book  Review.  "It  is  magnifiGent . . . 
without  inurh  doubt  the  autobiographical 
highspot  of  the  year." — A^.  Y.  Herald 
Tribune.  "Full  of  shrewdness  and  mature 

wisdom of  crackling  humor  of  the  best 

Yankee  brand ...  As  a  piece  of  genuine 
Americana  (it)  has  a  good  chance  of  be- 
coming a  classic." — A^.  Y.  Sun.  Illus.  $5.00 


MONTANA:  HIGH,  WIDE 
AND  HANDSOME 

JOSEPH  KINSEY  HOWARD 

The  story  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
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IHE  PSYCHOLOGY 
OF  JUNG 

JOLAN  JACOBI 

With  a  Foreword  by  Dr.  Jung 

A  short  but  comprehensive  survey  of  the 
work  of  the  leading  psychologist  of  our 
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Italy,  where  he  was  cartooned  as  the  septuagena- 
rian who  owed  his  youthful  energy  to  the  habit  of 
"going  months  without  a  bath."  Bathtubless 
Republicans  from  the  rural  districts  turned  out  to 
vote  for  Gross  as  one  of  their  own. 

As  governor  Wilbur  Cross  usually  had  the  Re- 
publican and  Socialist  State  legislature  against 
him.  His  greatest  victories  were  won  by  a  char- 
acteristic indirection  that  was,  in  reality,  merely 
the  Yankee  inventor  taking  a  short-cut.  Early 
in  the  game  Cross  smelled  out  a  corrupt  state  of 
affairs  in  the  Waterbury  Democratic  city  machine. 
He  couldn't  prove  his  case,  but  he  was  bound  that 
he  would  not  run  on  the  same  ticket  with  Daniel 
Leary.  The  Old  Guard  Democrats  planned  to 
nominate  Cross  for  governor,  then  put  Leary  over 
on  him  as  a  candidate  for  lieutenant-governor 
whether  he  liked  it  or  not.  But  Gross,  without 
direcdy  attacking  Leary,  announced  that  he 
wouldn't  allow  his  name  to  be  brought  before  the 
convention  until  after  the  candidate  for  second 
place  on  the  slate  had  already  been  chosen.  The 
politicians  got  the  idea  and  dropped  Leary.  A 
few  years  later  the  whole  Waterbury  gang  was 
indicted  for  corrupt  practices. 

He  Loves  Anecdote 

Practically  half  of  Cross's  autobiography  is  con- 
cerned with  Connecticut  politics,  which  will  un- 
doubtedly weary  the  average  citizen  of  Joplin, 
Missouri,  or  Snake  Gulch,  Idaho.  But  all  of  the 
detail  is  relevant  to  the  portrait  of  a  man.  The 
spirit  of  Eighteenth-Century  realism — or  of  rural 
realism  anywhere — speaks  on  every  page  of  Con- 
mcticut  Yankee.  Cross  doesn't  wear  his  heart  on 
his  sleeve,  or  his  social  philosophy  either.  He 
often  speaks  elliptically.  And  like  all  elliptical 
talkers,  he  loves  anecdote.  For  anyone  who  is 
interested  in  academic  gossip,  the  first  half  of 
Connecticut  Yankee  will  prove  a  mother  lode.  There 
are  excellent  anecdotes  about  an  older  generation 
of  teachers — Henry  Beers,  Thomas  Lounsbury, 
William  Graham  Sumner,  "Waterloo  Arthur" 
Wheeler.  It  is  too  bad  that  Thomas  Beer  didn't 
live  to  savor  these  reminiscences  of  academic 
characters  he  loved,  characters  who  ought  to  be  as 
famous  as  Copeland  and  Kittredge  of  Harvard. 
Beer  would  have  enjoyed  this  story  of  the  trans- 
formation of  a  school  for  fledgling  ministers  and 
lawyers  into  a  modern  university. 

To  his  friends  Cross  is  "Uncle  Toby" — a  name 
taken  from  Sterne's  famous  "he-would-not-harm- 
a-fly"  character  in  Tristram  Shandy.  But  the  nick- 
name is  deceptive,  a  matter  of  protective  colora- 
tion. It  is  all  part  of  the  work  of  art  that  is  Cross's 
character.  If  Cross  had  exuded  briskness  and 
purpose  people  would  have  opposed  him.  But  as 
"Uncle  Toby,"  Cross  has  been  able  to  slip  under 
the  guards  of  embattled  faculty  politicians,  re- 
calcitrant Democrats  and  Republicans,  and  unwary 
students.     He  will  leave  as  his  monument  two 


YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS    •    NEW  HAVEN,  CONN,  a 

Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


Johnny  Tremain 


BY    ESTHER   FORBES 

1^ 


^CC^XKIC  it  is  a  book  which  bofh  parents 
and  children  will  love.  Ideal  for  reading 
aloud.  Because  it  is  about  an  inspiring 
monnent  in  our  history  and  is  written  by  a 
great  novelist  whose  knowledge  of  this 
period  won  her  a  Pulitzer  award.  $2.50 


Rio  Grande  to  Cape  Horn 

&ec^M^^  Tinne  Magazine  calls  him  "the 
best  informed  living  v/riter  on  Latin  Amer- 
ica," and  because  he  has  distilled  a  lifetime 
of  study  of  Latin  Americans  to  give  us  this 
picturesque,  provocative  and  utterly  honest 
book.  $3.50 


BY   CARLETON    BEALS 


The  Robe 


BY    LLOYD    C.    DOUGLAS 


CcC^U{4^  in  a  year  when  America  needed 
to  forget  itself  and  needed  also  reassur- 
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been  one  of  the  great  best  sellers  of  Amer- 
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f^CXitCdW^^  these  titles.  They  will  serve  you  well  in  your  hour 
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to  read  yourself  before  giving  them  away. 


HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


HARVARD 


Clemeu'^eau 

By  GEOFFREY  BRUUN 

A  vigorous,  impartial  study  of  Clemenceau  and 
re-evaluation  of  his  place  in  modern  history.  More 
than  a  biography,  this  book  provides  the  reader 
interested  in  international  affairs  with  a  succinct 
analysis  of  the  leading  statesman  of  the  Third 
French  Republic.  The  review  of  his  autocratic  and 
intolerant  realism  at  the  Paris  Peace  Conference 
comes  at  an  auspicious  moment,  as  does  the  an- 
alysis of  Clemenceau' s  conclusions  on  the  Franco- 
German  problem.  240  pages.  $3-00 

Nusantara:  A  History  of  the 
East  Indian  Archipelago 

By  BERNARD  H.  M.  VLEKKE 

Every  person  concerned  with  the  development,  past 
or  future,  of  the  East  Indies  will  welcome  this 
timely  publication  —  the  first  complete  history  of 
the  Archipelago  in  English,  from  earliest  times  to 
the  fall  of  Bandung  in  1942.  The  social,  economic, 
and  political  development  of  the  Indies  forms  an 
absorbing  story,  and  facts  never  before  published 
shed  new  light  on  the  events  of  the  war  in  the 
Pacific .  ' '  Magnificent . "  —  Hendrik  Willem  Van 
Loon.  438  pages.  $5.00 

The  Passing  of  the 
European  Age 

By  ERIC  FISCHER 

A  refreshingly  new  concept  of  the  evolution  of 
western  civilization  explaining  the  transfer  of 
centers  of  culture  from  Europe  to  other  continents. 
The  author  analyzes  the  reciprocal  influences  of  the 
new  on  the  old  and  shows  how  the  world  wars 
climaxed  an  inevitable  social  and  economic  revolu- 
tion. "A  far  cry  from  the  heavy  gloom  and  Teu- 
tonic pessimism  ...  of  Spengler."  —  Saturday 
Review  of  Literature.  Ill  pages.  $2.50 


DESCRIPTIVE 

CATALOGUE  OF 

1943 

BOOKS 

ON  REQUEST 


HARVARD 
UNIVERSITY 

PRESS 

CAMBRIDGE 

MASSACHUSETTS 


HARVARD 


books  of  sound  scholarship,  a  vigorous  and  trans- 
formed Tale  Review  (which  he  still  helps  edit),  a 
record  for  sound  university  administration,  and  a 
memory  of  skillful  infighting  as  Connecticut's  de- 
pression era  eight-year  governor. 

The  final  stroke  in  the  artful  composition  of 
the  Connecticut  Yankee's  life  may  be  glimpsed  by 
anyone  who  reads  one  of  Governor  Cross's  oflficial 
Thanksgiving  proclamations.  When  he  was  cam- 
paigning Cross  tried  to  convince  the  rubes  from 
the  rural  rotten  boroughs  that  he  was  just  as 
sensible  as  any  illiterate  who  has  not  been  cor- 
rupted by  a  knowledge  of  abstractions.  But  after 
election  Cross  would  proceed  to  issue  Thanksgiving 
proclamations  that  will  live  in  the  anthologies  of 
English  prose.  For  example:  "As  the  colors  of 
autumn  stream  down  the  wind,  scarlet  in  sumach 
and  maple,  spun  gold  in  the  birches,  a  splendor 
of  smoldering  fire  in  the  oaks  along  the  hill,  and 
the  last  leaves  flutter  away,  and  dusk  falls  briefly 
about  the  worker  bringing  in  from  the  field  a  late 
load  of  its  fruit,  and  Arcturus  is  lost  to  sight  and 
Orion  swings  upward  that  great  sun  upon  his 
shoulder,  we  are  stirred  once  more  to  ponder  the 
Infinite  Goodness  that  has  set  apart  for  us,  in  all 
this  moving  mystery  of  creation,  a  time  of  living 
and  a  home.  In  such  a  spirit  I  appoint  Thursday, 
the  twenty-fourth  of  November,  a  day  of  public 
Thanksgiving.  ..." 

Alec  Woollcott  was  so  entranced  by  one  of  Gov- 
ernor Cross's  proclamations  that  he  put  it  on  the 
air  for  all  America.  And  as  the  Thanksgiving 
words  of  Uncle  Toby  once  rang  out  through  space, 
they  will  probably  ring  on  down  through  time — 
a  unique  and  certain  memory  that  is  vouchsafed  to 
few  governors  and  practically  no  professors. 

Assembling  an  American 

After  reading  Wilbur  Cross's  autobiography, 
one  wonders  whether  Hamilton  Basso  has  suc- 
ceeded in  exploring  all  the  important  strains  of  the 
American  character  in  Mainstream.  Mr.  Basso's 
book  is  imaginative  and  highly  perceptive;  it 
abounds  in  striking  characterizations  and  shrewd 
speculative  remarks.  After  inventing  a  "typical" 
American,  a  small-town  druggist  named  John 
Applegate  who  has  been  affected  in  certain  ways 
by  Americans  as  diverse  as  Cotton  Mather  and 
Huey  P.  Long,  Mr.  Basso  backtracks  into  history, 
giving  us  shrewd  biographies  of  the  American  as 
aristocrat  (John  Calhoun),  the  American  as  demo- 
crat (Jeff'erson),  the  American  as  success  story 
(Carnegie),  the  American  as  Progressive  (Theo- 
dore Roosevelt),  the  American  as  demagogue 
(Huey,  the  Louisiana  Kingfish),  and  the  American 
as  "educator"  (P.  T.  Barnum,  the  father  of  modern 
advertising).  As  a  biographer  of  intellects  Mr. 
Basso  is  better  than  anyone  who  has  recently  come 
along  the  pike.  But  one  looks  in  vain  throughout 
his  list  for  the  American  as  Yankee.  This  particu- 
lar type  of  American  has  made  his  mark  on  John 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


Tistmas 


A   NATIONAL  BEST-SELLER 

THE  JOT  or  COOKING 

By  Irma  5.  Rombauer 

It  Is  breaking  sales  records  everywhere  because  It  Is  the  only 
cookbook  sold  with  a  money-back  guarantee  and  as  Time 
Magazine  says:  "Mrs.  Rombauer's  expert,  explicit  manner 
of  writing  recipes  is  nearly  baffle-proof."  New  and  enlarged 
edition,  3,200  recipes,  896  pages,  completely  indexed.  $2.50 


SUCH  INTERESTING 

PEOPLE        By  Robert  J.  Casey 

When  you're  in  the  newspaper  business  you  meet  such  in- 
teresting people — they're  all  in  the  newspaper  business!  In 
hilarious  prose  Bob  Casey  presents  a  multitude  of  grand 
stories  about  the  colleagues  of  his  long  journalistic  career. 
Decorations  by  John  Groth,  $3.00 


Shadowed  Victory 

By  Arthur  Stringer.  In  this  absorbing  novel  told  in  poig- 
nant verse,  Arthur  Stringer  has  made  unforgettable  the  bloody 
drama  of  Dieppe  and  paid  tribute  to  our  New  World  part 
in  the  struggle  of  the  United  Nations.  $1.50 

Road  lo  Peace  &  Freedom 

By  Irving  Brant.  An  analysis  of  the  relationship  of  the 
United  States  to  other  nations,  and  a  clear-cut,  forthright 
plan  for  peace  based  on  co-operation  with  the  other  world 
powers,  especially  Russia  and  Great  Britain.  $2.00 

Supper  at  the 
Maxwell  House 

By  Alfred  Leiand  Crabb.  "Mr.  Crabb  has  scored  again 
with  a  novel  of  the  reconstruction  in  which  recaptured  Nash- 
ville plays  a  major  part.  Delightful . .  .  pleasant .  .  .  piquant." 
— Boston  Globe.  "Well-drawn  characters,  sprightly  conver- 
sations, and  a  city  full  of  people  and  events  make  it  a  good 
book." — Los  Angeles  Times,  $2.50 


Captaiii 


"An  action-packed  tale  of  fast  sailing, 
hair-breath  escapes  and  rum-scented 
amours.  Mr.  Cochran  is  a  two-fisted 
author  ...  A  year  ago,  in  'Windward 
Passage,'  he  gave  us  a  full-bodied  pic- 
ture of  the  buccaneer  Sir  Henry  Mor- 
gan. In  this  romantic  novel  he  moves 
with  the  same  assurance  through  the 

Danish  West  Indies."-N.  Y         

Times.  Second  Printing. 


By 

Hamilton 

Cochran 


•^4 


American  Guerrilla 

By  Captain  Douglas  M.  Smith  and  Cecil 
Carnes.  The  true  story  of  a  modern  Law- 
rence of  Arabia,  an  American  with  the  French 
Foreign  Legion  who  organized  the  desert  tribes 
for  the  Fighting  French  then  joined  a  band 
of  British  raiders  in  harrying  Rommel  across 
Africa.  Illustrated.  $3.00 


Gunners  Get  Glory 

By  Lieutenant  Bob  Berry  as  told  to  i 
Lloyd  Wendt.  This  is  the  story  of  the  Navy 
gunners  on  merchant  ships.  Here  is  drama, 
tragedy,  humor,  bravery  and  gripping  sus- 
pense. This  is  the  story  of  men  who  have 
seen  man  and  nature  at  their  worst  and  who 
go  back  to  "get  the  stuff  through"  again. 
Illustrated.  $2.75 


m 


K  J^-S-q^^" 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


-Ever/one  is  buying 
Everyone  is  giving 
Everyone  is  reading 
Everyone  is  talking  about 

THIS  CHRISTMAS! 

BURMA 
SURGEON 

By  Gordon  S.  Seagrave 


"This  rough  and  ready  story,  one  of  the  most 
simple  but  heroic  of  them  all . . .  will  be  one 
of  the  great  stories  of  the  war." 

— Harper^s  Magazine 

"Americans  will  be  proud  of  this  book  ...  it 
is  a  book  filled  with  great  deeds,  touching 
sympathy,  and  kind  humor — and  those  nurses 
will  make  any  man  want  to  go  to  Burma  for 
his  next  operation." — Atlantic  Monthly 

Illustrated  •  $3.00 

"BOOKS  THAT  LIVE'' 
W  •  W  •  NORTON    •    70  Fifth  Avenue,  N.  Y.  II 


Applegate's  character,  for  John  Applegate  cer- 
tainly believes  in  abundance  by  the  short-cut 
method  first  established  by  Eli  Whitney  and  Sam- 
uel Colt  and  later  pushed  towards  its  limits  by 
Henry  Ford  and  the  men  of  Detroit. 

True,  Mr.  Basso's  Barnum  hailed  from  the 
Yankee  hill  country  in  back  of  Bridgeport,  Con- 
necticut. But  Barnum  was  only  a  shill.  John 
Applegate  has  been  visibly  affected  by  the  shill. 
The  institution  of  mass  advertising,  however, 
would  function  in  a  vacuum  if  it  were  not  for  the 
basic  transformation  of  a  whole  way  of  making 
goods  that  was  first  set  in  motion  by  men  who 
tinkered  with  machinery  by  the  waterfalls  of  small 
Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  streams. 

This  is  a  mere  parenthetical  objection  to  Mr. 
Basso's  book,  which  is  shrewd,  civilized  reading. 
Anyway,  Mr.  Basso's  main  desire  was  to  portray 
the  American  as  the  eternal  pilgrim  in  search  of 
liberty,  a  pilgrim  who  knows  his  backsliding  mo- 
ments but  who  can't  be  fooled  for  very  long  by  a 
theocratic  Cotton  Mather,  an  aristocratic  William 
Byrd  of  Westover,  a  John  Calhoun  of  South  Caro- 
lina, or  a  Huey  Long. 

Perspective  on  Africa 

It  is  about  time  that  we  began  to  see  our  North 
African  campaign  in  perspective,  and  Kenneth 
Crawford's  Report  on  North  Africa  (Farrar 
and  Rinehart,  S2)  is  a  helpful  document  to  that 
end.  Mr.  Crawford  went  originally  to  Casablanca 
and  Algiers  with  an  idea  that  "someone  had 
blundered,"  perhaps  Mr.  Robert  Murphy  of  the 
American  State  Department.  But  three  months 
on  the  North  African  scene  convinced  Mr.  Craw- 
ford that  the  so-called  "Darlan  deal"  was  justified 
(he  thinks  that  pro  tem  recognition  of  Darlan 
saved  at  least  19,500  American  lives).  As  for  the 
character  of  Mr.  Murphy,  Mr.  Crawford  now 
thinks  it  is  eighteen  karat.  Murphy's  wirepulling 
and  cozening  enabled  the  Anglo-American  strate- 
gists 1  J  achieve  a  thunderous  success  with  a  fright- 
eningly  small  force. 

Mr.  Crawford's  book  is  not  anti-de  Gaulle.  But 
neither  is  it  anti-Giraud.  It  accepts  de  Gaullism 
as  the  living  evidence  of  rising  French  nationalism. 
But  Mr.  Crawford  is  uneasy  about  de  Gaulle's 
character.  A  man  who  thinks  he  is  Joan  of  Arc 
one  day  and  Georges  Clemenceau  the  next  may  be 
needed  in  a  nation's  darkest  hour.  But  when 
Frenchmen  from  Left  to  Right  meet  to  re-establish 
parliamentary  democracy,  what  then?  Saviors 
often  confuse  their  own  voices  with  the  mandate  of 
the  people,  and  they  have  been  known  in  the  past 
to  kill  democracy  in  the  act  of  trying  to  rescue  it. 

Mr.  Crawford  undertook  his  North  African 
jaunt  for  PM,  whose  editors  refused  to  accept 
their  reporter's  conclusions.  Just  what  a  former 
editor  of  PM  thinks  of  the  political  aspects  of  our 
North  African  campaign  is  not  made  plain  in  the 
pages  of  Captain  Ralph  Ingersoll's  The  Battle  Is 


Books  Are   Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


'ar  Christmas  Qiving 

THE  AMERICAN  ,r;r;;5„ 

By  JAMES  TRUSLOW  ADAMS 

moid,  mellow  and  civilized"  book  on  the  way  the  American  type  and 

racter  has  been  moulded  through,  and  by,  our  national  history.  "The 

historical  volume  Mr.  Adams  has  written  ...  It  should  become  an 

erican  classic! -iV.  K  Sun;  Third  Printing.  $3.00 

YANKEE  *LAWYER 

The  AMtobiography  o^  l.}^\vi{\\m  "Xwit 

eludes  almost  everything  a  reader  needs  for  a  good  time:  human- 
rest  stories  from  Mr.  Tutt's  legal  life;  anecdotes  about  Mr.  Tutt's 
temporaries  and  Mr.  Tutt  himself.  As  American  as  a  Stephen 
ter  songV— Time;  Fourth  Printing.  $3.50 

PARIS-UNDERGROUND 

By  ETTA  SHIBER 

"The  confession  of  a  modern  Edith  Gavell,  who 
brought  about  the  escape  of  over  150  British 
soldiers  from  France  right  under  the  noses  of  the 
Gestapor-//«rr3;  Hansen,  N,  Y.  World  Telegram; 
One  of  a  Dual  Book-of-the-Month  Club  Selection, 

GOD  IS  MY  COPILOT 

By  COL.  ROBERT  L  SCOTT 

he  most  fascinating  personal  story  of  the  war  Whatever  way  you 
e  him,  Colonel  Scott  is  one  whale  of  a  manV-John  (^'"""''^'''"'"x 
Y.  Times;  Illustrated.  *■ '^^ 

GARDEN  ISLANDS 
of  the  GREAT  EAST 

By  DAVID  FAIRCHILD 

new  book  and  a  delightful  one,  about  a  wandering  expedhm^^^^^ 
wering  Islands  of  the  Malay  Archipelago.  -Dorothy  Canfieia  rts       .^ 
ith  64  pages  of  Halftones  from  photographs. 


Action  This  Day 

tters  from  the  Fighting  Fronts 

By  FRANCIS  J.  SPELL/MN 

Archbishop  of  New  York 
5  full  story  of  Archbishop  Spellman's  re- 
it  visit  to  the  Mediterranean  battle 
'unds  and  to  the  capitals  of  Europe  — 
ked  with  incident,  anecdote,  humor,  wis- 
n  and  inspiration.  $2.75 


The  Russian  Enigma 

Aw  Interpretation 

By  WILLIAN  HENRY  CHAMBERLIN 

An  invaluable  background  "o""""  *'";;;; 
nresent  and  possible  future  of  *«  Soviet 
E  A  dispassionate,  <S"ph:c    aii-roun 
picture  of  Soviet  history  and  polices.     $2.75 


'k 


\ 


*r4 


r:^M/  ^t*^' 


HARLES  SCRIBNER-S  c^.c    M.W  YORK    of  oH  booksfores 


BRIEF    REVIEWS 


The  Navy  tells  its  own  story 

[ondition 
Red 


Destroyer  Action  in 
the  South  Pacific 


By  COMMANDER  FREDERICK  J. 
BELL,  u.  s.  NAVY 

The  most  important  and  stirring  actions  of 
tlie  war  in  the  Pacific  are  here  reinacted  with 
the  original  actors  playing  their  own  roles — 
an  accurate  historical  document  as  well  as  a 
narrative  of  continuous  excitement . . .  the  first 
book  about  our  destroyers  in  action.  Maps, 
photographs.  $3.00 

Also  by  Comcfr.  Bell:  ROOM  TO  SWING 
A  CAT.  3rd  printing  ready.  $3.00 

The  Pageant  Of 
Canadian  History 

By  Anne  Merriman  Peck,  Far  from  being 
a  formal  history,  this  epic  account  of  the  birth 
and  life  of  Canada  is  the  story  of  people 
of  various  racial  stocks,  their  activities  and 
ambitions  and  cultures  that  erected  the 
Dominion.  Illustrated.  $3.00 

BOOKS   FOR  CHILDREN 

Painter's  Coach 

By  Use  Bischoff,  This  well-told  story  of  tne 
adventures  of  itinerant  painters  in  New  Eng- 
land and  a  boy's  development  as  an  artist 
is  sure  to  find  a  hearty  welcome.  Illustrated. 
Ages  8-12.  $2.25 

Bow  Bells 

By  Katharine  Gibson,  The  story  of  Dick 
Whittington  has  never  been  told  so  charm- 
ingly and  with  such  contagious  humor. 
"Katharine  Gibson  has  a  faculty  of  recaptur- 
ing period  and  atmosphere." — ^Virginia  Kirkus. 
Illustrated'-.   Ages  8-12.  $2.00 

Liberty  For  Johanny 

By  Adelaide  H.  and  John  C.  Wonsetleu 

Johanny,  son  of  a  Pennsylvania  Dutch  family, 
plays  an  exciting  part  in  the  life  of  America 
during  the  winter  of  Valley  Forge.  "The  star 
of  liberty  shines  brighdy  in  these  absorbing 
pages  ...  a  fine  story."— The  Horn  Book.  Illus- 
trated.    Ages  10-15.  $2.50 

LONGMANS,  GREEN  &  CO. 

55   Fifth  Avenue,   New  York  3 
215  Victoria  Street,  Toronto  2 


the  Pay-Qff  (Harcourt,  Brace,  $2).  But  if 
Captain  Ingersoll  is  mum  about  our  political  war- 
fare, he  is  eloquent  on  the  subject  of  our  army. 
Captain  Ingersoll  describes  his  ow^n  part  in  a 
minor  action  in  central  Tunis  in  a  narrative  w^hich 
is  just  as  confusing  as  all  such  attempts  to  portray 
battle  from  the  limited  view  afforded  down  in  the 
mud.  But  on  the  subject  of  an  army's  training, 
organization,  and  "housekeeping"  functions  Cap- 
tain Ingersoll  is  remarkably  clear  and  convincing. 
If  you  want  to  know  how  an  army  combes  into 
being,  and  how  it  lives  and  moves  toward  the 
battle  that  is  the  "pay-off,"  Captain  IngersolFs 
is  the  best  book  on  the  subject  in  existence. 

Books  That  Shed  Light 

Other  good  books  of  the  autumn  that  shed  light 
on  war,  the  nature  of  armies,  and  the  objects  of 
war,  include  Richard  Aldington's  The  Duke 
(Viking,  $3.75),  a  pleasantly  written  and  spirited 
life  of  the  victor  of  Waterloo;  F.  S.  Crafford's 
Jan  Smuts  (Doubleday,  Doran,  S3. 50),  a  work- 
aday biography  of  the  great  South  African  soldier 
and  politician;  Makers  of  Modern  Strategy: 
Military  Thought  from  Machiavelli  to  Hitler 
(Princeton,  $3.75),  a  wide-sweeping  symposium 
edited  by  Edward  Mead  Earle;  and  Count  Richard 
N.  Coudenhove-Kalergi's  Crusade  for  Pan- 
Europe  (Putnam,  S3. 50).  If  you  gather  from 
these  volumes  the  idea  that  it  is  easier  to  make 
war  than  to  make  peace,  that  is  not  entirely  the 
fault  of  the  authors. 

IX  BRIEF 

By  Katherine  Gauss  Jackson 

Fiction 

Indigo,  by  Christine  Weston. 

India  seems  to  endow  those  Westerners  who  love 
her  with  a  peculiar  gift  of  sensitivity  and  percep- 
tion. This  novel  of  six  major  characters  and  in- 
numerable minor  ones  has  the  force  of  a  powerful 
drug.  In  it  are  all  the  sights  and  sounds  and  smells 
of  India;  all  her  beauty,  terror,  and  uncertainties, 
and  though  the  people  would  be  important  as  hu- 
man beings  anywhere,  their  problems  take  on  the 
added  tension  that  the  unfamiliar  background 
gives  them.  Essentially  this  is  the  story  of  a  de- 
termined and  jealous  mother  who  ruins  the  lives 
of  her  children  and  in  the  end  is  punished  as  such 
selfishness  is  always  punished.  But  all  the  people 
who  are  part  of  the  life  of  her  son,  Jacques  de  St. 
Remy,  have  real  life  of  their  own.  And  woven 
into  the  fabric  of  their  lives  and  the  slow  move- 
ment of  their  days  is  more  about  the  so-called 
"India  problem" — as  that  problem  must  seem  to 
those  who  live  it — than  ever  was  put  into  ten 
treatises  on  the  subject,  though  th'.s  was  written 
of  a  time  before  the  last  war  and  though  Mrs. 
Weston  never  points  any  moral  aside  from  her  story 
as  Mrs.  Buck  does  in  her  novel  of  China.  Here 
are  no  political  answers.     But  in  human  terms 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


Sing 

for 

Qristmas 

The  words  of  all  your  favorite  carols  with 
music  simply  arranged  so  that  almost  any 
child  or  adult  can  sing  and  play  them.  Every 
service  man  will  love  it.  Sixteen  four-color, 
full  page  illustrations;  twelve  two-color,  full 
page  illustrations;  and  a  large  number  of 
black-and-whites.  $2.50 

by  OPAL  WHEELER 

author  of 

"Handel  at  the  Court  of  Kings", 

"Stephen  Foster",  "Ludwig  Beethoven",  etc. 

Illustrated  by  Gustaf  Tenggren 


THE  NEW  BOOK  BY  THE 

AUTHOR  OF 

QUEEN   OF  THE    FLAT-TOPS 

STANLEY 
JOHNSTON 

■he  vivid  feel  n«  on         "     "'''  ^•— — '. 

THE  GRIM 
REAPERS 


MALTA  STORY  --  "W%  a  greol  book!" 
-Chicago  Tribune.  By  W.  i.  kiver.  Based  on 
the  Diary  ond  Experiences  of  Lt,  Howard  M. 
CofRn^  U.S.A.A.F.,  formerly  Flyins  Officer  with 
the  R.A.F.  $2.50 

THEY  SHALL  NOT  HAVE  ME  by  Uan 

Helton,  One  of  the  great  escape  stories  of 
aU  time.  "Breathtaking  .  <.  .  One  of  the  half- 
dozen  most  remarkable  books  of  World  War 
11/'— Time  A^ogozine.  $3.00 

THE  LADY  AND  THE  TIGERS  by  oigaS, 

Greenlaw,  "the  one  and  only  outhentic  story 
of  the  Flying  Tigers  —  an  inside  fob  and  abso- 
lutely honest/'— Lei  and  Stowe.  Illustrated  with 
photographs.  $3.00 

WE    THOUGHT    WE    HEARD    THE 

ANGELS  SING  fay  it.  James  C.  Whlftaker. 
The  complete  epic  story  of  the  ordeai  and 
rescue  of  the  Rickenbacker  party.  Illustrated. 

$1-50 

GIVE  US  A  UTTLE  SMILE,  BABY  by 

Harry  J,  Coleman.  "The  mellow  recollections 
of  a  veteran  news  photographer  who  .  ,  . 
happens  to  be  ...  a  salty  story-teller/'— Stanley 
Walker.     Illustrated     with     photographs     and 

t  wings  by  famous  cartoonists.  $3.00 

DAYS:  The  Survival  of  Seaman 

Jzzi  by  Mark  Murphy,  "...a  human  testimonial 
to  the   high   bravery,    imagination,   and 


^"^  LEADING  AMERICAN 
ACE  OF  THIS  WAR 

President  Roosevelt,  in  awarding  Maior 

-naicon,batachieven,ent  unsurpassed 

.nth.s  war.'    You-Ji  thrill  witl,%de 

at  this  story  of  the  good- 

natured  American  farm 

boy   who   turned   from 

shooting   birds   on   the 

South  Dakota  plains  to 

shooting  Jap  Zeros  out 

of  South  Pacific  skies. 

Illustrated  with  action 

photos.  $2.50 


of  the  men  who  are  fighting  our  war. 


^OE  FOSS 

FLYING   MARINE 

and  the  Story  of  his  FLYING  CIRCUS 
"*  ">'d  to  WAITER  SIMMONS 


BRIEF    REVIEWS 


'y4  6^0^  €utd  €i 

—Boston  Globe 

"Through  Dahris  Martin's  eyes 
;  •  .  one  sees  the  hot  sun,  the  gay 
color,  the  raucous  night-life  of  an 
Arah  city.  An  unique  experience 
.  .  .  gayly  and  deftly  communi- 
cated. -Lewis  Gannett 

I  Know 
Tunism 

by  DAHRIS  MARTIiy 

The  story  of  an  American  girl 
who    became    the    "adopted 
daughter"  of  an  Arab  town. 
Third  Printing  Hlus,,  $3,00 

'7iU$500.000 

That's  the  sum  (in  War  Bonds) 
which  the  original  manuscript  of 
this  genteel  journey  through 
Great  Britain  and  France  in  1839 
brought  from  Harvard  University 
Library^ 


The  Diary  of  Mrs.  Daniel  Webster. 

Foreword  by  Claude  Fuess,  lllus»f  $2.75 


for  your  boy  in   the  Service  and  for 
sport  fans  of  all  ages— and  both  sexes! 

TEN^AND  OUT! 

The  Complete  Story  of  the  Prize  Ring 

in  America. 

by  ALEXAIVDER  JOHNSTON 


/v, 


fitt)  i>ninr0t> 


n.  f.ditinn     lilt 


<lli2,7!Z 


^   IVES  WASHBURN,  \NO\ 


and  in  terms  of  the  novel,  this  is  an  extraordinary 
book.  Scribners,  $2.50 

The  Promise,  by  Pearl  Buck. 

Once  more  Mrs.  Buck  uses  her  Biblical  style  and 
her  knowledge  of  China  and  the  Chinese  people 
to  point  a  lesson  for  our  times.  Her  story  is  of  the 
disastrous  defeat  in  Burma  and  the  difficulty 
which  the  Chinese  and  British  allies  had  in  trying 
to  understand  one  another.  Perhaps  the  English 
in  Burma  were  all  as  stupid  as  Mrs.  Buck  paints 
them,  the  Chinese  all  as  brave  and  good,  but 
occasionally  she  seems  to  make  her  points  at  the 
expense  of  the  story,  the  characters,  and  credulity 
itself.  Yet  her  faith  in  China  shines  even  when 
her  novel  does  not.  John  Day,  $2.50 

My  Days  of  Anger,  by  James  T.  Farrell. 

In  which  Danny  O'Neill,  of  A  World  I  Never 
Made  and  No  Star  Is  Lost,  puts  away  childish  things 
and  becomes  a  man  through  a  slow  and  painful 
process  yet  with  a  certain  triumph  at  the  end.  Mr. 
Farrell's  style  is  distinctive  and  unforgettable. 

Vanguard,  $2.75 
Barnaby,  by  Crockett  Johnson. 

The  delightful  heroes  of  the  comic  strip — 
Barnaby  and  his  unpredictable  fairy  godfather, 
Mr.  O'Malley — are  put  into  book  form  for  per- 
manent delight.  Holt,  $2 
Wild  River,  by  Anna  Louise  Strong. 

A  simple,  direct  story  of  a  man  produced  by  the 
Russian  revolution;  his  early  loneliness  and  strug- 
gle, his  marriage,  his  work  as  one  of  many  on  the 
Dnieper  Dam,  and  finally  the  coming  of  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  hate  and  determination  their  coming 
aroused.  ...  In  the  life  of  one  man,  simply  told, 
one  feels  the  story  of  countless  thousands  and  under- 
stands again  the  Russian  victories. 

Litde,  Brown,  $2.50 
The  Locusts,  by  Otto  Schrag. 

This  novel  of  the  American  West,  and  the  often- 
told  story  of  the  locust  plagues  and  the  heroism  of 
those  who  fought  them  has  a  more  intense  quality 
than  most  American  historical  novels.  Perhaps 
it  is  because  the  author,  bom  and  bred  in  Ger- 
many though  his  mother  was  an  American,  never 
saw  the  American  West  and  the  American  farmers 
until  he  was  thirty-three  years  old  and  a  fugitive 
from  Hitler's  Germany.  It  is  natural  that  he 
should  see  in  the  struggle  of  the  early  settlers  some- 
thing important  for  the  spirit  of  man  to-day  and 
thus  be  able  to  give  it  added  meaning  and  dignity. 

Farrar  &  Rinehart,  $3 

Non-fiction 

To  All  Hands:  An  Amphibious  Adventure,  by 

Lt.  John  Mason  Brown. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  to 
come  out  of  the  war.  A  drama  critic,  turned 
lieutenant  in  the  Navy,  is  listed  as  Bridge  An- 
nouncer— which  meant  giving  daily  talks  on  the 
loudspeaker  system — to  the  soldiers  and  sailors 
aboard  the  flagship  of  the  U.  S.  Amphibious  Force 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


I 

The  warmly  human  life  story  of  a 

surgeon  whose  power  of  understanding  is  as 

great  as  his  skill  in  healing 

i  SURGEOH  S  WORLD 


"m^ 


By  MAX  THOREK,  M.D. 

"The  record  of  a  full  and  a  rich  life,  an  autobiography  more' 
crowded  than  most  doctor  books  with  the  raw  materials  of  human 
drama  .  .  .  Sprightly  anecdotes,  salted  with  tolerant  wisdom." 
^N.  y.  Times,  "Extraordinary  ...  a  lusty,  gusty  saga."-N.  Y. 
Herald  Tribune.  "Fascinating  stuff." -N.  Y.  World-Telegram. 

$3.75 
Fourth  Printing 


FE  IS  TOO  SHORT    DUET  with  NICKY 


By  C.  Kay-Scott 

»ne  of  the  most  astonishing  personal  documents 
at  has  come  along.  The  extraordinary  autobiog- 
phy  of  one  of  the  most  many-sided  men  in  the 
untry."-N.  Y.  Herald  Tribune,  $3.50 

EAST  COAST 
CORVETTE 

y  Nicholas  Monsarrat,  Lt.,R.N.v.R. 

Author  of  H.  M.  Corvette 

A  moving  book  ...  of  rare  charm  ...  of  how  men 
ght  and  work  and  exist  on  escort  duty  .  .  .  modu- 
ited.in  tone,  humorously  off-hand   in  attitude. 
•N.Y.Times.^  $^-5^ 


rHE  FRAMEWORK 
OF  BATTLE 

By  Lt.  Col.  John  G.  Burr^  u.s.A.{ret.) 


By  Alice  Berezowsky 

The  story  of  a  happy  couple.  "Her  prosb  sounds 
like  Debussy  ...  A  gay,  witty,  engrossing  story. 
,^N.Y.  Herald  Tribune.  *2.75 

THE  SPY 
IN  AMERICA 

By  George  S.  Bryan 

"At  last  the  history  of  spying  has  been  presented  as 
it  should  be."-N.  Y.  Herald  Tribune.  $3.00 

THE 

UNITED  STATES 
NAVY: 

A  HISTORY 

By  C.  S.  Alden  and  Allan  Wescott 

An  authoritative  account,  from  the  beginning  through 
the  invasion  of  North  Africa. 

Illustrated.  $5.50 

SOUTHWEST  PASSAGE 

The  Yanks  in  the  Pacific 
By  iohn  lardner.  Illustrated.  %i.OQ 

WAR  DISCOVERS  ALASKA 

By  Joseph  Dri5.oll.  Illustrated.  $3.00 


BRIEF    REVIEWS 


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on  its  way  to  and  from  and  "during"  Sicily.  "In 
my  role  of  a  water-soaked  WooUcott,  a  sea-swept 
Pepys,  a  wet  Swing,  a  moist  Baedeker,  a  damp 
Greek  messenger,  and  a  damper  Polonius,  it  was 
my  hope  and  my  duty  to  try  to  interest  all  these 
men."  He  must  have  done  far  more  than  interest 
them.  The  speeches  are  brilliantly  written,  elo- 
quent, amusing,  and  heart-lifting  all  at  once, 
whether  transmitting  the  orders  of  the  day  or 
addressing  the  men  as  the  battle  draws  near.  And 
excellent  photographs.  Whittlesey  House,  $2.75 
The  New  Sun,  by  Taro  Yashima. 

For  once  we  have  a  pictux  e  of  a  spirit  in  Japan 
itself  which  has  fought  and  is  fighting  her  military 
aggression  just  as  fiercely  as  we  are,  and  at  as  great 
cost.  Taro  Yashima  is  an  artist  who  tells  in 
simple  words  and  moving  drawings  the  story  of  his 
life;  of  his  lifelong  eff'ort  to  improve  through  his 
art  and  his  actions  the  lot  of  the  poor  and  oppressed 
in  Japan;  of  his  marriage,  imprisonment,  and 
torture.  If  his  escape,  at  the  end,  remains  ra-ther 
inexplicable,  the  whole  is  an  unusual  and  heart- 
breaking, though  at  the  same  time  hopeful,  record 
for  our  time.  Holt,  $2.75 

Dunnyhrook,  by  Gladys  Hasty  Carroll. 

Mrs.  Carroll,  taking  the  small  corner  of  Maine 
which  was  home  to  her  ancestors  and  is  home  to 
her,  tells  with  the  richness  of  a  novel  and  the  feel 
of  As  the  Earth  Turns  of  the  people  who  built  the 
farms,  the  institutions,  and  the  customs  which 
make  it  what  it  is  to-day.  Macmillan,  $2.75 

Here  Is  Your  War,  by  Ernie  Pyle. 

To  say  that  reading  this  book  is  like  reading  a 
continuous  series  of  Mr.  Pyle's  reports  from  North 
Africa  is  not  to  belittle  the  book.  On  the  contrary. 
His  direct  human  dispatches  are  some  of  the  best 
to  come  out  of  the  war.  Holt,  $3 

Ambulance  in  Africa,  by  Evan  Thomas. 

The  son  of  Norman  Thomas  entered  the  am- 
bulance service  a  month  before  we  entered  the 
war  and  this  is  his  story  of  a  momentous  year  and 
a  half  of  the  African  campaigns  as  he  saw  them. 

Appleton,  $2 
Burning  an  Empire,  by  Stewart  Holbrook. 

Mr.  Holbrook,  from  his  wide  experience  and 
knowledge  of  the  woods,  writes  one  of  the  most 
terrifying  and  horror-filled  stories  of  our  history — 
the  story  of  the  destruction  of  our  forests  by  fire, 
which,  alas,  is  not  all  past  history.  As  exciting 
as  it  is  important.  Macmillan,  $2.75 

Hui'Lan  Koo,  the  autobiography  of  Madame 
Wellington  Koo. 

An  astonishing  revelation  by  a  rich  and  beautiful 
lady  of  China,  who  seems  able  to  go  through  life 
untouched  by  the  troubles  of  her  country  and  the 
world.  Dial,  $3 

In  addition  to  Christine  Weston's  novel,  Indigo, 
mentioned  above,  there  are  three  books  on  India: 
Introduction  to  India,  by  D.  R.  Moreas  and 
Robert  Stimsori. 

A  much-needed  primer  on  a  confused  subject 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


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changes  and  developments  in  all 
fields,  as  well  as  the  important  events 
and  effects  of  the  war  —  making  it 
more  than  ever  the  supreme  author- 
ity for  modern  Americans.     $19.50 


THE  COLUMBIA 
ENCYCLOPEDIA 

MAN'S  MOST  DAIVGEROUS  MYTH 

The  Fallacy  of  Race 

By  M.  F.  Ashley  Montagu.  In  our  time  the  problem  of  race  has  assumed  an  alarmingly 
exaggerated  importance.  Prof.  Montagu  proves  the  fallacy  and  offers  a  sound  solu- 
tion. "A  nvust  book  for  everyone  who  would  have  an  intelligent,  objective  approach 
to  the  problem  of  race  . . .  able  and  readable."— Social  Studies.  Foreword  by  Aldous 
Huxley.  $2.25 


BUSINESS  As  A 
SYSTEM  OF  POWER 

By  Robert  A.  Brady,  "It  is  difficult  to  overesti- 
mate the  importance  of  the  evidence  that  is 
here  collected.'*-— HAROLD  J.  LASKI,  New  States- 
man and  Nation.  $3.00 

THE  SCIENCE  OF 
NUTRITION 

By  Henry  C,  Sherman,  Written  for  the  intelli- 
gent layman  who  wants  to  understand  both  the 
scientific  evidence  and  its  human  and  social 
implications.  $2.75 

CONTEMPORARY 
CHINESE  STORIES 

Translated  by  Chi-Chen  Wang.  In  contrast  to  tra- 
ditional Chinese  tales,  these  stories  are  starkly 
realistic — representing  a  new  era  in  China's 
life  between  the  years  1908  to  1937.         $2.75 


THE  REAL  ITALIANS 

By  Count  Carlo  Sforza.  By  Italy's  former  Minis- 
ter for  Foreign  Affairs.  "The  best  book  a  non- 
Italian  can  read  about  Italy  today." — Neiv 
Republic.  $2.00 

THE  WORLD  OF  THE 
FOUR  FREEDOIWS 

By  Sumner  Welles.  "Coherence,  clarity  and  a 
moving  vision  . . .  The  book  makes  a  fundamen- 
tal document  in  the  development  of  American 
policy. "-WALTER  MILLIS,  N.  Y,  Herald  Tribune. 

$1.75 

TRADITIOrVAL 
CHINESE  TALES 

Translated  by  ChuChen  Wang.  Twenty  exotic  and 
mannered  stories  that  reflect  an  ancient  civili- 
zation of  which  we  in  the  West  know  only  too 
little — the  most  complete  and  representative 
anthology  of  its  kind.  $2.75 

The  two  volumes,  gift  boxed.  set,  $5.00 


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Dictionary,  second  Edition 

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ment needs  must  be  supplied— all  in  the  face  of 
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Supreme 
Authority 


''One  of  the  most  vital  books  to  be  published 
in  the  last  fifty  years,'*'*  —  Louis  Bromfield 

p.  A.  WARING  and  W.  M.  TELLER 

ROOTS  IN  THE  EARTH 

The  Small  Farmer  Looks  Ahead 

An  intensely  human  and  personal  document  of 
the  crucial  problems  which  the  small  independent 
farmer  will  face  in  the  post-war  period.  Grows  out  of 
the  actual  farming  experience  of  the  authors  in  Bucks 
County,  Pa.  $2.00 

PETER  P.  YURCHAK 

THE  CLUB  LEADER'S 
HANDBOOK 

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FOSTER  F.  FARRELL,  Secretary,  National  Fra- 
ternal Congress  of  America.  $2.00 


HARPER 


Books  Are  Weapons 


explaining  briefly  and  simply  the  main  outlines  of 
the  country's  problems.  Oxford,  $2 

Subject  India,  by  H.  N.  Brailsford. 

The  cause  for  the  freedom  of  India  presented  by 
an  Englishman.  John  Day,  $2.50 

Report  on  India,  by  T.  A.  Raman. 

The  author  of  What  Does  Gandhi  Want?  writes  a 
reasoned  and  readable  short  history  of  India,  from 
the  beginning  (circa  3500  B.C.)  to  the  present,  with 
emphasis  on  the  tangled  problems  of  to-day. 

Oxford,  $2.50 

BOOKS  FOR  CHILDREIV 

List  Compiled  by  Josephine  D.  Kimball 

714  Madison  Ave.,  New  York  21 

Picture  Books 

Fitter  Patter,  by  Dorothy  Baruch. 

Excellent  text  and  pictures  of  the  delights  of  the 
rain.  Scott,  $1 

Help  the  Farmer,  by  Dorothy  King. 

A  new  toy  book  by  the  author  of  Find  the  Animals. 

Morrow,  $1.50 
A  Child's  Good  Night  Book,  by  Margaret  Brown. 

An  irresistible  invitation  to  sleepiness.   Scott,  $1 

Picture  Story  Books:  3  to  5  Years 

Trumpet,  by  Margot  Austin. 

Wonderful  new  tale  in  the  Peter  Churchmouse 
series.  Dutton,  $1 

Katy  and  the  Big  Snow,  by  Virginia  Lee  Burton. 

The  adventures  of  a  tractor  by  a  well-loved 
author.  Houghton,  $2 

Health  Can  Be  Fun,  by  Munro  Leaf. 

Funny  drawings  make  healthy  habits  fun. 

Stokes,  $1.35 

Picture  Story  Books:  5  to  9  Years 

The  Mighty  Hunter,  by  Berta  and  Elmer  Hader. 

A  gay  tale  of  a  small  Indian  boy.  Macmillan,  $2 
Many  Moons,  by  James  Thurber. 

About  a  little  princess  who  wanted  the  moon. 

Harcourt,  Brace,  $2 

Picture  Fact  Books:  5  to  9  Years 

Uncle  Sam^s  Army,  by  George  Avison. 

A  picture  book  showing  various  Army  specialists 
and  how  they  fight.  Macmillan,  $1 

What  Makes  It  Tick?  by  Katherine  Britton. 

Forty-five  simple  explanations  of  scientific  sub- 
jects. Houghton,  $2.50 

Story  Books:  6  to  9  Years 

Freddy  and  the  Bean  Home  News,  by  Walter 

Brooks. 

The  10th  volume  of  this  amusing,  exciting  series. 

Knopf,  $2 
Giants,  Witches  and  a  Dragon  or  Two,  edited 
by  Phyllis  Fenner. 

Eighteen  wonderful  old  stories  to  make  pleasant 
chills  go  up  the  spine.  Knopf,  $2 

in  the  War  of  Ideas 


BOOKS    FOR    CHILDREN 


My  Favorite  Age,  by  Elizabeth  Morrow. 
Delightful  tales  full  of  rare  understanding. 

Macmillan,  $2 

Story  Books:  9  to  12  Years 

Two  Logs  Crossing,  by  Walter  Edmonds. 

White  boy  and  Indian  hunt  together. 

Dodd,  Mead,  $2 
Jean  Lambert  Goes  to  War^  by  Andre  Maurois. 

A  powerful  story  of  the  France  that  did  not  sur- 
render. Harpers,  $1.50 
The  Picts  and  the  Martyrs,  by  Arthur  Ransome. 

Another  grand  Swallows  and  Amazons  story. 

l^acmillan,  $2.50 
Sigurd  and  His  Brave  Companions,  by  Sigrid 
Undset.  Knopf,  $2 

Non-Fiction:  9  to  12  Years 

Big  Red,  by  C.  W.  Anderson, 

The  story  of  Man  o'  War  illustrated  with  beauti- 
ful lithographs.  Macmillan,  $2 
See  and  Sew,  by  Mariska  Karasz. 

An  excellent  book  to  help  beginners  in  sewing. 

Stokes,  $1.50 
Fun  with  Magic,  by  Joseph  Leeming. 

Seventy  good  tricks  with  easy  diagrams. 

Stokes,  $2 
Flying  Fortress,  by  Ray. 

Complete  picture  description  of  the  favorite 
plane.  Garden  City,  $1 

Fiction:  12  to  16  Years 

Stand  Fast  and  Reply,  by  Lavinia  Davis. 

A  New  York  girl  finds  life  fun  on  an  Ohio  farm. 

Doubleday,  $2 
Dog  of  War,  by  Fairfax  Downey. 

A  dog  who  trained  and  fought  with  the  Field 
Artillery.  Dodd,  Mead,  $2 

Thunderhead,  by  Mary  O'Hara. 

Successor  to  the  famous  My  Friend  Flicka. 

Lippincott,  $2.75 
Keystone  Kids,  by  John  Tunis. 

An  exciting  and  worth-while  story  about  the 
Dodgers.  Harcourt,  Brace,  $2 

Non- Fiction:  12  Years  and  Up 

Inside  the  F.B.I. ,  by  John  Floherty. 

The  fascinating  workings  of  the  F.B.I.  Many 
photographs.  Lippincott,  $2 

Made  in  China,  by  Cornelia  Spencer. 

A  magnificent  book,  beautifully  illustrated  by 
Kurt  Wiese,  showing  all  that  China  has  given  to 
the  culture  and  civilization  of  the  world. 

Knopf,  $3 
Gift  Books 

The  Frenzied  Prince,  told  by  Padraic  Colum. 

Heroic  stories  of  ancient  Ireland.  McKay,  $3.50 
Merry  Christmas,  by  Natasha  Simkhovitch. 

Delightful  collection  of  Christmas  stories,  songs 
and  poems  with  unusually  lovely  illustrations. 

Knopf,  $1.50 


Hni^J^ 


Christmas  Q^rds  and  Qifts 

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Christmas  in  Wartime 

will  be  happier  for  all  of  us  if  we  share  it 
THE  SALVATION  ARMY  WAY 

SHARE  YOUR  CHRISTMAS 

through 

THE  SALVATION  ARMY 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


MURDERS  for  PLEASURE 


11 


GORY  GAZETTE 


eRi  Early  this  year  Craig  Rice  decided  to  give  us  a 
Hj^  Thanksgiving  gift.  It  arrived  two  months  ago, 
^as  rushed  to  the  printer,  and  may  now  be  shared  by 
nyone  who  has  two  b\icks  and  knows  a  bargain  in 
ntertainment  when  he  sees  it. 

It*s  called  The  Thursday  Turkey  Murders 
(which  ought  to  be  enough  for  anyone)  and 
eatures  those  remarkable  partners — Bingo  and  Hand- 
ome — whose  first  adventures  were  related  in  The  Sun- 
lay  Pigeon  Murders, 

These  two  peripatetic 

street  photographers 
laven't  changed  any  since 
Newsweek  called  them  "The 
unniest  pair  of  protagonists 
n  any  detective  story."  So 
laturally,  when  they  drive 
nto  Thursday,  Iowa,  they  are 
he  heaven-sent  victims  of 
very  confidence  game  the 
leepy  little  town  has  to  oflfer 

—and  there  are  m.any.  Even  the  golden-haired  Ear- 
ner's Daughter  turns  out  to  be  a  snare  and  a  delusion, 
^iven  an  unidentified  corpse  who  might  have  been  a 
raveling  preacher,  a  patent  medicine  salesman,  or  a 
)ank  robber;  plus  two  hundred  kidnapped  turkeys,  a 
jang  of  escaped  convicts,  and  two  beautiful  babes  (the 
^owers  model  type  babes) ;  and  you  have  a  situation 
idmirably  suited  to  the  peculiar  talents  of  Bingo  and 
-landsome.  Also  naturally,  when  they  learn  that 
everal  hundred  thousand  dollars  in  bank  robbery  loot 
s  cached  somewhere  in  the  vicinity,  they  very  sensibly 
ake  a  deep  personal  interest  in  the  case. 

^rar  In  the  ensuing  welter  of  excitement  the  reader 
^^F  gets  to  meet  such  diverse  characters  as  attorney 
K^illie  Sims,  whose  idea  of  heaven  is  a  place  entirely 
nhabited  by  Eagle  Scouts;  Ollie^  permanent  resident 
)f  Thursday's  jail  who  is  studying  psychology  in  order 
o  find  out  why  he  is  an  idiot;  and  twelve-year-old 
\rtie,  whose  language  throughout  can  only  be  printed 
n  dashes. 

Obviously,   the   ideal   Thanksgiving   company. 
Not  only  ideal  but  available — in  your  copy  of 


|dk 


The  THURSDAY  TURKEY  MURDERS 

by  Craig  Rice 

AN  INNER  SANCTUM  MYSTERY     •     PRICE  $2.00 

PUBLISHED  BY  SIMON  AND  SCHUSTER 


by  William  C.  Weber 

The  Grinning  Pig  by  Nap  Lombard  (Simon  & 
Schuster,  $2)  is  about  the  gayest — and  grimmest — 
yarn  of  the  season.  Amateur  and  professional 
detectives  here  match  wits  to  find  out  the  identity 
of  the  pig-masked  killer  who  cached  a  corpse  in  a 
London  air-raid  shelter,  stabbed  an  elderly  Eng- 
lishwoman in  a  country  lane,  and  scared  the  wits 
out  of  other  folks.  If  s  full  of  lively  talk,  fun, 
shivers,  and  the  plot — ^if  it  wavers  a  bit  at  the  end — 
is  baffling  enough. 

Going,  Going,  Gone  by  Phoebe  Atwood  Taylor 
(W.  W.  Norton,  ^2)  is  a  prime  Asey  Mayo  story — 
and  that's  about  all  one  need  say.  Not  too  cute, 
like  some  Mayopuses,  and  brimful  of  plot,  action, 
and  Cape  Cod  witticisms.  The  murderee,  an 
antique  dealer,  turns  up  stabbed  in  an  old  sea  chest. 
Asey  carries  on  from  there. 

The  Lady  in  the  Lake  by  Raymond  Chandler 
(A.  A.  Knopf,  $2)  is  a  rare  morsel  for  those  who 
like  their  mysteries  tough  and  outspoken,  and  who 
don't  mind  good  characterizations,  bang-up  writ- 
ing, and  expert  puzzlement  thrown  in.  Marlowe, 
the  sleuth,  is  an  8-minute  California  egg,  and  his 
search  for  a  client's  missing  wife  uncovers  several 
murders,  and  much  nasty  work  at  numerous  cross- 
roads. It  goes  like  greased  lightning — but  it's  not 
for  the  nervous. 

Espionage  and  intrigue  make  up  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  current  mystery  ration.  In  this 
class  there  are  two  top-notchers — The  Stars  Are 
Dark  by  Peter  Cheyney  (Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  S2) 
and  Stalk  the  Hunter  by  Mitchell  Wilson 
(Simon  &  Schuster,  $2).  The  first  is  a  chilling, 
unprincipled,  and  deadly  yarn  of  under-cover  war- 
fare between  English  and  Nazi  spies;  the  second 
the  suspenseful  and  romantic  tale  of  a  refugee  girl's 
efforts  to  escape  from  enemy  agents  in  New  York. 

One  recent  story  that  should  not  be  missed  is  He 
Fell  Down  Dead  by  Virginia  Perdue  (Crime  Club, 
S2).  It  tells  of  the  gradual  disillusionment  of  a 
hastily  married  young  California  girl  whose  hand- 
some doctor  husband  is  hated  by  practically  every- 
body.    She  finds  out  why. 

In  the  slow,  sure,  and  solid  British  Department 
there  is  a  capably  plotted  and  gorgeously  panoplied 
tale  of  the  English  courts  in  Tragedy  at  Law  by 
Cyril  Hare  (Harcourt,  Brace  &  Co.,  $2).  The 
pomp  and  color  of  the  opening  pages  set  the  stage 
beautifully  for  a  devious  plot — a  judge  is  murdered 
— that  develops  very  deliberately  and  moves  in- 
exorably to  a  logical  finish. 

Add  to  your  list  of  omnibus  books  a  capital  col- 
lection of  shuddery  tales  edited  by  Boris  Karloff — 
Tales  of  Terror  (World  Publishing  Co.).  For 
Helen  R.  Hull's  "Clay  Shuttered  Doors"  alone 
this  book  is  worth  the  price  of  admission,  and  there 
are  other  items,  new  and  time-honored,  by  Poe, 
Blackwood,  Oliver  Onions,  Hugh  Walpole,  and 
others.  But  the  W.  W.  Jacobs  story  mentioned  on 
the  jacket  just  ain't  there. 


VOL   188     No  1123     December  1943 


CANADA    SWINGS   TO   THE   LEFT 

The  Political  Uprising  North  of  the  Border 


WILLIAM    HENRY    CHAMBERLIN 


CANADA  is  usually  regarded  in  the 
United  States  as  a  rather  staid  and 
conservative  neighbor.  But  right 
now,  when  the  trend  in  the  United  States — 
as  shown  in  the  last  Congressional  elec- 
tions— is  swinging  to  the  Right,  Canada  is 
booming  Leftward. 

Two  years  ago  few  people  would  have 
guessed  that  it  could  happen.  Prime 
Minister  Mackenzie  King,  with  his  pro- 
gram of  cautious,  middle-of-the-road,  old- 
fashioned  liberalism,  was  sitting  on  top  of 
the  parliamentary  world  in  Ottawa.  His 
Liberal  Party  had  a  top-heavy  majority 
in  the  Canadian  Parliament  and  con- 
trolled eight  of  the  nine  Provincial  gov- 
ernments. The  Conservatives — old  and 
traditional  opposite  numbers  to  the  Liber- 
als— were  wandering  disconsolately  in  the 
political  wilderness,  without  a  forceful 
leader  or  an  acceptable  program.     A  doz- 

Copyright,  1943,  by  Harper  & 


en  militant  anti-conscription  French  Ca- 
nadians from  Quebec  and  the  eight  depu- 
ties who  belonged  to  the  C.C.F.  (Co- 
operative Commonwealth  Federation), 
Canada's  socialist  party,  were  only  minor 
thorns  in  Mr.  King's  side.  It  seemed  as 
though  he  might  look  forward  to  a  long 
period  of  unchallenged  power. 

But  suddenly  everything  has  sharply 
changed.  The  Co-operative  Common- 
wealth Federation  has  upset  elections  in 
many  sections  of  Canada  and  has  the  pros- 
pect of  upsetting  more.  A  good  example 
of  this  was  furnished  by  the  overturn  in 
the  provincial  elections  in  Ontario  last 
August.  Ontario  is  the  most  populous  and 
the  most  industrialized  of  the  Canadian 
provinces.  The  Liberals,  formerly  the 
majority  party  in  the  provincial  legislature, 
came  out  a  very  bad  third  in  the  August 
election.     The  Conservatives,  who  are  now 

Brothers.     All  Rights  Reserved.  ^^^  "'  ^  •>      r,  *    /  »     -~*^. 

f  PiiRl  IC  LlBBARYj 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


trying  to  get  in  step  with  the  times  by 
caUing  themselves  Progressive- Conserva- 
tives, became  the  leading  party  in  the  new 
legislature  with  38  seats.  But  the  sensa- 
tion of  the  election  was  the  C.G.F.  It 
elected  34  deputies  to  a  legislature  of  90 
members  where  formerly  it  did  not  hold  a 
single  seat ! 

The  C.G.F.  polled  its  heaviest  vote  in 
Ontario,  where  the  industrial  constituen- 
cies are,  but  it  has  a  strong  following 
among  the  farmers  of  the  West.  In  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  for  example,  its  showing 
was  so  strong  that  Liberals  and  Conserva- 
tives found  themselves  forced  into  a  coali- 
tion against  it.  The  C.G.F.  is  the  official 
opposition  in  Saskatchewan.  It  stands  a 
good  chance  of  winning  Alberta.  There 
the  Social  Credit  Party,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  William  Aberhart,  the  evangelist, 
has  been  in  power  for  the  past  eight  years. 
But  Aberhart  is  now  dead  and  his  party 
failed  to  put  the  glittering  monetary  theo- 
ries of  Social  Credit  into  tangible  practice. 
So  their  strength  is  dwindling  and  the 
C.G.F.  may  easily  capture  control  of  the 
province. 

The  new  party  has  made  little  headway 
in  French- Canadian  Quebec,  and  its  only 
supporters  in  the  Maritime  Provinces  are 
the  coal  miners  of  Cape  Breton.  But  its 
industrial  following  in  Ontario  and  its 
hold  on  the  Western  farmers  promises 
substantial  representation  when  the  next 
Dominion  parliamentary  election  is  held 
some  time  before  the  spring  of  1 945 .  Non- 
partisan political  observers  and  reporters 
are  inclined  to  concede  the  C.G.F.  at  least 
a  fourth  and  perhaps  a  third  of  the  seats 
in  the  next  Dominion  Parliament.  This 
would  be  far  ahead  of  any  political  suc- 
cess ever  achieved  in  the  United  States  by 
any  party  group  with  an  avowedly  social- 
ist program. 

The  C.G.F.  has  strenuously  resisted 
Communist  bids  for  a  united  front.  The 
Leftward  swing  in  Canada  has  added  some 
strength  to  the  Communists,  who  are  now 
transparently  camouflaged  as  the  Labor- 
Progressive  Party.  As  an  organization  the 
Communists  were  officially  banned  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  but  there  have  been 
no  serious  restrictive  measures  taken  against 
them  since  the  Soviet  Union  entered 
the  conflict.     Fred  Rose,  the  first  Com- 


munist to  sit  in  the  Dominion  Parliament, 
recently  won  a  by-election  in  the  Cartier 
district  of  Montreal.  In  this  district, 
which  somewhat  resembles  New  York's 
East  Side  in  its  poverty  and  racial  compo- 
sition, the  French  Canadians — who  are 
strongly  indoctrinated  against  Commu- 
nism by  the  Catholic  Church — are  a  mi- 
nority. In  this  particular  election  the  ra- 
cial element  played  some  part:  three  of  the 
candidates  were  Jews  and  the  fourth  a 
nationalist  French  Canadian.  The  can- 
didates of  the  two  extremes — the  Commu- 
nists and  the  nationalist  Bloc  Populaire — 
polled  the  largest  votes.  Elsewhere  in 
Canada  Communist  strength  is  slight  and 
scattering.  There  are  urban  districts  in 
Toronto  and  Winnipeg,  with  a  high  pro- 
portion of  foreign-born  residents,  where 
the  Communists  stand  a  chance  of  parlia- 
mentary success.  But  that's  about  all. 
Just  as  in  the  United  States,  the  indirect 
Communist  influence  on  certain  trade 
unions  and  "front"  organizations  is  great- 
er than  the  Communist  following  at  the 
polls.  The  C.C.F.,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  open  and  widespread  popular  strength. 
It  is  a  strictly  "native"  Canadian  move- 
ment. 

What  does  the  C.G.F.  aim  at  and  what 
are  the  reasons  for  its  rapidly  growing 
popular  support?  Its  leaders  describe  it 
as  a  democratic  socialist  party,  committed 
to  realizing  an  ever-widening  measure  of 
state  and  co-operative  control  of  economic 
life  by  constitutional  methods.  Many  of 
its  proposals  recall  the  programs  of  the 
Labor  Parties  in  Great  Britain,  Australia, 
and  New  Zealand.  Its  theoretical  proj- 
ects are  expressed  in  sharp  and  uncom- 
promising terms — a  circumstance  that 
may  perhaps  be  explained  by  the  fact  that 
the  C.G.F.  has  never  been  exposed  to  the 
softening  and  moderating  influence  of 
holding  office. 

The  C.G.F.  calls  for  the  socialization  of 
what  it  considers  the  key  industries  and 
enterprises — banking,  transportation,  elec- 
tric power,  and  large  monopolies.  This 
is  to  be  done,  says  M.  J.  Cold  well,  the 
party's  parliamentary  leader,  "as  soon  as 
possible  after  taking  office."  The  party 
wants  these  socialized  industries  operated 
not  by  government  departments,  but  by 
independent  public   boards,   selected  for 


CANADA    SWINGS    TO    THE    LEFT 


technical  competence.  This  idea  has 
already  been  tried  out  to  some  extent  in 
Great  Britain,  where  boards  of  this  type 
operate  a  good  deal  of  the  electrical  power 
supply  and  local  transportation. 

As  an  agency  for  over-all  public  plan- 
ning the  C.C.F.  advocates  a  National 
Planning  and  Investment  Board,  to  be 
supplemented  by  import  and  export  boards 
for  the  purpose  of  regulating,  promoting, 
and  directing  foreign  trade.  It  offers  the 
farmers  a  guaranteed  minimum  price  for 
their  products.  If  the  market  price 
should  rise  above  this  minimum  the  sur- 
plus would  be  held  in  a  special  fund. 
This  fund  is  to  cover  the  cost  of  subsidies 
if  the  market  price  should  fall  below  the 
minimum  figure. 

The  C.C.F.  has  attacked  the  operation 
of  the  Canadian  war  economy  as  being 
too  favorable  to  the  business  interests.  It 
wants  government  operation  of  all  war 
industries;  one  hundred  per  cent  taxation 
of  all  profits  above  four  per  cent;  the 
financing  of  the  war  through  compulsory 
interest-free  loans;  and  the  replacement  of 
dollar-a-year  men  by  paid  state  officials. 
The  party  wants  immediate  action  on  a 
number  of  social  measures:  the  establish- 
ment of  a  floor  beneath  which  no  income 
should  be  allowed  to  fall;  bigger  allow- 
ances for  the  dependents  of  service  men; 
national  health  insurance,  and  higher  old- 
age  pensions. 

For  the  immediate  postwar  period  the 
C.C.F.  program  calls  for  ^extensive  govern- 
ment spending  in  order  to  stave  off  de- 
pression. An  outlay  of  five  billion  dollars 
during  the  first  two  years  after  the  close 
of  hostilities  has  been  suggested.  (In  view 
of  the  difference  in  national  income  this 
would  be  the  equivalent  of  about  seventy- 
five  billion  dollars  in  the  United  States.) 
This  money  would  be  spent  on  job-pro- 
ducing enterprises  such  as  housing,  re- 
habilitation, reforestation,  and  so  on.  The 
retraining  of  service  men  for  new  jobs 
and  the  maintenance  on  a  liberal  scale 
of  discharged  soldiers  and  dismissed  war 
workers  —  pending  re-employment  —  are 
demanded  under  this  system  of  free  spend- 
ing. 

The  C.C.F.  program  is  much  farther  to 
the  Left  than  anything  the  New  Deal  has 
ever  proposed  or  done.     The   C.C.F.  is 


not  interested  in  the  Idea  of  free  enter- 
prise, though  the  leaders  of  the  party  ex- 
pect that  a  good  deal  of  business  activity 
will  be  left  in  private  hands  after  the  key 
industries  arc  nationahzed. 

The  C.C.F.  leaders  are  unmistakably 
sincere  in  their  faith  in  democracy  and 
civil  liberties.  They  believe  what  con- 
servatives and  old-fashioned  liberals  would 
deny  or  doubt:  that  individual  freedom 
can  be  preserved  and  even  enlarged  side 
by  side  with  a  great  extension  of  public 
controls  over  economic  life.  As  E.  B. 
Jolliffe,  the  C.C.F.  leader  in  Ontario,  said 
to  me:  ''The  great  task  of  our  time  is  to 
combine  economic  collectivism  with  cul- 
tural individualism." 

Mr.  Jolliffe,  a  Toronto  lawyer  and  for- 
mer Rhodes  scholar,  received  me  in  the 
office  reserved  for  the  Leader  of  the  Oppo- 
sition in  the  legislative  building  at  Queen's 
Park.  I  asked  him  why  the  party  had 
made  such  a  striking  gain  in  the  provincial 
election. 

"A  breakdown  of  the  votes,"  said  Mr. 
JolUffe,  "shows  that  we  polled  especially 
heavily  among  three  classes  of  people: 
soldiers,  war  workers,  and  the  miners 
and  lumberjacks  of  northern  Ontario. 
All  these  groups  had  special  reasons  for 
feeling  anxious  about  their  prospects  of 
employment  after  the  war.  As  their  votes 
showed,  they  believe  that  the  C.C.F.  has 
more  to  offer  than  the  old  parties  in  the 
way  of  a  constructive  postwar  program  of 
full  employment  and  full  utilization  of 
plant  facilities  and  natural  resources." 

Mr.  Jolliffe  suggested  also  that  his  party 
was  reaping  what  it  had  sown  during  years 
of  patient  spadework  when  its  pioneer 
members  toured  the  country,  setting  forth 
their  ideas  at  every  crossroads  village 
where  they  could  find  a  meeting  place  and 
an  audience. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  C.C.F. 
is  the  beneficiary  of  a  good  deal  of  labor 
discontent  with  Canadian  war-economy 
policies  and  of  much  bitterness  at  the 
prospect  of  sinking  back — after  war  em.- 
ployment  is  over — to  the  drab  hopeless- 
ness of  the  dreary  and  depressed  thirties. 
The  truth  is  that  an  opportunity  has  long 
been  in  preparation  for  just  such  a  party 
as  the  Co-operative  Commonwealth  Fed- 
eration. 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


II 

FOR  some  time  Canadians  have  been 
very  uneasy  about  their  economic  fu- 
ture. The  Dominion  itself  was  originally 
put  together  in  1867  by  Canadians  who 
were  afraid  that  the  United  States  would 
eventually  swallow  up  the  continent. 
They  wanted  an  independent  Canada  and 
they  wanted  to  maintain  the  connection 
with  Britain.  To  clinch  this  proposition 
a  transcontinental  rail  system  was  built  to 
open  up  the  Canadian  West  and  tariffs 
were  instituted  to  encourage  home  indus- 

Not  much  of  a  dividend  was  paid  on 
this  great  investment  until  Europe  pro- 
vided a  greater  market  for  grain.  Then 
the  wheat  boom  of  the  nineties  began. 
This  boom,  in  turn,  helped  manufacturing 
in  Quebec  and  Ontario.  Canada  went 
ahead  fast.  But  the  foundation  of  its 
economy  was  wheat.  Acreage  was  ex- 
panded again  and  again,  until  through 
over-extension  at  home  and  declining  mar- 
kets abroad  the  Dominion  was  set  for  a 
collapse.  The  First  World  War,  with  its 
tremendous  demand  for  supplies,  helped 
the  Canadians  for  a  time,  but  after  the  war 
things  began  to  look  pretty  grim.  Grain 
production  had  increased  enormously  in 
the  United  States,  in  Australia,  Argentina, 
and  in  other  parts  of  the  world  during  the 
preceding  generation.  There  was  no  way 
for  Canada  to  meet  this  competition,  and 
the  prospect  for  the  prairies  was  one  of 
permanent  depression.  This  state  of  af- 
fairs brought  increasing  political  agitation 
in  the  wheat  provinces  and  set  the  stage 
for  the  capture  of  Alberta  by  the  Social 
Credit  Party. 

Canada  was  saved  by  metal  and  wood 
pulp.  The  United  States  is  the  greatest 
market  for  newsprint  in  the  world  and 
over  four-fifths  of  Canadian  output  is 
bought  here.  In  metal,  Canada  has 
practically  a  monopoly  of  the  world's  sup- 
ply of  nickel. 

In  1932  Great  Britain  was  in  the  trough 
of  the  world  depression  herself,  and  the 
Ottawa  agreements  were  worked  out. 
The  core  of  the  scheme  was  this:  Britain 
adopted  protective  tariffs  and  undertook 
to  preserve  the  British  market  for  Domin- 
ion foodstuffs:  in  return  the  Dominions 


were  to  give  preference  to  British  manu- 
factures. These  agreements  put  a  fence 
around  the  British  Empire.  But  it  didn't 
work.  For  one  thing,  Canadians  wanted 
to  encourage  trade  in  their  own  man- 
ufactures. For  another,  American  cap- 
ital came  to  Canada  and  set  up  indus- 
tries in  order  to  get  inside  the  imperial 
wall.  Lastly,  no  matter  how  hard  they 
tried,  the  British  simply  could  not  ab- 
sorb the  wheat  and  other  farm  prod- 
ucts of  the  Empire.  The  market  in 
Europe  was  no  better,  with  most  of  the 
continental  nations  in  a  desperate  race 
to  become  self-sufficient.  In  a  word, 
Canada  had  become  both  a  manufactur- 
ing and  a  wheat-growing  nation.  She 
could  not  sell  enough  of  her  wheat  nor  of 
her  manufactures — except  the  metals  and 
the  newsprint — to  keep  her  going.  The 
Second  World  War  saved  her  again,  but 
there's  not  a  man  in  Canada  now  who 
does  not  face  the  future  with  misgiving. 
Neither  of  the  two  old  parties — the  Liber- 
als and  the  Conservatives — was  in  a  posi- 
tion to  offer  Canadians  much  that  was 
new.  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum.  The 
Co-operative  Commonwealth  Federation 
has  now  offered  to  fill  the  vacuum.  Mr. 
Jolliffe's  listing  of  supporting  groups  in 
Ontario  is  significant — soldiers y  war  work- 
ers^ miners^  and  lumberjacks. 

Of  course,  for  the  moment,  Canadian 
industry  is  strained  to  the  limit  with  war 
production  and  the  problem  of  finding 
sufficient  manpower.  There  has  been 
an  enormous  expansion  of  war  plant. 
Chemicals  furnish  a  good  example:  in 
1941  the  industry  employed  22,000  per- 
sons; to-day  it  employs  86,000.  Steel 
output  has  doubled  since  1939  and  the 
rate  is  now  more  than  3  million  tons  a 
year.  Aluminum  production  in  1 943  was 
six  times  the  1939  figure.  Canada  sup- 
plies the  United  Nations  with  40  per  cent 
of  their  aluminum  and  95  per  cent  of  their 
nickel.  Up  to  last  summer  Canada  had 
built  about  500  ships,  500,000  motor  vehi- 
cles, and  8,000  airplanes.  Production  is 
now  a  ship  a  day,  4,000  motor  vehicles 
and  80  planes  a  week.  The  cash  value  of 
munitions,  foodstuffs,  and  other  supplies 
shipped  free  of  charge  to  Great  Britain, 
the  Soviet  Union,  and  others  of  the 
United  Nations  is  about  a  billion  dollars. 


CANADA    SWINGS    TO    THE    LEFT 


The  population  of  Canada  is  a  little  less 
than  12,000,000.  Of  this  number  8,720,- 
000  are  over  fourteen  years  of  age.  Early 
in  1943  a  breakdown  was  made  of  the 
manpower  situation.  The  analysis  is  a 
little  out  of  date  because  the  armed  forces 
now  number  about  722,000,  but  it  will 
serve  to  show  what  has  happened  in  em- 
ployment: 

Armed  forces  (men  and  women) 645,000 

Munitions  and  essential  civilian 
industry 

(1,503,000  men;  622,000  women).  .  2,125,000 

Agriculture  (men  only) 1,020,000 

Less  essential  civilian  industry 

(787,000  men;  530,000  women) .  .  .  1,317,000 
Employable  but  not  in  industry 

(301,000  men;  2,768,000  women).  .  3,069,000 
Retired  and  unemployable 

(244,000  men;  300,000  women) 544,000 

If  production  and  labor  achievement  in 
Canada  are  compared  on  a  relative  basis 
with  performance  in  the  United  States, 
one  can  get  a  better  idea  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  Canadian  war  effort.  An  armed 
force  of  722,000  men  is  an  approximate 
equivalent  of  8,700,000  in  the  United 
States. 

How  to  make  the  labor  supply  go 
round  has  taxed  ingenuity  to  the  utmost. 
Over  a  million  farmers  and  persons  in 
other  categories — coal  miners  and  school 
teachers  for  example — had  already  been 
frozen  in  their  jobs  when,  recently,  1,400,- 
000  more  were  brought  under  the  same 
ruling.  Hoarded  and  superfluous  work- 
ers have  been  combed  out  from  less  essen- 
tial pursuits  and  put  into  such  key  indus- 
tries as  shipbuilding,  aircraft  production, 
mining,  and  farming.  Women  are  not 
subjected  to  compulsion  (Catholic  Que- 
bec wouldn't  stand  for  it),  and  married 
men  may  not  be  forced  to  change  their 
residence  nor  take  new  jobs  at  lower  pay; 
but  on  the  whole  there  has  been  stricter 
supervision  than  in  the  United  States. 
Rationing  has  been  better  managed  and 
more  generously  than  in  the  United  States. 
The  gasoline  ration  is  higher  north  of  the 
border,  the  meat  supply  is  bigger,  the 
butter  allowance  is  half  a  pound  a  week. 
(The  most  constant  item  in  the  dining 
room  of  the  Harvard  Faculty  Club  is 
"horse  steak,"  but  I  never  saw  horse  meat 
on  the  bill  of  fare  of  a  Canadian  restau- 
rant.) 


But  taxation  has  drawn  blood.  A 
married  man  with  two  children  and  an 
income  of  S5,000  is  taxed  $1,662,  of  which 
$600  is  returnable  after  the  war.  If  such 
a  man  earns  $10,000  he  pays  $4,546  in 
taxes  and  gets  back  $1,200  after  the  war. 
Half  the  war  budget  comes  from  taxes  and 
the  rest  from  internal  loans.  Last  spring 
40  per  cent  of  the  Canadian  v/ar  loan  was 
taken  up  by  individuals.  In  the  United 
States  the  corresponding  figure  for  the 
second  war  loan  was  26  per  cent. 

Wage  and  price  increases  have  been 
held  down.  Since  the  winter  of  1941  the 
cost  of  living  has  risen  less  than  3  per  cent 
as  against  a  20  per  cent  rise  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  government  is  trying  to 
hold  fast.  Recently  Donald  Gordon, 
head  of  the  Wartime  Prices  and  Trade 
Board  (the  Canadian  equivalent  of  the 
OPA)  delivered  himself  of  the  follow- 
ing warning:  "Everyone  now  is  thinking 
about  victory  and  a  great  deal  of  thinking 
is  being  indulged  in  about  an  early  peace, 
with  a  quick  abandonment  of  wartime 
restrictions.  Unfortunately  this  letdown 
of  public  support  comes  at  the  very  mo- 
ment when  need  for  control  is  more  vital 
than  ever.  The  cumulative  effect  of 
shortages  of  civilian  supplies  and  raw 
materials,  machinery  and  manpower  is 
exerting  more  pressure  now  than  at  any 
time  since  the  beginning  of  the  war.  I 
say  definitely  that  inflation  is  no  imaginary 
condition.  We  have  all  the  circumstances 
and  pressures  which  create  inflation  right 
here  now." 

These  statistics  make  clear  how  closely 
Canada  has  been  harnessed  to  the  war  and 
they  serve  to  underscore  the  questions  of 
the  C.C.F.:  To  what  purpose  is  this  effort 
being  made?  What  are  the  plans  for  the 
future? 

Ill 

THIS  uncertainty  about  the  future  gives 
the  C.C.F.  the  promise,  in  greater 
or  lesser  degree,  of  the  support  of  other 
groups.  The  unions  are  an  example. 
Canada  has  no  equivalent  of  the  Wagner 
Act  and  employers  may  still  legally  refuse 
to  deal  with  trade  unions.  The  unions 
feel  that  they  have  been  shortchanged 
in  labor  representation  in  government 
war  agencies.     Labor  representatives  will 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


not  accept  the  official  contention  that  the 
cost  of  living  has  risen  less  than  three  per 
cent.  They  say  it's  greater  and  that  rigid 
wage  ceilings  tend  to  freeze  substandard 
wages.  Moreover  they  feel — even  though 
it's  illogical  in  the  face  of  the  all-round 
sacrifice  for  the  war  effort — that  labor 
should  not  be  denied  the  advantages  of  its 
favorable  bargaining  position.  They  took 
a  beating  during  the  thirties;  unemploy- 
ment and  part-time  work  were  wide- 
spread. Now  when  there  are  more  jobs 
than  men,  labor  cannot  legally  demand 
more  pay,  nor,  with  frozen  jobs,  can  the 
individual  worker  seek  a  better  one.  So, 
for  numerous  reasons,  the  unions  regard 
the  C.G.F.  very  favorably. 

There  are  two  trade-union  federations 
in  Canada.  One  of  them  is  the  Canadian 
Congress  of  Labor,  which  has  some  ties 
with  our  own  CIO.  The  other  is  the 
Trades  and  Labor  Congress,  which  in- 
clines more  to  craft-union  organization 
and  has  affiliations  with  A.F.  of  L.  unions 
in  the  United  States.  (Oddly  enough, 
this  latter  organization  has  been  subjected 
to  more  Communist  infiltration  in  its 
leadership  than  the  Canadian  Congress 
of  Labor.)  The  C.C.F.  has  found  a  lot 
of  support  in  both  organizations,  especially 
because  its  plan  for  an  expanding  Cana- 
dian economy  gives  orthodox  finance  a 
distinctly  secondary  consideration. 

"One  would  imagine,"  said  A.  R. 
Mosher,  President  of  the  Canadian  Con- 
gress of  Labor,  recently,  "that  the  financ- 
ing of  the  war  effort  not  only  in  Canada, 
but  in  all  the  belligerent  countries,  would 
have  proved  beyond  question  that  what 
is  physically  possible  is  financially  possible, 
that  wealth  is  not  money,  but  manpower. 
The  details  of  postwar  construction  are 
not  a  source  of  difficulty.  Canada  needs 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  new  homes. 
Slums  in  every  city  must  be  torn  down  and 
replaced  by  apartments.  Almost  every 
farm  in  the  country  needs  improvements. 
There  are  great  areas  of  farm  and  timber 
and  mining  land  to  be  developed,  high- 
ways to  be  built  and  food  and  clothing  to 
be  provided  for  a  larger  population  at  a 
higher  standard  of  living  than  ever  be- 
fore. .  .  .  The  test  will  come  when  Cana- 
da's postwar  financial  policy  is  to  be  deter- 
mined." 


In  view  of  this  attitude — which  is  com- 
mon— it  is  not  surprising  that  the  Con- 
gress of  Labor,  at  its  recent  annual  con- 
vention in  Montreal,  voted  in  favor  of  the 
affiliation  of  its  unions  with  the  C.C.F. 
Pat  Conroy,  Secretary-Treasurer  of  the 
Congress,  supported  the  move  with  this 
argument: 

"Political  action  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  support  action  in  the  economic  field. 
The  C.C.F.  comes  closer  than  any  other 
organization  to  representing  the  view  of 
the  Canadian  Congress  of  Labor." 

This  means  that  more  than  two  hun- 
dred thousand  organized  workers  (the 
equivalent  of  two  and  a  half  or  three 
million  potential  voters  in  the  United 
States)  are  formally  lined  up  behind  the 
C.C.F.  The  other  union  federation  (the 
Trades  and  Labor  Congress)  has  not 
taken  any  such  action,  but  support  of  the 
C.C.F.  among  the  rank  and  file  of  its 
member  unions  is  very  strong. 

Though  the  support  of  the  C.C.F. 
comes  largely  from  farmers  and  industrial 
workers,  the  leaders  and  the  original 
organizers  came  from  neither  group. 
They  are  intellectuals.  Mr.  Coldwell, 
an  Englishman  by  birth,  was  a  school 
superintendent  in  Regina,  Saskatchewan, 
when  he  began  his  political  career  as  a 
representative  of  a  rural  district  in  that 
province.  Attractive  in  his  straightfor- 
wardness, simplicity,  and  obvious  sinceri- 
ty, Coldwell  is  a  hard  worker  and  an  om- 
nivorous reader.  His  political  opponents 
concede  that  he  is  one  of  the  best-informed 
men  on  Canadian  politics  and  economics 
to  be  found  in  Parliament.  A  middle- 
aged  man,  rather  stockily  built,  he  appeals 
to  the  reason  rather  than  to  the  emo- 
tions. His  speeches  are  closely  reasoned 
arguments  rather  than  displays  of  oratori- 
cal fireworks. 

Frank  Scott,  national  chairman  of  the 
party,  a  vigorous  debater  with  a  keen 
sense  of  humor,  is  Professor  of  Civil  Law 
at  McGill  University  and  author  of  sever- 
al books  on  Canada's  foreign  and  domes- 
tic problems.  Like  Jolliffe,  the  Ontario 
leader,  Scott  is  a  former  Rhodes  scholar. 
So  is  David  Lewis,  the  party  secretary, 
who  is  of  Polish  Jewish  origin.  Coldwell, 
Scott,  Jolliffe,  and  Lewis  are  names  that 
may  presently  appear  in  the  news  dis- 


CANADA    SWINGS    TO    THE    LEFT 


patches  if  the  C.C.F.  finds  itself  in  a  po- 
sition to  form  a  Cabinet  or  if  it  decides  to 
enter  a  coalition  ministry — a  course  to 
which  it  has  been  opposed  so  far. 

IV 

LL  this  political  ferment,  along  with 
the  success  of  the  C.C.F.,  has  forced 
the  other  two  parties  to  refurbish  their 
platforms  and  show  some  willingness  to 
step  lively. 

The  Liberals,  now  in  control  of  the 
Dominion  government,  have  been  con- 
sidering ambitious  schemes  for  social  secu- 
rity and  postwar  rehabilitation.  There 
has  been  no  action  on  these  programs, 
but  Prime  Minister  King  is  a  pretty  good 
judge  of  public  opinion  and  the  Liberals 
may  try  to  galvanize  themselves.  A 
Canadian  economist,  Dr.  Leonard  C. 
Marsh,  has  drawn  up  what  is  sometimes 
called  the  Canadian  Beveridge  Plan.  It 
calls  for  an  enlargement,  co-ordination, 
and  strengthening  of  practically  all  forms 
of  social  security  and  for  closer  co-opera- 
tion of  the  federal  government  with  the 
provinces  in  this  field.  Like  Mr.  Cold- 
well,  Dr.  Marsh  believes  that  free  govern- 
ment spending  will  be  the  only  antidote 
to  a  disastrous  slump  during  the  tran- 
sition from  a  war  to  a  peace  economy. 
He  wants  to  spend  a  billion  dollars  in  the 
first  year  after  the  war.  His  report  has 
been  much  discussed  but  so  far  nothing 
has  been  done  about  it. 

Government  plans  for  reabsorbing  sol- 
diers into  civilian  life  have  reached  a 
fairly  concrete  stage.  The  returned  sol- 
dier will  be  eligible  for  unemployment 
insurance  while  waiting  for  a  job  ($10.20 
a  week  for  single  men;  $14.40  a  week  for 
married  men) .  University  students  will  be 
supported  while  completing  their  courses 
of  study,  interrupted  in  order  to  join 
the  armed  forces.  Free  vocational  train- 
ing will  be  available  and  soldiers  with 
farming  experience  will  receive  financial 
help  from  the  government  in  purchasing 
farms  on  easy  terms.  All  these  moves  of 
course  are  palliatives.  It  is  pretty  gener- 
ally recognized  that  only  full  employment 
of  manpower,  plant,  and  resources  will 
provide  for  the  future  of  the  more  than 
seven  hundred  thousand  men  in  the  serv- 


ices and  of  the  war  workers  who  cannot 
be  taken  over  automatically  into  recon- 
verted industries.  (There  are  about  a 
million  Canadians  now  employed  in  war 
industry.) 

Projects  for  insuring  employment  are 
still  in  a  tentative  stage,  although  official 
and  semiofficial  committees  are  at  work 
on  the  question.  The  Advisory  Commit- 
tee on  Reconstruction,  headed  by  Dr. 
F.  C.  James,  Principal  of  McGill  Univer- 
sity, has  set  up  subcommittees  on  such 
subjects  as  agricultural  policy,  conserva- 
tion and  development  of  resources,  and  so 
on.  One  of  these  subcommittees,  headed 
by  K.  M.  Cameron,  suggests  that  the 
transformation  of  existing  aviation  re- 
sources, enormously  expanded  as  a  result 
of  the  Empire  Air  Training  scheme,  for 
peacetime  commercial  and  private  passen- 
ger use,  including  continental  and  trans- 
Atlantic  traffic,  might  "galvanize  the 
whole  Canadian  economy."  Any  such 
attempt  of  course  will  pitch  the  Canadians 
into  the  middle  of  the  impending  inter- 
national scrap  over  air  rights. 

While  the  government  and  other  bodies 
have  been  busy  with  these  concerns,  the 
Conservative  Party,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
been  trying  to  catch  up;  its  leaders  hope 
that  their  change  of  label  to  Progressive- 
Conservatives  will  help  them  to  get  going 
again.  This  change  of  name  was  brought 
about  by  the  new  Conservative  leader,  John 
Bracken,  once  a  professor  of  agricultural 
science  and  author  of  several  books  about 
Canadian  farming.  Formerly  Prime 
Minister  of  Manitoba,  he  displays  the 
sort  of  farm  liberalism  that  one  often 
finds  in  the  governors  of  our  States  of 
the  upper  Mississippi  Valley.  He  recog- 
nizes the  fact  that  undiluted  conservatism 
has  little  popular  appeal  in  Canada  and 
that  the  Conservative  Party  cannot  hope 
to  make  a  comeback  without  putting 
on  a  fairly  convincing  show  of  being 
progressive. 

Tactics  such  as  he  advocates  were  cer- 
tainly successful  in  the  Ontario  elections 
last  August,  when  the  Liberals  were 
shoved  back  to  third  place  against  the 
competition  of  the  C.C.F.  and  the  Progres- 
sive-Conservatives. George  Drew,  the 
new  Prime  Minister  of  Ontario,  followed 
Bracken's  line  in  the  election  campaign. 


8 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


He  published  a  twenty-two-point  program 
with  a  number  of  suggestions  for  adminis- 
trative improvement  and  social  reform  and 
promised  to  create  "a  dynamic  Ontario." 
Bracken  has  set  the  pace  lOr  the  Conserva- 
tives and  recently  one  of  the  most  con- 
servative of  Canadian  newspapers,  the 
Montreal  Gazette,  undertook  to  show  by  ci- 
tations from  his  speeches  that  Mr.  Bracken 
is  about  as  advanced  in  his  views  as  Vice- 
President  Wallace. 


THERE  remains  the  question  of  French 
Canada.  Can  the  C.C.F.  or  the  re- 
vamped Conservatives  or  a  possibly  re- 
suscitated Liberal  Party  make  a  junction 
with  the  French  Canadians?  This  ques- 
tion is  worth  examination,  though  at  the 
moment  Canada  is  split  in  two  over  the 
war. 

In  the  spring  of  1942  Prime  Minister 
King  submitted  to  a  referendum  vote  the 
question  of  whether  or  not  the  Gov- 
ernment should  be  released  from  its  ear- 
lier pledge  not  to  apply  conscription  for 
overseas  service.  English  Canada  voted 
strongly  "Yes,"  and  French  Canada  ve- 
hemently "No."  Sixty-two  per  cent  of  the 
total  national  vote  was  for  lifting  the  ban, 
a  tolerably  close  vote.  But  though  the 
government  was  empowered  to  send  con- 
scripts overseas,  it  has  not  yet  done  so. 
Home  defense — where  there  has  never 
been  a  bar  against  conscripts — has  been 
stretched  to  include  Newfoundland,  the 
West  Indies,  and  even  the  Aleutians. 
The  slowness  with  which  the  Government 
has  moved  shows  how  critical  the  issue  is. 

A  recent  political  development  in  Que- 
bec has  been  the  emergence  of  an  intransi- 
gent French-Canadian  nationalist  party, 
the  Bloc  Populaire  Canadien.  Its  leader 
is  Maxime  Raymond,  a  veteran  member 
of  Parliament  and  a  prominent  lawyer, 
an  uncompromising  opponent  of  Cana- 
dian participation  in  the  war,  and  a 
strong  champion  of  provincial  autonomy 
for  Quebec. 

What  will  happen  to  the  Bloc  is  prob- 
lematical. While  the  C.C.F.  asks  for 
votes  on  promises  for  the  future,  the  Bloc 
rages  about  the  war  and  thinks  about  the 
past.     "One  may  be  allowed  to  dream," 


begins  one  of  the  leaflets  issued  on  behalf 
of  Armand  Choquette,  the  Bloc  candidate 
at  a  recent  parliamentary  by-election. 
"If  our  country  had  done  as  Ireland  did 
and  as  Maxime  Raymond,  leader  of  the 
Bloc,  demanded;  if  it  had  remained  neu- 
tral .  .  ."  Then,  the  argument  goes  on, 
the  billions  of  dollars  spent  on  the  war 
could  have  immensely  improved  the  social 
well-being  of  the  country.  The  leaflet 
gives  detailed  calculations  of  how  many 
homes  could  have  been  built  and  fur- 
nished, how  much  machinery  could  have 
been  given  to  farmers,  how  many  hospitals, 
orphanages,  and  old  people's  homes  could 
have  been  endowed  with  "these  gifts  not 
to  England,  but  to  Canadians." 

Most  English  Canadians  fumed  with 
rage  over  such  propaganda,  but  it 
helped  to  elect  M.  Choquette  in  a  district 
where  there  was  a  large  English-speaking 
minority. 

The  reasons  why  most  French  Cana- 
dians are  opposed  to  conscription  for  over- 
seas wars,  why  many  of  them  reflect 
wistfully  on  what  might  have  happened  if 
Canada  had  remained  neutral,  are  numer- 
ous and  complex.  It  is  unfair  and  a  mark 
of  ignorance  to  stigmatize  French  Canada 
as  "fascist."  The  French  Canadian  has 
a  strong  sense  of  personal  liberty  and  dis- 
likes regimentation.  The  militant  Prot- 
estants are  wrong  when  they  attribute 
the  attitude  of  French  Canada  toward 
the  war  to  the  influence  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  So  far  as  I  could  judge  from  a 
number  of  personal  contacts  in  Quebec, 
the  priest  is  no  more  critical  of  the  war 
than  the  peasant,  the  little  business  man, 
and  the  intellectual. 

The  French  Canadians  have  a  strong 
sense  of  constituting  a  national  and  a  cul- 
tural minority.  Always  on  guard  against 
absorption  by  the  English-speaking  ma- 
jority, they  are  suspicious  of  a  conflict 
that  they  feel  originated  in  Great  Britain 
rather  than  in  Canada.  Because  English 
is  the  language  of  command  in  the  Cana- 
dian Army  and  because  higher  education 
in  French  Canada  is  strongly  classical  and 
non-technical,  the  young  French  Cana- 
dian is  at  a  disadvantage  in  trying  to 
qualify  for  a  commission  or  to  enter  the 
more  interesting  technical  branches  of 
the  service.     Suspicious  of  discrimination 


CANADA    SWINGS    TO    THE    LEFT 


on  racial  grounds,  he  often  feels  that 
this  is  an  English-Canadian's  war  and  a 
French-Canadian's  fight.  If  there  were 
a  direct  attack  on  Canada  the  attitude 
would  be  wholly  dilTerent.  Even  so, 
many  French  Canadians  have  entered 
the  armed  services  and  have  made  excel- 
lent military  records. 

The  appeal  of  the  Bloc  Populaire  Cana- 
dien  is  restricted  to  French  Canadians, 
and  its  strength — unlike  that  of  the  C.C.F. 
— has  not  yet  been  tested  on  a  wide  scale. 
But  some  observers  who  are  by  no  means 
sympathetic  with  it  believe  that  it  may 
win  a  considerable  proportion  of  Quebec's 
65  seats  in  the  next  election.  (There  are 
245  deputies  in  the  Canadian  House  of 
Commons.)  Besides  being  as  critical  of 
the  war  effort  as  the  law  will  permit,  the 
spokesmen  for  the  Bloc  fiercely  attack 
alleged  federal  encroachments  on  Que- 
bec's rights  of  provincial  self-govern- 
ment. One  of  Raymond's  slogans  is 
"Canada  for  the  Canadians;  Quebec  for 
the  Quebecers." 

But  after  the  war,  when  Canada's  par- 
ticipation in  the  conflict  and  the  applica- 
tion of  conscription  are  no  longer  burning 
questions,  what  is  going  to  happen  to  the 
Bloc?  Its  survival  will  depend  largely 
on  its  ability  to  work  out  an  acceptable 
social  program.  M.  Raymond  seems  to 
be  conscious  of  this,  for  in  one  of  the 
broadcasts  in  which  he  introduced  the 
new  party  he  urged  an  expansion  of 
rural  co-operatives,  better  housing  for  in- 
dustrial workers,  and  equal  pay  for  work- 
ers in  Ontario  and  Quebec.  Factory 
workers  in  Ontario  are  now  in  many 
cases  more  highly  paid  than  those  of 
Quebec. 

If  the  C.C.F.  and  the  Bloc  are  on 
opposite  sides  on  the  war  question,  could 
they  find  common  ground  afterward? 
Some  optimistic  members  of  the  C.C.F. 
believe  that  the  expropriation  of  Quebec's 
privately  owned  power  resources  might 
be  one  issue  on  which  the  two  groups 
might  see  eye  to  eye.  The  C.C.F.  would 
approve  of  such  a  measure  on  general 
principles;   the  Bloc  would   approve  be- 


cause the  power  is  owned  mostly  by 
British-Canadian  and  American  interests. 
There  is  the  powerful  precedent  of  Presi- 
dent Cardenas,  who  expropriated  the  for- 
eign-owned oil  interests  in  Mexico. 

The  recent  decision  of  the  Canadian 
Catholic  hierarchy  that  there  is  no  moral 
objection  to  Catholic  support  of  the  C.C.F. 
is  of  obvious  political  benefit  in  a  country 
where  more  than  forty  per  cent  of  the 
people  belong  to  this  faith.  It  reversed 
earlier  unfavorable  statements  of  high 
clerics  about  the  C.C.F.  No  party  under 
the  ban  of  the  Church  would  stand  much 
chance  of  success  in  Quebec;  but,  as  the 
French-Canadian  tide  at  the  moment 
seems  to  be  swinging  toward  the  Bloc 
Populaire,  the  C.C.F.  is  likely  to  reap 
more  immediate  benefit  from  the  friend- 
lier attitude  of  the  hierarchy  among  Eng- 
lish-speaking Catholic  voters  in  Ontario 
and  the  Mari times  and  the  West. 

Some  American  conservatives  have  been 
inclined  to  blame  the  New  Deal  for 
the  inevitable  deprivations,  inconven- 
iences, and  confusions  of  a  war  economy. 
This  cannot  happen  in  Canada.  Mr. 
King's  liberalism  is  of  the  nineteenth  rather 
than  the  twentieth  century;  to  rebel 
against  Mr.  King  is  to  rebel  against  the 
past.  So  there  has  been  no  temptation 
to  find  an  outlet  for  war  grievances  by 
voting  in  conservatives.  This,  together 
with  the  fact  that  Canada  has  lagged  in 
such  matters  as  compulsory  collective  bar- 
gaining and  in  recognizing  the  status  of 
organized  labor,  helps  to  explain  the  for- 
ward sweep  of  the  C.C.F. 

That  does  not  mean  that  revolution  is 
just  around  the  corner.  It  does  mean 
that  Canadians  now  seem  more  inclined 
than  Americans  to  take  a  chance  on  sys- 
tematic government  intervention  as  es- 
sential insurance  against  a  postwar  eco- 
nomic tailspin.  There  are  crusted  elderly 
business  men  and  bankers  in  the  Dominion 
who  regard  the  mildest  reform  advocated 
by  the  C.C.F.  as  damnable  heresy.  But 
the  voices  raised  on  behalf  of  thorough- 
going laissez  faire  are  few  and  sound  rather 
scared  and  lonely. 


THE    OLEOMARGARINE    REBELLION 


WESLEY    McCUNE 


FOR  many  years  margarine,  a  "butter 
substitute,"  has  been  an  orphan 
child,  disdained  by  all  families  of 
refinement  and  almost  taxed  out  of  exist- 
ence through  the  efforts  of  dairy  and  but- 
ter lobbies.  Margarine  was  made  and 
sold  in  very  small  quantities;  quiet  reigned 
throughout  the  land.  There  is  no  quiet 
now.  Margarine  has  shown  itself  to  have 
the  power  of  dynamite.  It  has  not  only 
blown  up  the  works  at  the  Iowa  State 
College  of  Agriculture — through  the  sup- 
pression of  a  pamphlet  enumerating  the 
virtues  of  margarine  during  a  wartime 
butter  shortage;  it  has  proved  even  more 
powerful.  It  has  breached  the  Farm 
Bloc  in  Washington  and  split  the  agricul- 
tural lobbies  from  top  to  bottom. 

Young  Oswald  H.  Brownlee,  a  seven- 
teen-hundred-dollar-a-year  research  asso- 
ciate, touched  off  the  Iowa  State  fireworks 
by  writing  a  pamphlet  on  dairying  while 
working  for  the  taxpayers  of  the  nation's 
second  largest  dairy-products  State. 
Writing  the  fifth  in  a  "Wartime  Farm  and 
Food  Policy"  series  published  by  the  col- 
lege press,  Brownlee  advanced  a  number 
of  frank  suggestions,  none  of  which  was 
very  flattering  to  the  dairy  industry.  But 
on  page  29  of  his  thirty-five-page  study 
he  entered  the  taboo  subject:  "Substitut- 
ing Margarine  for  Butter." 

After  pointing  out  that  there  would  not 
be  enough  butter  to  go  round,  Brownlee 
wrote  that  "one-half  of  the  crop  land  and 


one-eighth  of  the  labor  necessary  to  turn 
out  our  butter  would  produce  enough 
vegetable  oils  which,  when  converted  into 
margarine,  could  entirely  displace  but- 
ter." Then  came  the  prime  heresy: 
"Margarine  compares  favorably  with  but- 
ter both  in  nutritive  value  and  palatabil- 
ity.  But  in  spite  of  the  food  value  and 
efficiency  of  margarine,  dairy  interests 
have  been  rather  effective  in  suppressing 
its  use."  To  dairymen  who  remained 
calm  enough  to  read  on,  Brownlee  next 
proposed  abolition  of  restrictions  on  mar- 
garine and  suggested  that  it  might  even 
be  allowed  to  be  colored  to  resemble 
butter. 

Word  of  researcher  Brownlee's  frontal 
bite  on  the  hand  that  fed  him  spread 
quickly  through  dairy  associations.  First 
to  run  up  the  storm  signal  was  Julius 
Bruner,  president  of  a  creamery  associa- 
tion, who  said  he  would  be  satisfied  with 
"nothing  less  than  recall  of  the  pamphlet, 
denial  of  faculty  responsibility  for  it,  and 
removal  from  the  faculty  of  .  .  .  its  au- 
thors as  self-convicted  incompetents." 

Protests  continued  until  President 
Charles  E.  Friley  met  for  two  hours  with 
a  hundred  dairymen.  According  to  ac- 
counts of  the  session,  Friley  insisted  that 
the  college's  right  to  publish  facts  was  not 
debatable.  However  he  arranged  for  a 
joint  committee  of  faculty  members  and 
dairy  representatives  to  "review  this  bulle- 
tin paragraph  by  paragraph  to  determine 


THE    OLEOMARGARINE    REBELLION 


11 


by  objective  evidence  the  accuracy  of  its 
contents."  As  the  dairymen  agreed  to 
the  unique  arrangement,  reinforcements 
arrived  from  the  East  in  the  persons  of 
Owen  Richard,  President  of  the  American 
Dairy  Association,  and  Neil  Kelly,  repre- 
senting the  National  Dairy  Council. 

Three  months  later  the  pamphlet  had 
not  been  reissued,  but  President  Friley  had 
received  a  long  letter  of  resignation  from 
Dr.  Theodore  W.  Schultz,  head  of  the 
economics  and  sociology  department  for 
eight  years  and  one  of  the  country's  out- 
standing agricultural  educators.  Schultz's 
blast  was  aimed  at  the  general  disappear- 
ance of  academic  freedom  in  a  leading 
State  school,  but  first  on  his  bill  of  particu- 
lars was  the  incident  of  Pamphlet  No.  5, 
of  which  he  was  one  of  a  four-man  edi- 
torial committee.  Stating  that  many  of 
his  fellow  faculty  members  were  willing  to 
pay  almost  any  price  to  establish  a  satis- 
factory working  relationship  with  repre- 
sentatives of  the  dairy  industry,  Schultz 
resigned  and  hied  himself  off  to  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago.  Meanwhile,  having 
smelled  blood,  dairy  spokesmen  demanded 
the  scalps  of  others  on  the  editorial  com- 
mittee who  apparently  failed  to  realize 
where  their  own  interests  lay. 

About  the  same  time  margarine  was  in 
the  news  for  another  reason.  It  became 
so  plentiful  in  comparison  with  butter  that 
the  Office  of  Price  Administration  left  it  at 
four  ration  points  per  paund,  while  boost- 
ing butter  from  twelve  to  sixteen.  Worst 
of  all,  the  butter  shortage  walked  right  into 
Washington  itself.  At  the  U.  S.  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  of  all  places,  employees 
found  signs  in  their  cafeteria  announcing 
that  only  margarine  was  available,  and 
Senators  found  on  the  last  day  of  September 
a  polite  note  from  the  management  of  their 
restaurant  saying  that  there  would  be 
"butterless  Thursdays"  for  a  while. 

Across  the  Capitol  grounds  Hampton 
Pitts  Fulmer,  Chairman  of  the  House  Ag- 
riculture Committee,  was  rounding  up 
key  witnesses  for  late  October  hearings  on 
his  bill  to  remove  margarine  taxes. 

In  millions  of  kitchens  housewives  were 
wondering  almost  as  much  as  ever  about 
the  point-cheap  and  price-cheap  mar- 
garine they  were  buying,  many  for  the 
first  time.     Most  of  all  they  wondered  why 


they  had  to  mix  the  little  packet  of  col- 
ored powder  into  the  cold-looking  mar- 
garine so  that  it  would  look  like  butter. 
In  the  answer  to  that  question  lies  the 
whole  fantastic  story  of  margarine. 

II 

iACK  in  the  1860's  Napoleon  III,  faced 
with  an  oil  and  fat  shortage,  offered 
a  large  cash  prize  to  the  man  who  could 
invent  a  cheap  butter  substitute.  The 
Victualing  Department  of  the  French 
Navy  also  stimulated  research.  As  it 
happened,  the  prize  winner,  a  scientist 
named  Mege-Mouries,  was  not  looking 
for  a  substitute;  he  was  trying  to  concoct 
synthetic  butter  in  a  laboratory.  The  re- 
sulting product  was  greasy  and  barely 
palatable,  but  it  won  Napoleon's  contest 
and  started  factories  in  other  countries. 

"Butterine,"  as  it  was  first  called,  earned 
few  friends  for  a  long  time.  Most  of  it 
was  made  in  small,  dirty,  back-street 
shops,  and  the  English  public,  for  example, 
was  ready  to  believe  any  fantastic  story 
about  what  went  into  the  despised  product. 

Nor  were  Amicricans  friendly  to  the 
substitute,  which  early  in  its  career  was 
often  palmed  off  as  butter.  Recognizing 
the  fraud,  as  well  as  the  competition,  law- 
makers started  a  campaign.  Fifteen  years 
after  the  first  American  patent  was  taken 
out,  the  Oleomargarine  Act  of  1886  im- 
posed a  stamp  tax  of  two  cents  a  pound  on 
all  margarine  and  special  annual  taxes 
on  manufacturers  and  dealers.  By  an 
amendment  passed  in  1 902  a  sharp  distinc- 
tion was  drawn  between  colored  and  un- 
colored  margarine,  the  tax  on  the  former 
being  fixed  at  10  cents  a  pound  and  on  the 
latter  at  one-fourth  of  one  cent.  All  man- 
ufacturers now  pay  $600  a  year;  wholesal- 
ers of  colored  margarine  pay  S480  and 
their  retail  outlets  pay  $48.  On  un- 
colored  margarine  the  fee  is  $200  at  whole- 
sale and  S6  at  retail. 

Two  taxes  make  imports  of  margarine 
practically  nil.  After  paying  the  tariff 
of  14  cents  a  pound  (the  same  as  that  on 
butter)  an  importer  must  pay  the  1886 
stamp  tax  of  another  15  cents  a  pound. 
Furthermore,  tariffs  on  palm  and  coconut 
oil  discourage  manufacturers  from  using 
two  of  the  best  ingredients  for  margarine. 


12 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Another  type  of  Federal  restriction  has 
been  imposed  by  the  dairy  lobby  at  the 
appropriation-committee  level.  By  spe- 
cific ban,  most  Federal  institutions  (such 
as  veterans'  hospitals)  and  the  Army  are 
not  permitted  margarine  except  for  cook- 
ing purposes,  when  the  persons  affected 
ask  for  it,  or  when  use  of  butter  is  not 
practicable.  Last  year  the  provisos  were 
dropped,  but  they  will  undoubtedly  re- 
appear after  the  war.  By  regulation,  the 
Navy  specifies  butter,  but  it  also  has  been 
driven  to  margarine  by  wartime  supply 
problems. 

State  regulation,  which  started  snow- 
balling in  1877,  has  been  even  more  op- 
pressive. Outright  bans  were  voided  by 
the  Supreme  Court  as  unconstitutional  re- 
straints on  interstate  commerce,  but  the 
States  trampled  margarine  ruthlessly  un- 
der the  old  maxim  that  **the  power  to  tax 
is  the  power  to  destroy."  Five  States  re- 
quired that  margarine  be  colored  pink,  but 
the  Supreme  Court  found  a  legal  device 
for  getting  round  the  ruse  and  invalidated 
the  laws.  However,  one  State,  Wiscon- 
sin, which  leads  in  milk  production,  taxes 
consumers  of  interstate  margarine  one  dol- 
lar per  year.  Many  States  require  ex- 
pensive dealers'  licenses  and  several  dis- 
criminate against  boarding  houses, 
restaurants,  and  bakers  who  use  the  more 
economical  product. 

On  the  novel  side,  many  States  require 
conspicuous  signs  where  margarine  is 
served.  Missouri  and  Arkansas  require 
such  places  to  label  the  plates  used  for  it 
"Oleomargarine." 

Few,  if  any,  authorities  any  longer  think 
that  this  myriad  of  regulations  is  in  step 
with  the  facts  of  modern  margarine  pro- 
duction and  marketing.  Both  State  and 
Federal  margarine  laws  provide  for  label- 
ing and  prevention  of  fraud,  so  that  the 
original  premise  of  the  tax  is  now  out- 
moded. In  fact,  since  most  of  the  tax 
barriers  were  erected  a  comprehensive 
Pure  Food  and  Drug  Act  has  been  put  on 
the  books. 

To  those  who  rejoin  that  margarine  can 
still  be  unclean,  while  the  cow's  product 
somehow  remains  pure,  the  following  data 
are  interesting  though  embarrassing:  In 
the  twelve  years  ending  in  1936  the  U.  S. 
Food  and  Drug  Administration  had  a  total 


of  2,384  court  cases  on  its  records  against 
butter,  compared  with  14  against  mar- 
garine. Oddly  enough,  the  most  frequent 
citation  against  butter  marketers  has  been 
for  failure  to  maintain  80  per  cent  fat  in 
their  product,  which  under  current  Fed- 
eral regulations  is  the  minimum  allowed 
in  both  butter  and  margarine. 

Perhaps  the  most  humorous  twist  in  the 
rivalry  concerns  complaints  by  butter 
protagonists  against  the  practice  of  artifi- 
cially coloring  and  flavoring  margarine. 
What  they  never  mention  is  that  artificial 
coloring  and  flavoring  is  a  standard  prac- 
tice in  the  butter  industry. 

Most  important  of  the  improvements  in 
margarine  since  the  archaic  laws  about  it 
were  written  is  its  fortification  with  vita- 
mins. Manufacturers  claim  that  taste 
and  palatability  have  also  improved,  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  its  nutritive 
value  has  skyrocketed.  Under  Federal 
standards,  9,000  units  of  Vitamin  A  may 
be  injected  into  each  pound  of  margarine 
— a  fact  which  infuriates  the  butter  lobby 
because — averaged  through  the  four  sea- 
sons of  a  year — butter  reaches  about  the 
same  figure. 

Considering  the  size  of  its  hurdles,  mar- 
garine has  come  along  fairly  well.  Before 
the  war  annual  per  capita  consumption  of 
butter  ran  to  about  17  pounds  against 
margarine's  3.  The  war's  impact  shifted 
the  ratio  steadily  until  in  1943  the  figure 
for  butter  is  estimated  at  13,  compared 
with  4.8  for  margarine.  Last  year  425,- 
000,000  pounds  of  margarine  were  pro- 
duced, of  which  only  64,500,000  pounds 
was  colored.  Almost  all  of  the  latter  was 
shipped  to  Lend-Lease  consumers,  who 
were  thus  saved  the  trouble  of  adding 
color — if  they  cared. 

Last  June  margarine  received  a  thor- 
ough examination  and  bill  of  health  from 
the  extremely  important  National  Re- 
search Council  in  a  report  by  its  Food  and 
Nutrition  Board.  The  Board  found  no 
nutritional  differences  between  fortified 
margarine  and  butter  as  sources  of  fat  in  a 
mixed  diet,  and  found  it  obvious  that 
margarine  taxes  interfere  with  the  dis- 
tribution and  utilization  of  certain  fat 
resources. 

After  the  scientific  plug  however  came 
a  politically  sterile  statement  to  keep  the 


THE    OLEOMARGARINE    REBELLION 


13 


issue  rolling  along:  ".  :  I  but  the  impli- 
cations of  these  taxes  are  so  extensive  and 
complex  that  no  recommendation  with 
respect  to  them  can  be  made  in  this  re- 
port." 

Ill 

BUTTRESSED  with  Scientific  pamphlets 
I  however,  margarine  manufacturers 
have  an  ace  political  card — the  awaken- 
ing of  farmers  who  sell  raw  materials  to 
them.  The  reason  for  this  awakening  is 
apparent  from  a  glance  at  the  composition 
of  margarine.  In  1942,  for  example,  166,- 
500,000  pounds  of  cottonseed  oil  and  133,- 
300,000  pounds  of  soybean  oil  went  into 
margarine.  Together  they  accounted  for 
86.5  per  cent  of  the  entire  output  and 
slowly  drew  into  the  fray  all  growers  of 
cotton  and  soybeans,  whether  they  live  in 
the  deep  South,  where  dairying  is  slight,  or 
in  the  corn  belt,  where  dairying  is  a  chief 
source  of  income. 

Congressmen  can  no  longer  brush  aside 
proposals  that  discrimination  be  removed 
from  butter's  enemy  as  they  could  when 
most  of  the  raw  material  for  margarine 
came  from  foreign  soil.  To-day  Con- 
gressman Zilch  must  hoist  a  wet  finger  into 
the  air  to  see  which  way  the  wind  blows  in 
his  home  district  before  he  goes  all-out  for 
the  status  quo. 

Representative  Fulmer,  veteran  from 
cotton-dominated  South  Carolina,  has  had 
his  bearings  for  a  long  time,  as  have  other 
members  of  the  House  Agriculture  Com- 
mittee, which  he  heads.  It  was  inevitable 
therefore  that  he  should  finally  introduce  a 
bill  to  wipe  out  margarine  taxes.  In  do- 
ing so  he  has  started  in  motion  a  mecha- 
nism for  bringing  out  of  hiding  the  many 
but  bashful  or  bruised  friends  of  mar- 
garine. A  crevice  in  the  farm  bloc — one 
of  the  few — has  been  opened  and  both 
sides  are  rushing  up  to  the  brink  with 
artillery. 

Two  powerful  organizations  are  pricking 
all  Southern  congressmen:  the  Southern 
Commissioners  of  Agriculture,  an  associa- 
tion of  the  top  agriculture  officials  from 
each  State,  and  the  National  Cotton 
Council,  dedicated  to  increasing  the  use 
and  price  of  King  Cotton.  The  Southern 
Commissioners,  each  of  whom  is  militantly 
loud  and  powerful  in  his  own  territory, 


have  had  a  Washington  representative  for 
several  years  in  "Coloncr'  C.  C.  Hanson, 
elderly,  philosophical  Southerner  who 
works  mainly  on  the  telephone  from  head- 
quarters in  the  Raleigh  Hotel.  Hanson 
has  been  sending  data  on  margarine  back 
to  Dixie  for  several  years,  but  not  until 
now  have  his  constituents  been  ready  for 
the  head-on  attack  in  Congress. 

The  National  Cotton  Council  overlaps 
Hanson's  function  considerably  when  it 
comes  to  margarine,  but  the  two  work 
hand  in  glove.  Oscar  Johnston,  president 
of  the  Council  and  one  of  the  world's  larg- 
est cotton  farmers,  discussed  his  organiza- 
tion's stake  in  the  fight  at  great  length  in  a 
letter  to  Clarence  Cannon,  Chairman  of 
the  potent  House  Appropriations  Commit- 
tee, after  Cannon  had  sounded  off  against 
alleged  margarine  advocates  in  the  gov- 
ernment. Johnston  presented  many  ar- 
guments for  giving  margarine  a  fair  chance 
to  stand  on  its  own  merits,  but  this  one 
struck  nearer  home  than  any:  the  cotton- 
seed oil  used  in  margarine  in  1941  was 
produced  on  257,478  farms. 

The  second  major  bloc  of  support  com.es 
from  the  dairymen's  cousins,  the  beef- 
cattle  men.  Oil  derivatives  from  cattle 
now  make  up  nearly  10  per  cent  of  the 
total  poundage  of  margarine — a  fact 
which  gives  cattlemen  an  obvious  reason 
for  entering  the  pressure  game.  How- 
ever there  is  another  reason,  which  re- 
veals, in  addition,  a  ridiculous  feature  of 
present  regulation.  It  is  not  only  illegal 
to  color  margarine  artificially,  but  under 
the  Bingham  law  its  manufacturers  must 
even  bleach  out  the  natural  color  of  the 
beef  oils  before  adding  them  to  the  mix- 
ture! 

Since  the  development  of  an  animal 
known  as  the  dual-purpose  cow,  some 
cow  owners  have  been  unable  to  deter- 
mine their  prime  allegiance  between  the 
rival  pressure  groups.  Because  a  dual- 
purpose  cow  may  be  used  both  for  milking 
and  for  the  beef  market,  farmer  Jones  may 
be  with  the  butter  bloc  on  Tuesday,  when 
he  is  milking  his  critter,  and  shift  to  the 
margarine  crowd  on  Wednesday,  when 
he  decides  to  market  her  for  beef. 

A  third  advantage  to  the  margarine 
supporters  is  the  division  of  potential  op- 
position.    Not  only  do  many  butter  han- 


14 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


dlers  deal  also  in  margarine,  but  some  of 
the  biggest  corporations  which  might 
otherwise  oppose  margarine  by  advertis- 
ing, say,  have  one  of  their  hands  in  the 
margarine  business.  Most  notable  of 
these  is  the  gigantic  National  Dairy  Prod- 
ucts Corporation,  whose  subsidiary  Kraft 
Cheese  has  acquired  a  brand  of  margarine 
and  is  shouting  its  virtues  from  the  house- 
tops. 

A  fourth  aid  to  the  margarine  cause 
comes  from  the  American  Soybean  Associ- 
ation, whose  lobbying  has  not  been  ap- 
parent in  Washington  as  yet,  but  will  be. 
This  fall  the  Association  resolved  in  favor 
of  repealing  taxes  on  domestic  margarine, 
but  the  resolution  itself  is  not  so  signifi- 
cant as  was  the  fact  that  the  Association 
met  in  Iowa,  in  the  midst  of  angry  dairy 
farmers.  That  is,  they  were  angry  unless 
they  produced  soybeans,  as  well  as  milk, 
on  their  farms — which  illustrates  the  fal- 
lacy of  enacting  pressure  legislation  in 
behalf  of  geographical  groups.  Iowa  hap- 
pens to  be  one  of  the  major  soybean- 
producing  States. 

Of  further  significance  is  the  fact  that 
the  Association  heard  a  plea  for  support 
of  the  Fulmer  bill  from  Paul  T.  Truitt, 
President  of  the  National  Association  of 
Margarine  Manufacturers,  of  Washing- 
ton. 

Truitt  is  a  comparative  newcomer  to  the 
rough-and-tumble  part  of  the  pressure 
arena,  but  his  knowledge  of  trade  barriers 
is  second  to  that  of  no  other  lobbyist. 
Since  1939  he  has  been  the  government's 
key  authority  on  the  subject.  As  Chair- 
man of  the  Interdepartmental  Committee 
on  Interstate  Trade  Barriers,  Truitt  was 
responsible  for  much  of  the  work  done  by 
the  Federal  government  in  tearing  down 
barriers;  in  other  capacities  he  helped 
collect  the  vast  pile  of  evidence  from  which 
enemies  of  barriers  have  been  hurling 
bricks  the  past  few  years.  Before  that  he 
had  spent  fifteen  years  in  the  aggressive 
Sears,  Roebuck  and  Co. 

Until  Truitt  took  over,  just  a  year  ago, 
the  Association  was  run  by  a  kindly  old 
man  trained  in  the  scientific  approach  but 
unwilling  or  unable  to  snap  back  at  the 
strong  butter  lobby.  His  record  of  twen- 
ty-two years  with  the  Association  and  its 
predecessors  adds  up  to  some  four  hundred 


articles  and  bulletins  on  margarine  but 
none  of  the  slyness  that  opponents  at- 
tempted to  attach  to  his  one-man  pressure 
activities.  During  his  tenure,  the  indus- 
try was  so  uncertain  of  the  course  to  be  fol- 
lowed that  it  merely  limped  along;  and  it 
was  only  when,  last  year,  the  Big  Four  of 
the  meat-packing  industry  re-entered  it 
that  a  rejuvenated  Association  set  out 
with  money  and  personnel  to  fight  back. 

No  such  indecision  or  timidity  has 
hampered  butter  protectionists,  however. 
Their  fully-supported  champion  for  twen- 
ty-three years  has  been  Charles  W.  Hol- 
man,  Secretary  of  the  National  Co-opera- 
tive Milk  Producers  Federation  and 
rugged  lobbyist  of  the  old  school.  From 
his  downtown  headquarters  Holman 
storms  up  and  down  Capitol  Hill  with  the 
greatest  of  ease  during  emergencies  and 
keeps  lesser  situations  under  control 
twenty-four  hours  a  day.  Nothing  draws 
a  hotter  blast  from  him  than  does  a  step 
ahead  for  margarine.  He  sees  margarine 
lobbyists  behind  each  of  Washington's 
many  pillars  and  issues  screeching  press 
releases  each  time  a  government  official 
suggests  that  margarine  might  make  a 
good  food  during  the  war. 

Though  he  is  technically  only  a  pro- 
ducer representative,  Holman  usually 
carries  the  ball  for  distributors  as  well. 
Once  a  year,  before  the  war,  this  activity 
took  the  form  of  National  Dairy  Month, 
of  which  he  was  chairman.  To  him  must 
go  almost  the  sole  credit  for  holding  the 
1886   and    1902   line   against   margarine. 


IV 

MERELY  as  a  feud  between  two  com- 
modities, the  butter-margarine  dis- 
pute is  important,  but  the  issue  reaches 
much  farther.  In  the  first  place,  it  fur- 
nishes a  vivid  example  of  the  twentieth- 
century  penalty  on  progress.  The  strat- 
egy of  the  enemies  of  margarine  resembles 
that  of  the  old-fashioned  labor  leaders  who 
smashed  modern  machines.  But  mar- 
garine— like  the  milking  machines  which 
were  eventually  substituted  for  hand  labor 
in  many  places — will  ultimately  be  allowed 
to  stand  or  fall  on  its  merits. 

A  more  immediate  and  harsh  proof  of 
the   ultimate   futility   of  barriers   against 


THE    OLEOMARGARINE    REBELLION 


15 


margarine  is  the  experience  certain  dairy 
States  have  already  had  with  retaliation 
against  them.  Probably  nothing  has 
contributed  more  than  margarine  legisla- 
tion to  the  destruction  of  free  trade  among 
States,  supposedly  basic  in  our  system  of 
government.  The  experience  of  Wiscon- 
sin with  several  Southern  States  illustrates 
how  the  spiral  of  retaliation  operates. 

In  the  period  of  the  three  years  ending 
in  1935  fourteen  States  slapped  taxes  of  10 
to  15  cents  a  pound  on  margarine  not 
containing  specific  percentages  of  home- 
grown products.  Immediately  after  Wis- 
consin (whose  license  plates  call  it 
"America's  Dairyland")  passed  its  15-cent 
tax  public  protests  were  issued  by  the 
governors  of  Alabama  and  Texas  and  the 
State  Commissioner  of  Agriculture  in 
Louisiana.  The  Mid-South  Cotton  Grow- 
ers Association  declared:  "We  are  Wiscon- 
sin's best  customer  for  butter,  cheese, 
condensed  milk,  farm  implements,  farm 
light  plants,  plumbing  supplies,  and  road- 
building  machinery.  Without  our  patron- 
age she  would  indeed  be  in  a  sad  plight. 
She  has  invited  such  a  calamity  upon 
herself.  She  has  chosen  to  wall  herself  in. 
Let  her  see  how  she  likes  it. 

"The  Wisconsin  Manufacturers  Associ- 
ation has  announced  that  millions  of  dollars 
of  contracts  for  Wisconsin  .  .  .  products 
have  already  been  canceled  by  business 
men  in  sympathy  with  Southern  producers 
of  fats  and  oils." 

The  Mississippi  Wholesale  Grocers  As- 
sociation announced  plans  for  reprisals  in 
that  State;  the  Tennessee  Federation  of 
Labor  added  its  voice;  and  the  Arkansas 
General  Assembly  protested  against  taxa- 
tion of  wholesome  food  products  on  the 
grounds  that  it  was  a  form  of  interstate 
tariff. 

The  extent  of  the  damage  done  Wiscon- 
sin by  retaliation  is  not  clear,  though  sev- 
eral business  leaders  put  it  at  high  figures; 
but  resentment  persisted  in  the  South. 
When  Wisconsin  announced  plans  for  an 
official  goodwill  tour  of  the  Cotton  Belt 
(which  did  not  materialize).  Southern  ed- 
itors renewed  their  taunts.  One  advised 
his  readers:  "Treat  them  with  courtesy  of 
course  but  the  goodwill  tourists  may  also 


be  reminded  that  goodwill  is  a  game  thai 
two  can  play.  Why  come  down  to  the 
South  and  expect  to  encourage  our 
friendly  relations  when  they  have  already 
placed  a  tax  on  some  Georgia  products 
which  will  make  their  use  in  Wisconsin 
prohibitive?" 

This  phase  of  the  margarine  tangle  ex- 
poses more  than  the  cost  to  consumers  of 
trade  barriers  and  counter-barriers;  it  il- 
lustrates a  blind  spot  in  our  whole  system 
of  government,  for  margarine  is  a  food 
product  wandering  around  looking  for  a 
tribunal  at  which  to  present  its  case. 
There  is  no  tribunal  apparently. 

If  margarine  were  a  person,  instead  of  a 
commodity,  leagues  and  committees  for 
its  defense  would  undoubtedly  have  mush- 
roomed all  over  the  country.  The  Amer- 
ican Civil  Liberties  Union  would  have  de- 
manded a  trial  for  the  accused  before  a 
jury  of  consumers  in,  say,  Arizona,  the 
only  State  which  has  not  shown  prejudice. 
Since  its  case  cannot  be  treated  like  a  civil- 
rights  case,  what  can  be  done?  Marga- 
rine's predicament  is  not  so  much  a  con- 
demnation of  pressure  tactics  as  of  the 
system  under  which  years  of  discrimina- 
tion have  been  able  to  go  unchallenged. 

Neither  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  his  agencies,  the  Supreme  Court, 
Congress,  nor  the  State  legislatures,  acting 
separately,  could  knock  down  the  last 
barrier.  To  get  that  job  done  the  manu- 
facturers of  margarine  must  educate  about 
one  hundred  and  thirty  million  people, 
not  to  its  merits,  but  only  to  letting  it  stand 
or  fall  on  its  merits. 

But  even  educational  facilities  and  en- 
dowed research  do  not  have  their  doors 
open  to  full,  practical  discussion  of  the 
subject.  There  seems  to  be  no  way  in 
which  the  national  interest  can  be  mobi- 
lized to  deal  with  a  problem  like  that 
presented  by  margarine — either  favorably 
or  unfavorably.  Ironically,  only  through 
the  rise  of  another  and  counter-pressure 
group  is  margarine  getting  a  brief  day  in 
court.  Thus  our  diet  is  being  selected  for 
us  by  pressure  groups.  Senator  Soybean 
and  Senator  Cotton  will  debate  Repre- 
sentative Butterfat  and  decide  what  shall 
be  spread  on  our  bread. 


PUGLIC  LIBRARY 


WHAT   ABOUT   MODERN   ART   AND 

DEMOCRACY? 

With  Special  Reference  to  George  Biddle^s  Proposals 
STUART    DAVIS 


x\  GREAT  increase  in  the  production  and 
/\\  distribution  of  art  has  taken  place 
-iTjV  in  the  United  States  during  the 
past  ten  years.  PoHtical,  economic,  and 
technological  events  have  resulted  in  the 
establishment  of  a  number  of  agencies 
which  sponsor  and  disseminate  art  in  vari- 
ous ways  and  for  various  reasons.  An 
ever-widening  public  awareness  of  and 
participation  in  art  have  been  the  logical 
result  of  this  process,  which  many  have 
characterized  as  the  beginning  of  a  great 
American  renaissance  in  art.  However 
retarded  by  the  war,  it  is  certain  to  be 
accelerated  with  the  coming  of  peace.  A 
vast  machinery  for  popularization  of  art 
is  now  available,  and  we  face  the  question: 
who  controls  it  and  to  what  ends? 

As  we  must  define  our  political  and 
social  objectives  as  we  prosecute  the  war 
against  fascist  reaction,  so  it  is  appropriate 
to  discuss  our  cultural  direction  in  relation 
to  them.  George  Biddle  has  already  cov- 
ered this  subject  in  Harper'' s.  In  two  arti- 
cles entitled  "The  Victory  and  Defeat  of 
Modernism"  and  "The  Government  and 
the  Arts"  he  has  discussed  the  subject  in 
its  aesthetic,  social,  and  economic  aspects. 
Knowing  that  a  great  many  artists  and 
other  interested  persons  have  reached  con- 
clusions  different   from    Mr.   Biddle's,   I 


believe  that  some  of  these  should  be  formu- 
lated to  round  out  the  discussion. 

In  particular,  his  conclusion  that  the 
Modern  movement  has  run  its  course  in- 
volves arguments  that  go  far  beyond  any 
mere  quibble  about  styles  in  painting. 
Taken  as  a  premise,  it  colors  his  attitude 
toward  all  the  other  aspects  of  the  matter, 
involving  the  whole  question  of  the  artist's 
role  in  society.  In  brief,  his  thesis  is  that 
Modernism  in  art  eventuates  in  Ivory 
Towerism,  an  escape  from  life,  incapable 
of  meeting  the  challenge  of  contemporary 
reality;  that  "the  most  momentous  event 
in  the  world  of  art  since  the  Italian  renais- 
sance" is  now  under  way;  that  we  have 
developed  agencies  and  media  for  mass  art 
distribution  which  make  an  "art  for  the 
masses"  possible  and  necessary,  and  that 
this  art  must  speak  a  common  language; 
that  in  totalitarian  countries  this  appara- 
tus will  be  used  to  convert  the  "masses  to 
sadism  and  fear";  but  that  in  a  democracy 
the  artist  "has  the  uncensored  privilege  of 
expressing  a  social  faith." 

These  are  very  definite  conclusions^  It 
is  chiefly  on  four  points  that  I  differ  with 
Mr.  Biddle.  These  are  (1)  his  estimate  of 
Modern  Art;  (2)  his  claim  as  to  a  con- 
temporary renaissance  in  American  art; 
(3)  his  argument  that  art  must  speak  a 


WHAT  ABOUT  MODERN  ART  AND  lJ)EMOCRACY? 


17 


common  language;  and  (4)  his  confidence 
on  the  question  of  censorship. 

In  the  first  place,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
term  'Tvory  Tower"  is  inappropriately 
applied  to  an  art  movement  that  has  had 
repercussions  in  all  parts  of  the  civilized 
world  on  aesthetic  perception  and  indus- 
trial design.  In  the  second  place,  anyone 
who  predicts  a  renaissance  because  the 
apparatus  for  broad  art  activity  is  now 
available  should  be  reminded  that  power 
can  be  used  to  subvert  as  well  as  to  imple- 
ment human  welfare.  In  the  third  place, 
anyone  who  discusses  the  question  of  '*an 
art  for  the  masses"  which  must  speak  "a 
common  language"  should  bear  in  mind 
the  fact  that  Modern  Art  does  speak  a 
common  language  to  thousands  who  have 
had  the  opportunity  and  the  will  to  cul- 
tivate it.  It  will  become  part  of  the  com- 
mon art  language  of  the  masses  as  oppor- 
tunity for  participation  in  authentic  art 
experience  is  made  available  to  them. 
But  that  language  cannot  be  formulated  in 
terms  of  their  relative  illiteracy  in  art  and 
the  prejudices  resulting  from  it.  Oppor- 
tunity will  bring  new  terms  to  clarify  and 
extend  the  scope  of  their  present  under- 
standing. Increased  understanding  must 
certainly  involve  ultimate  knowledge  of 
the  most  advanced  forms  of  contemporary 
Modernism  as  well  as  the  art  forms  of  past 
epochs.  To  assume  incapacity  on  the 
part  of  the  masses  for  the  fullest  cultural 
growth  is  incompatible  with  belief  in  the 
democratic  principle.  Finally,  Mr.  Bid- 
die's  belief  that  the  artist  in  a  democracy  is 
free  from  censorship  or  coercion  requires 
certain  reservations  if  it  is  to  check  with 
the  facts. 

Between  the  artist  and  the  public  there 
are  the  agencies  of  sponsorship  and  distri- 
bution, in  whose  policies  the  artist  has 
little  or  no  voice.  These  policies,  which 
both  reflect  and  create  public  opinion, 
react  directly  on  the  economic  status  of  the 
artist  and  on  his  aesthetic  orientation. 
Mr.  Biddle  perceives  that  in  totalitarian 
countries  the  artist  is  coerced  into  "con- 
verting the  masses  to  sadism  and  fear,"  but 
apparently  he  does  not  see  the  possibility 
of  coercion  here.  While  examples  of  out- 
right suppression  or  destruction  of  art  in 
the  United  States  are  infrequent,  there 
have  been  a  number  of  them.     The  most 


spectacular  was  the  complete  destruction 
of  Rivera's  mural  in  Rockefeller  Center 
by  the  management  in  1933.  In  this  in- 
stance Mr.  Rivera,  whose  work  Mr.  Biddle 
admires  and  who  definitely  had  a  "social 
faith,"  discovered  that  a  very  active  cen- 
sorship could  operate  in  a  democracy. 
(The  adjacent  murals  by  Sert,  expressing 
the  social  faith  in  international  Acade- 
mism, were  not  destroyed.)  But  overt  sup- 
pression is  only  the  cruder  form  of  censor- 
ship; the  preferred  instruments  of  coercion 
are  propaganda  and  economic  attrition. 
I  share  Mr.  Biddle's  hope  that  a  great  ren- 
aissance in  art  is  at  hand,  but  am  less  ready 
than  he  to  change  it  into  a  prediction. 


II 

To  DISCUSS  the  matter  further  we  must 
first  of  all  try  to  define  what  kind  of 
art  we  are  talking  about.  The  field  of  art 
is  broad  and  includes  many  valuable  ac- 
tivities other  than  the  painting  of  easel 
and  mural  pictures,  or  the  creation  of 
sculpture.  But  our  interest  in  folk  arts 
and  crafts,  commercial  art,  political  and 
literary  illustration,  applied  design,  etc. 
does  not  preclude  us  from  wishing  to  create 
works  which  have  no  such  immediate 
utilitarian  function,  works  which  proceed 
from  and  satisfy  spiritual  needs.  It  is 
this  order  of  work  which  is  commonly 
meant  by  the  word  "art."  To-day  the 
word  connotes  a  certain  level  of  emotional 
and  intellectual  values  which  have  been 
sought  and  realized  by  men  at  different 
times  and  in  different  historical  environ- 
ments. Art  is  not  a  mere  reflection  of 
reality,  but  rather  a  revelation  of  subjec- 
tive values  as  integral  with  all  its  aspects. 
It  is  expressed  through  a  dimensional 
structure — art  form — which  is  always  dif- 
ferent from  the  natural  forms  that  inspired 
it.  Art  is  not  in  the  subject  matter  but  in 
the  artist,  and  communicates  his  personal 
realization  directly  through  its  form.  Art 
is  not  the  recording  of  the  impact  of  natu- 
ral forms  on  the  retina;  it  is  the  synthesis 
of  all  the  perceptive  faculties  in  emotional 
equilibrium,  objectified  in  a  language  of 
form.  Emotional  response  to  nature  does 
not  create  art  except  when  it  is  integrated 
with  an  interest  in  imaginative  construc- 
tion for  its  own  sake.     The  act  of  painting 


18 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


is  not  a  duplication  of  experience,  but  the 
extension  of  experience  on  the  plane  of 
formal  invention. 

Such  an  activity  takes^time  and  space 
for  its  realization,  and  is  not  an  automatic 
by-product  of  other  activities.  He  is  an 
artist  who  not  only  is  inspired  by  reality 
but  extends  its  scope  by  creating  a  new 
reality  shaped  by  his  imagination.  We 
perceive  this  personal  spiritual  realization 
in  art  works  of  the  past  and  cherish  them 
for  that  reason  without  regard  to  the  limi- 
tations of  their  subject  matter.  Modern 
art  brings  to  its  subject  matter  the  new 
spatial  concepts  of  our  epoch  that  are 
being  realized  in  all  the  forms  of  acceler- 
ated communication.  There  is  no  innate 
barrier  between  public  understanding  of 
modern  social  and  technological  concepts 
and  their  spiritual  equation  in  the  ad- 
vanced forms  of  Modern  Art.  It  is  on  the 
basis  of  the  considerations  noted  above 
that  questions  of  art  must  be  discussed  to- 
day if  we  wish  our  art  facilities  to  be  used 
creatively. 

Although  the  "formalist"  concept  of  art 
and  the  concept  of  "an  art  of  ideas"  are  at 
opposite  poles,  it  is  obvious  that  whatever 
the  "ideas"  may  be  they  must  be  visualized 
in  terms  of  "form"  to  exist  as  art.  It  is 
also  clear  that  verisimilitude  to  natural 
form  and  appearance  does  not  make  a 
work  of  art.  A  flesh-colored  cast  of  the 
human  head  is  not  art,  although  it  may 
express  a  number  of  physiological  and 
psychological  ideas.  Norman  Rockwell 
has  all  his  facts  straight  but  his  work  re- 
mains in  the  category  of  illustration.  It 
is  agreed  by  both  theories  that  art  must 
have  form;  even  those  people  who  cur- 
rently demand  an  art  of  cogent  political 
and  social  directives  agree  to  this.  But  if 
it  is  the  story  that  makes  art  vital,  why 
bother  about  the  form  of  its  telling? 
Mr.  Rockwell's  illustrations  certainly  have 
their  own  kind  of  form,  even  though  it  is 
not  art  form.  Even  if  he  changed  his  sub- 
ject-matter from  middle-class  anecdotes 
to  cogent  ideas,  would  his  work  become 
vital  art?  In  such  a  case  it  would  express 
vital  ideas  through  form.  But  we  know 
very  well  that  it  would  remain  illustration, 
because  his  style  shows  more  concern  with 
imitation  than  invention  of  form  and  thus 
is  barren  of  the  creative  formal  realization 


which  characterizes  art.  It  should  be 
clear  from  this  that  the  quality  of  art  does 
not  depend  on  subject  matter  or  story. 
And  there  is  no  existing  principle  of  design 
which  merely  awaits  an  overlay  of  impor- 
tant ideas  to  materialize  into  art.  Art 
design,  art  form,  is  precisely  the  "impor- 
tant idea"  which  we  get  from  a  work  of 
art,  and  the  real  importance  of  a  work  of 
art  stands  in  no  direct  ratio  to  the  impor- 
tance of  its  subject  matter  or  ideological 
references. 

But  painting,  we  are  still  told,  must  in 
its  very  nature  tell  a  story,  and  where  it 
becomes  "abstract"  it  is  said  to  be  "craft" 
art.  Mr.  Biddle  supports  this  view,  and 
says  that  the  philosophy  of  abstract  art 
asserts  that  "meaning  in  a  work  of  art 
detracts  from  its  beauty."  I  have  spoken 
with  a  great  many  abstract  artists  but  have 
never  heard  them  put  it  that  way.  On  the 
contrary  I  have  received  the  impression 
that  they  eagerly  sought  "meaning,"  even 
though  they  refused  to  limit  "meaning" 
to  a  literary  connotation.  The  fact  that 
ponderous  Wagnerian  operas  exist  does 
not  somehow  deprive  Bach's  "Art  of  the 
Fugue"  of  meaning.  Nor  do  Rivera's 
more  identifiable  images  preclude  mean- 
ing in  the  more  creative  forms  of  Picasso's 
"Guernica." 

But  while  Mr.  Biddle  argues  that  the 
philosophy  of  Modern  Art  is  unsuited  to 
American  needs,  and  is  dead  of  its  own 
sterility,  he  doesn't  leave  the  matter  there. 
He  finds  that  it  still  lives  on  as  "a  school  of 
design"  in  the  works  of  "our  best  artists." 
There  is  a  seeming,  and  possibly  actual, 
contradiction  here.  It  involves  the  rather 
difficult  maneuver  of  separating  design 
from  subject  matter,  form  from  content. 
It  suggests  that  the  skeleton  of  Modern  Art 
is  still  alive  even  though  the  body  is  dead. 
It  implies  that  the  emotional  content  of 
art  lies  in  the  recognition  of  natural  ob- 
jects which  tell  a  cogent  story,  but  that 
underneath  or  behind  this  story  lies  an 
inert  structural  device  called  "design." 
This  must  be  what  Mr.  Biddle  means,  be- 
cause he  finds  the  design  of  those  modern 
pictures,  which  he  says  are  lacking  in 
meaning  or  content,  as  an  active  principle 
in  the  work  of  "our  best  artists."  This 
can  only  mean  that  something  new  in  the 
way  of  subject  matter  has  been  added  to 


WHAT    ABOUT    MODERN    ART    AND    DExMOCRAGY? 


19 


give  American  work  that  art  content 
which  is  lacking  in  the  work  of  modern 
artists  in  Europe.  It  suggests  that  it  is 
only  European  Modern  Art  that  is  dead, 
and  only  American  artists  who  are  modern . 
I  cannot  accept  this  view  for  two  rea- 
sons. First,  because  my  concept  of  "de- 
sign," as  integral  with  content,  makes  it 
impossible  to  borrow  the  "design"  of  a 
work  which  you  pronounce  empty  of  con- 
tent and  get  something  which  will  not  in 
its  turn  be  empty  of  content;  and  second, 
because  you  cannot  borrow  the  "design" 
of  a  work  of  Modern  European  Art  with- 
out contracting  its  philosophy  as  well.  I 
know  of  course  that  certain  mechanical 
structural  principles  of  design,  innate  in 
the  nature  of  the  materials,  are  common 
to  all  graphic  expression.  These  are  nec- 
essarily transferable.  But  Mr.  Biddle's 
use  of  the  word  refers  to  an  emotional 
design,  even  though  his  argument  seems  to 
contradict  the  idea  by  placing  emotion  in 
the  subject  matter.  His  argument,  al- 
though I  am  sure  not  by  intention,  would 
in  effect  allow  the  enemies  of  Modern  Art 
to  clothe  their  nakedness  with  its  prestige. 


Ill 

MR.  Riddle's  implication  that  only 
European  Modernism  is  defunct 
has  suggestive  connotations.  I  am  re- 
minded that  there  are  currently  living  and 
working  in  the  United  States  a  great  many 
exponents  of  this  same-  "defunct"  Mod- 
ernism. In  addition  to  the  Americans 
there  are  a  number  of  Europeans  who  are 
direct  products  of  that  philosophy  which 
Mr.  Biddle's  analysis  finds  frustrated  in  the 
face  of  contemporary  reality.  Are  these 
artists  to  be  regarded  as  essentially  un- 
American,  and  remote  from  the  possibility 
of  inclusion  in  the  category  of  "our  best 
artists"?  The  logic  of  Mr.  Biddle's  argu- 
ment suggests  that  possibility,  in  which 
case  I  should  find  it  hard  to  distinguish  his 
view  from  isolationist  views  in  general.  If 
the  different  approaches  to  the  art  problem 
evidenced  in  the  work  of  artists  such  as 
Milton  Avery,  Paul  Burlin,  Byron  Browne, 
Balcome  Greene,  Carl  Holty,  Jacob  Laur- 
ence, Jan  Matulka,  George  L.  K.  Morris, 
Walter  Quirt,  Abe  Rattner,  Niles  Spencer, 
Joseph  Stella,  and  other  American  mod- 


ernists— not  to  mention  such  European 
artists  now  in  the  United  States  as  Jean 
Hdlion,  Fernand  L6ger,  Andr6  Masson, 
Pict  Mondrian,  and  Hans  Richtcr — can 
play  no  part  in  our  renaissance,  except  in 
its  application  to  "craft  design,"  we  might 
do  well  to  make  the  decision  now.  It 
would  eliminate  any  confusion  as  to  their 
proper  status  in  the  activities  of  Mr.  Biddle's 
proposed  national  Bureau  of  Fine  Arts  in 
case  it  is  set  up.  It  would  prevent  artists, 
innately  craft-designers  but  holding  delu- 
sions of  grandeur,  from  wasting  the  time 
of  the  Bureau's  functionaries  with  mis- 
guided demands. 

Democracy  in  culture  is  dependent  on 
the  free  exchange  of  ideas,  which  isolation- 
ism seeks  to  frustrate  by  constantly  work- 
ing to  perpetuate  local  racial,  national, 
and  cultural  prejudices.  In  America 
there  is  a  tendency  to  look  with  suspicion 
on  "abstract"  ideas  or  creative  innova- 
tions when  they  occur  outside  the  field  of 
technology  or  commerce.  Although  we 
live  in  an  industrial  society  built  on  ab- 
stract ideas,  "professors"  in  politics  and 
"abstractionists"  in  art  are  generally  held 
to  be  crackpots.  We  do  not  call  the  radio 
an  "abstraction,"  and  we  do  not  put  bird 
feathers  on  the  wings  of  our  airplanes  or 
artificial  dentures  in  the  radio  loudspeaker. 
We  regard  synthetic  quinine  and  sulfa 
drugs  as  very  real  and  desirable  despite 
their  foreign  origin  and  "unnaturalness." 
But  where  art  is  concerned  the  Currier 
and  Ives  model  is  held  to  be  adequate. 
In  science  the  word  "abstract"  is  identi- 
fied with  progress;  in  social  philosophy 
and  art,  with  the  Ivory  Tower. 

This  fallacy  could  be  cleared  up  in  a 
week  by  the  advertising  agencies  of  big 
business,  granted  an  extremely  hypotheti- 
cal motive.  Instead,  business  puts  its 
weight  behind  glorifying  an  art,  suppos- 
edly founded  on  sound  American  tradi- 
tions, which  exploits  the  American  Scene 
in  terms  of  traditional  and  provincial 
ideology.  This  cultivated  cultural  back- 
wardness of  the  public  is  reflected  directly 
in  any  large  cross-section  of  contemporary 
American  art,  and  deprives  its  forms  of 
any  real  contemporary  quality.  The  fa- 
miliar, the  literal,  or  the  "folksy"  is  reiter- 
ated to  the  exclusion  of  new  vision  and  new 
synthesis.     The    public    hears    much    of 


20 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


creative  business  executives  of  vision,  but 
it  seems  to  want  its  artists'  vision  in  tra- 
ditionzJ  form.  Creative  bathrooms  and 
kitchens  are  eagerly  desired,  and  we  are 
told  that  it  will  soon  be  possible  to  bring 
home  the  dehydrated  soup  from  the  A  &  P 
in  a  helicopter;  but  in  cultural  matters, 
nostalgia  for  the  old  frontiers  tends  to 
dim  out  the  new  frontiers  already  in  view. 
Any  desire  to  realize  the  real  spiritual 
values  of  contemporary  industrial  society 
is  frustrated  because  we  look  for  them  in 
the  wrong  direction. 

But  this  cultural  situation,  while  his- 
torically determined  in  one  sense,  has  been 
created,  cultivated,  and  exploited  as  a 
matter  of  policy  in  a  more  important  sense. 
In  much  the  same  way  that  Mr.  Biddle 
extracts  the  skeletal  design  of  Modern  Art 
to  clothe  it  with  ideological  meaning,  so 
the  authors  of  these  policies  find  a  way  to 
separate  form  from  content.  They  also 
want  not  only  "ideas"  but  "art  form"  as 
well.  So  they  sponsor  artists  with  gallery 
and  museum  reputation — that  supplies  the 
"art  design."  This  design  is  then  clothed 
with  a  "meaning"  of  commercial  import, 
or,  for  other  purposes,  with  middle-class 
psychological  palliatives.  As  examples, 
take  the  series  of  "genuine  oil  paintings" 
in  the  Lucky  Strike  advertisements,  or 
the  International  Business  Machines  art 
collection  and  exhibitions.  In  the  last 
analysis,  much  of  the  activity  in  Mr.  Bid- 
die's  predicted  renaissance  will  be  financed 
by  big  business.  Through  cultural  en- 
dowments, direct  commercial  investment, 
and  advertising  subsidy  of  publications, 
the  interests  of  business  are  already  re- 
flected in  the  field  of  art.  In  these  and 
other  ways  are  established  numerous  agen- 
cies for  the  dissemination  of  art  which  are 
directly  or  remotely  affected  by  the  politi- 
cal, social,  and  financial  interests  of  busi- 
ness enterprise.  From  the  evidence  at 
hand  one  must  judge  that  the  general 
character  of  this  influence  is  notable  for 
uncreative  literalism  on  one  hand  and 
nostalgia  for  past  formulations  of  spiritual 
values  on  the  other.  The  latter  consti- 
tutes the  American  business  man's  sur- 
realism. 

Art  has  a  good  reputation  even  among 
those  who  cannot  discriminate  in  it,  and 
the  draping  of  large  enterprise  in  robes  of 


art  creates  a  good  impression.  .  But  if  in 
creating  the  good  impression  "dangerous 
thoughts"  were  generated  in  the  public,  a 
wrong  impression  would  have  been  cre- 
ated. Business  approves  of  art,  yes,  but  an 
art  of  the  status  quo  to  soothe  the  public 
mind  and  keep  it  on  the  beam.  An  art  of 
the  glorified  familiar  and  spiritual  nostal- 
gia in  reverse.  And  by  all  means  a  one- 
hundred-per-cent  American  art  purged  of 
the  dangerous  thoughts  of  foreign  isms,  an 
isolationist  art  singing  the  American  Way 
of  Life. 

But  outside  of  its  cultural  interests  busi- 
ness is  not  always  isolationist;  in  many 
cases  it  is  very  cosmopolitan  and  cultivates 
an  international  language  when  seeking 
commercial  purposes.  But  it  fears  that  a 
public  fed  too  rich  a  diet  of  creative  art 
might  develop  creative  ideas  of  its  own, 
and  might  find  that  "creative"  business 
has  failed  to  create  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds.  Modern  Art  is  not  useful  to  this 
program  because  it  contains  the  "danger- 
ous" thought  that  isolationist  culture  is 
historically  outdated. 

I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that  there  is  a 
totalitarian  conspiracy  by  big  business  to 
control  and  subvert  American  art.  But 
that  there  is  among  business-minded  peo- 
ple an  increasing  concern  about  matters 
cultural  there  can  be  no  doubt,  however 
unformulated  it  may  be  and  however 
variously  idealistic,  naive,  opportunistic, 
or  conscious.  Any  cross-section  of  Amer- 
ican art  to-day  reflects  it  in  impoverish- 
ment of  spirit.  Recent  acts  of  Congress 
reflect  it  in  the  expulsion  of  "professors" 
from  government  posts  as  suspected  of 
"dangerous  un-American  thoughts,"  and 
their  replacement  by  business  and  adver- 
tising men.  It  is  reflected  in  the  fact  that 
the  advertising  agencies  of  big  business 
now  determine  the  character  of  our  war 
posters  and  the  cultural  standards  of  the 
National  Association  of  Manufacturers 
hold  sway.  Congress  took  away  the  funds 
from  the  Graphics  Division  of  the  Do- 
mestic Branch  of  the  OWI,  which  had 
idealistically  hoped  to  produce  posters 
with  some  artistic  merit  as  part  of  their  ef- 
fectiveness. Similarly,  Mr.  Biddle's  own 
sponsor  in  painting  war-front  pictures,  the 
War  Department  Art  Advisory  Commit- 
tee, has  been  shot  out  from  under  him  by 


WHAT    ABOUT    MODERN    ART    AND    DEMOCRACY? 


21 


Congress.  The  magazine  Life  now  pays 
his  expenses.  I  assume  that  Peyton  Bos- 
well,  Jr.,  expresses  the  general  attitude  of 
Life  toward  art  in  his  book,  American  Art 
Today.  Its  illustrations  consist  of  a  col- 
lection of  Life'^s  art  color  plates,  with  elu- 
cidating text  by  Mr.  Boswell.  He  says, 
"Because  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  heritage 
American  art  is  a  literal  three-dimensional 
art.  There  is  little  room  in  its  pattern  for 
such  aesthetic  detours  as  cubism  or  non- 
objective  painting."  From  this  I  gather 
that  artists  with  other  racial  origins  or 
those  tainted  with  foreign  isms  have  to  get 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  groove  if  they  want 
to  be  American. 

IV 

MR.  BiDDLE  does  not  seem  to  fear  that 
the  flowering  of  our  renaissance  in 
art  might  be  obstructed  by  censorship  or 
diverted  by  other  pressures.  His  freedom 
from  fear  is  apparently  based  on  his  faith 
in  the  inexorable  workings  of  a  certain  cul- 
tural law.  After  noting  that  "frequent 
surveys  made  by  the  hard-headed  editors 
of  various  magazines  .  .  .  establish  the 
amazing  fact  that  the  people  prefer  the 
best,"  he  formulates  this  law.  It  states 
that  "when  good  art  and  less  good  art  are 
indiscriminately  offered  in  large  quantities 
to  a  large  audience  there  is  an  ever-increas- 
ing demand  for  the  best."  He  sees  this 
law  quietly  delivering  the  goods  through 
the  apparently  "indiscriminate"  activity 
of  such  agencies  as  Life;  Esquire,  Fortune, 
International  Business  Machines,  N.  W. 
Ayer  &  Son,  Associated  American  Artists, 
the  now  defunct  government  Art  Projects, 
and  others. 

I  am  willing  to  grant  Mr.  Biddle  his  law, 
with  the  reservation  that  other  counter-laws 
may,  in  certain  situations,  inhibit  its  flaw- 
less operation.  Granted  an  aesthetically 
uncoerced  public  and  a  group  of  benign 
and  "indiscriminate"  cultural  donors,  pos- 
sibly his  law  might  work  if  given  plenty  of 
time.  But  the  exploitation  of  art  through 
mass  media  does  not  now  offer  the  scien- 
tific conditions  essential  for  such  an  experi- 
ment. One  of  the  reasons  it  does  not,  in 
addition  to  those  indicated  above,  is  that 
a  number  of  people  feel  that  such  a  test  is 
unnecessary  and  have  jumped  the  gun  by 
revealing  the  secret  that  the  American 


Scene  is  "the  best"  and  that  the  search  is 
over. 

Sentiment  for  an  isolationist  culture  has 
been  rallied  round  the  slogan  of  "The 
American  Scene."  Through  institutional 
and  individual  propaganda  a  school  of 
illustrative  painting  has  been  created  and 
patronized  and  has  attained  an  almost 
official  status.  An  appropriate  slogan  for 
it  would  be,  "The  Academy  is  dead,  long 
live  the  Academy!"  In  opposition  to  the 
democratic  international  spirit  of  Modern 
Art,  this  "official  art"  fosters  regional  and 
provincial  concepts  and  flatters  public 
prejudice.  Isolationist  culture  is  reac- 
tionary and  undemocratic  in  character  in 
that  it  seeks  to  suppress  that  free  exchange 
of  ideas  which  alone  can  develop  an  au- 
thentic modern  American  art.  It  exer- 
cises a  censorship  in  our  channels  of  art 
communication  which  Mr.  Biddle  appar- 
ently does  not  detect.  It  is  not  that  the 
American  artist  is  prevented  from  painting 
any  way  he  chooses,  but  that  he  faces  a 
public  preconditioned  to  look  with  suspi- 
cion on  anything  beyond  the  literal,  the 
sentimental,  or  the  academic.  He  is  not 
coerced  into  leading  the  masses  to  "sadism 
and  fear";  he  is  coerced  into  leading  them 
to  complacency.  The  American  Scene 
philosophy  parallels  political  isolationism 
in  its  desire  to  preserve  the  status  quo  of 
the  American  Way  of  Life. 

For  many  years  past  such  men  as 
Thomas  Craven,  Peyton  Boswell,  Jr.,  edi- 
tor of  Art  Digest,  Forbes  Watson,  and 
many  others  have  been  propagating  their 
versions  of  the  American  Scene  idea. 
Through  books,  magazines,  newspapers, 
and  lectures  they  reach  a  vast  audience 
which  is  told  that  Modern  Art  is  un- 
American  and  devoid  of  content.  The 
Modern  artist  is  outlawed  and  deprived  of 
cultural  citizenship,  and  the  idea  of  de- 
mocracy in  culture  goes  down  the  drain. 
The  relations  between  art  and  politics  are 
devious,  and  often  obscure,  but  they  exist. 
The  American  Scene  ideology  has  in  it 
germs  which  the  fascist-minded  among  us 
may  find  it  profitable  to  cultivate. 

V 

WHEN  the  New  Deal  was  new,  Fed- 
eral subsidy  of  art  became  a  reality. 
The   WPA   Art   Project,   organized    and 


22 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


directed  by  Holger  Cahill,  and  the  Section 
of  Fine  Arts,  headed  by  Edward  Bruce, 
employed  between  them  many  thousands 
of  artists.  The  WPA  employed  them  on  a 
broad  basis  of  abiUties  and  skills  and  pro- 
duced much  valuable  work.  In  general, 
there  was  fair  approximation  to  demo- 
cratic procedure,  and  the  artists  gained 
considerable  voice  in  the  determination  of 
the  Art  Project's  policies,  up  to  the  point 
of  its  political  decline.  The  Section  of 
Fine  Arts,  on  the  other  hand,  was  con- 
ducted on  different  principles,  inherent  in 
its  original  purpose,  which  was  to  employ 
"the  best  artists"  to  embellish  government 
buildings.  In  both  cases  a  great  number 
of  the  artists  employed  had  already  been 
softened  up  by  American  Scene  propa- 
ganda, which  determined  the  general 
character  of  the  output.  But  under  the 
WPA  some  modern  art  was  produced,  in 
mural  and  easel  form,  without  undue  cen- 
sorship. Sincere  efforts  were  made  to 
allocate  and  give  it  social  currency.  The 
policy  of  the  Section  of  Fine  Arts,  by  con- 
trast, effectively  censored  such  work  with 
few  exceptions,  as  a  survey  of  their  several 
hundred  murals  will  show.  In  the  eyes 
of  the  Section,  Modernism  was  not  a  mat- 
ter for  concern  by  "our  best  artists,"  which 
its  competitions  were  designed  to  lure  from 
obscurity. 

However  this  may  be  denied  by  pointing 
to  "open  competitions"  and  juries  of  artist 
judges,  the  facts  as  to  the  works  chosen 
support  my  statement.  The  participation 
of  artists  in  the  policy  of  the  Section's  pro- 
gram, on  the  basis  of  its  results,  suggests 
the  possibly  unconscious  presence  of  the 
"divide  and  rule"  principle  and  the  "com- 
pany union"  idea.  Whatever  causes  lay 
behind  this  situation,  it  is  not  irrelevant  to 
note  that  the  late  Mr.  Bruce  held  both 
Modern  Art  and  the  more  democratic  ar- 
tists' organizations  of  the  period  in  low 
regard.  Another  contributing  factor  may 
have  been  the  presence  of  Forbes  Watson, 
writer  on  art  and  proponent  of  his  own 
version  of  the  American  Scene,  as  an 
active  member  of  the  staff  in  publicizing 
its  policies  and  activities.  Nor  does  it 
seem  out  of  place  to  recall,  in  view  of  his 
recent  frank  expression  of  beliefs,  that  Mr. 
Biddle  himself  was  closely  associated  with 
the  activities  of  the  Section  from  its  origin. 


The  idea  that  our  government  should  be 
concerned  with  the  cultural  welfare  of  the 
citizens  it  represents  seems  self-evident. 
And  that  efforts  to  revive  its  now-with- 
drawn support  of  art  should  be  vigorously 
pursued  is  beyond  question.  What  re- 
mains to  be  decided  is  the  form  that  such 
support  should  take  and  how  it  should  be 
organized.  Mr.  Biddle's  proposal  for  a 
national  Bureau  of  Fine  Arts  is  extremely 
valuable  in  bringing  the  whole  question 
before  the  public.  The  practical  question 
of  how  this  Bureau  is  to  be  integrated  in 
the  hierarchies  of  governmental  bureaus  is 
beyond  my  scope.  Also  its  internal  struc- 
ture and  the  scope  of  its  activities  are 
matters  requiring  much  fuller  discussion 
by  all  those  whose  interests  are  most  di- 
rectly involved.  But  Mr.  Biddle's  pro- 
posal that  the  director  of  the  national 
Bureau  of  Fine  Arts  be  chosen  by  presi- 
dential appointment  seems  to  me  highly 
debatable. 

Such  a  bureau  will  be  of  no  service  to 
our  cultural  advancement  unless  guaran- 
tees for  a  broad  policy  in  its  functions  are 
written  into  its  administrative  program. 
Such  guarantees  can  be  made  real  only  by 
direct  artist  representation  in  its  continu- 
ing policies  as  they  develop.  Such  rep- 
resentation must  somehow  be  available  to 
artists  who  have  the  confidence  of  their 
sponsoring  organizations.  Federal  guar- 
antees of  the  right  of  collective  bargaining 
for  artists'  organizations  are  as  essential  in 
a  matter  of  this  kind  as  they  are  in  other 
labor  relations.  Without  them  the  isola- 
tionist culture  of  the  American  Scene,  and 
Academism,  will  automatically  take  over 
and  subvert  the  possibility  of  cultural 
democracy. 

That  the  idea  of  a  direct  artists'  voice  in 
government  affairs  is  not  new  is  evidenced 
by  Report  No.  198  to  the  35th  Congress, 
dated  March  3,  1859 — over  eighty-four 
years  ago.  Addressed  to  the  Senate  and 
House,  this  document  began: 

"The  memorial  of  the  artists  of  the 
United  States,  in  convention  assembled, 
respectfully  represents: 

"That  your  memorialists  appear  before 
your  honorable  bodies  to  solicit  for  Ameri- 
can Art  that  consideration  and  encourage- 
ment to  which  they  conceive  it  to  be 
entitled  at  the  hands  of  the  general  govern- 


WHAT    ABOUT    MODERN    ART    AND    DEMOCRACY? 


23 


mcnt."  Their  purpose  was  the  eslabhsh- 
lucnt  of  an  Art  Commission  which  should 
function  to  "the  great  end  proposed," 
namely,  "the  advancement  of  art  in  the 
United  States."  This  Commission,  they 
went  on  to  say,  should  be  "composed  of 
those  designated  by  the  United  Voice  of 
American  artists  as  competent  to  the  of- 
fice. .  .  ."  The  report  was  signed  by  11 5 
important  artists  of  the  time,  from  many 
different  States,  headed  by  Rembrandt 
Peale  of  Philadelphia.  The  Commission 
was  duly  established  by  Congress  in  1910, 
but  the  "United  Voice"  idea  was  changed 
in  the  Act,  as  passed,  to  "the  President." 
It  was  the  President  who  had  the  power  to 
appoint  the  seven  members  and  to  fill  all 
vacancies.  The  scope  of  the  Commission 
was  limited  chiefly  to  an  advisory  function 
and  in  no  sense  fulfilled  the  intention  of  the 
memorialists'  proposal. 

Since  an  ultimate  concern  of  man  is 
man,  there  must  be  an  enormous  spiritual 
potential  in  our  epoch.  It  must  find  its 
objectification  in  political,  social,  and  cul- 
tural forms,  or  the  spiritual  equilibrium 
essential  to  civilized  progress  will  be  de- 
stroyed. In  the  field  of  art,  freedom  for 
creative  realization  must  be  established 
and  maintained.  Currently  the  narrow 
views  of  isolationism  are  inadequate  to 
create  such  freedom. 

In  contrast  to  them  I  want  to  end  by 
quoting  from  another  statement  made  by 
American  artists,  thirty  years  ago.  Al- 
though much  has  happened  in  the  interval, 
I  think  the  ideas  it  contained  are  still  a 
sound  ideological  antidote  for  the  Ameri- 
can Scene  concept. 

Organized  exclusively  by  artists,  the 
International  Exhibition  of  Modern  Art 


was  held  in  the  69th  Infantry  Armory  in 
New  York  City  in  1913,  and  subscqurnily 
in  Chicago  (where  students  of  the  Art 
Institute  burned  a  Matisse  painting  in 
cfligy),  and  later  in  Boston.  They  fornn^d 
the  Association  of  American  Painters  and 
Sculptors,  Inc.,  and  gave  their  reason  in 
the  preface  to  the  catalogue: 

"The  American  artists  exhibiting  here 
consider  the  exhibition  as  of  equal  impor- 
tance for  themselves  as  for  the  public. 
The  less  they  find  their  work  showing 
signs  of  the  developments  indicated  in  the 
Europeans,  the  more  reason  they  will  have 
to  consider  whether  or  not  painters  and 
sculptors  here  have  fallen  behind,  through 
escaping  the  incidence  through  distance, 
and  for  other  reasons,  of  the  forces  that 
have  manifested  themselves  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  Art  is  a  sign  of  life. 
And  to  be  afraid  of  life  is  to  be  afraid  of 
truth,  and  to  be  a  champion  of  super- 
stition. This  exhibition  is  an  indication 
that  the  Association  of  American  Painters 
and  Sculptors  is  against  cowardice  even 
when  it  takes  the  form  of  amiable  self- 
satisfaction." 

The  "United  Voice  of  American  artists" 
of  1859  became  a  whisper,  but  the  1913 
version  of  that  "Voice"  has  a  more  clarion 
note,  and  can  still  be  heard  through  the 
more  nasal  sounds  of  the  American  Scene. 
But  it  is  not  enough  for  the  "Voice"  to  be 
heard.  What  it  says  must  be  translated 
into  action  by  our  modern  painters,  who 
through  their  work  keep  the  channels  of 
cultural  communication  free,  and  consti- 
tute the  promise  that  "the  most  momen- 
tous event  in  the  world  of  art  since  the 
Italian  Renaissance"  may  yet  realize  its 
potentialities. 


POSTWAR   MIGRATION:   A   MIRAGE 


C.    HARTLEY    GRATTAN 


nPTER  the  war  there  is  going  to  be  a 
AjV  vast  migration  of  people.  This 
X  JjL  migration  is  going  to  help  solve 
the  world's  problems.  Most  of  the  people 
will  come  out  of  Europe.  They  will 
include  not  only  Jews  and  other  victims  of 
racial  and  political  persecution.  There 
will  be  millions  of  others  who  cannot  find 
jobs,  who  see  no  hope  for  advancement 
and  who,  therefore,  will  seek  to  better 
their  lot  in  the  less  settled  portions  of  the 
globe.  There  they  will  not  only  help 
themselves  economically;  in  freer  air  and 
in  the  open  spaces  they  may  find  more 
desirable  political  and  cultural  conditions. 

Who  says  that  this  migration  will  occur? 
Herbert  Hoover,  for  one.  Henry  Wallace 
also  thinks  so.  So  do  numerous  other 
eminent  orators  and  organizations.  Es- 
timates of  the  numbers  who  will  be  forced 
— or  choose — to  move  out  after  the 
battles  are  over  run  up  to  20,000,000. 
That  is  forty  per  cent  of  the  total  migration 
from  Europe  during  the  1 9th  century.  Of 
such  a  number  only  a  minority  can  be 
Jews,  for  there  were  but  6,250,000  Jews  in 
the  whole  of  Europe  in  1938 — outside  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  U.S.S.R. — and, 
of  the  survivors,  not  all  will  want  to  go 
elsewhere.  "It  is  possible,"  says  Mr.  Wal- 
lace, "that  in  the  tropics  of  Latin  America, 
in  the  highlands  of  Africa,  and  in  Siberia 
there  will  be  a  population  growth  similar 
to  that  experienced  in  the  United  States 
during  the  19th  century." 


Such  prospects  cause  the  hearts  of  men 
of  good  will  to  swell  with  hope.  Of  course 
these  migrants  can't  do  the  job  all  by 
themselves.  It  will  take  a  great  deal  of 
money,  but  the  trick  can  be  done  by  over- 
sight and  the  case-work  method  and  by 
preparing  the  migrants,  through  voca- 
tional training,  for  the  demands  which  the 
new  frontiers  will  make  upon  them.  They 
will  have  to  be  assisted,  perhaps  by  one  of 
those  huge  international  bureaucracies 
charged  with  managing  the  new  world  in 
which,  as  Mr.  Wallace  has  lately  said,  no 
man's  hand  will  be  raised  against  any 
other  man,  and  the  lion  and  the  lamb  will 
lie  down  together  in  a  quietist  universe. 
Are  there  any  grounds  for  believing  that 
this  beautiful  dream  can  be  made  to  come 
true — or  is  the  dream  just  a  pipe  dream? 

The  idea  that  there  is  some  magic  in 
going  to  the  frontier  to  make  a  new  start 
in  life  is  an  integral  part  of  the  American 
mythology.  A  parallel  idea  is  found  among 
the  people  of  the  United  Kingdom,  who 
phrase  it  as  going  to  the  "colonies,"  and 
also  among  other  peoples  with  a  tradition 
of  emigration.  The  notion  is  that  if  life 
is  hard  at  the  center,  flight  to  the  pe- 
riphery is  the  way  out.  The  countries 
which  have,  or  have  had,  frontiers  have 
always  entertained  the  notion  that  their 
frontier  moved  forward  by  virtue  of  na- 
tional enterprise.  Actually,  the  forward 
movement  has  been  associated  with  ad- 


POS'i'VVAR     MIGRAlIOxN:    A    xVliRA(;i 


25 


vancing  international  economic  forces, 
and  the  presence  of  exploitable  natural 
resources  directly  related  to  international 
demands  in  the  market.  The  American 
frontier,  the  most  romantic  in  human 
history,  has  become  almost  a  symbol  of 
national  enterprise;  but  an  intelligent 
reading  of  its  history  makes  it  clear  that  it 
would  not  have  advanced  successfully  had 
not  markets  existed  for  the  goods  produced 
by  the  pioneers.  The  repeal  of  the  Corn 
Laws  in  England,  which  opened  up  a 
huge  market  for  foodstuffs  at  a  strategic 
moment,  had  equally  as  much  to  do  with 
the  winning  of  the  West  for  economic 
enterprise  as  the  Homestead  Act  signed 
by  President  Lincoln.  And  so  it  is  with 
all  the  frontiers  of  the  world,  where  the 
commercial  success  of  the  pioneers  was 
the  sine  qua  non  of  their  adventure.  Aus- 
tralia burst  the  bounds  of  original  sea- 
board settlement  only  because  a  market 
for  fine  wool  existed  in  England  and  it  had 
been  demonstrated  that  such  fine  wool 
could  be  cheaply  and  successfully  pro- 
duced under  Australian  conditions.  The 
agricultural  frontier  of  Australia  moved 
forward  later  when  varieties  of  wheat 
suited  to  the  climatic  conditions  were 
developed,  and  the  international  wheat 
market  encouraged  production;  and  but- 
ter and  meat  production  became  feasible 
on  a  large  scale  when  refrigeration  of 
seagoing  ships  became  a  practical  reality 
and  the  English  market  was  there  to 
absorb  the  produce.  The  South-African 
frontier  boomed  on  the  basis  of  gold — a 
commodity  which,  in  those  days,  was 
unquestionably  precious,  and  commanded 
an  immediate  market.  New  Zealand 
found  its  place  in  the  world's  economy 
only  when  refrigeration  opened  the  way  to 
the  successful  exploitation  of  its  excellent 
pasture  lands,  and  the  British  Isles  still 
wanted  more  and  more  butter  and  meat. 
The  Canadians  got  out  on  the  prairies 
only  because  the  market  for  wheat  was 
still  expanding,  justifying  the  plowing  up 
of  new  land.  Always  and  everywhere 
national  enterprise  was  accompanied  by 
favorable  international  developments,  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  markets,  and  the  two 
were  tied  together  by  strategically  im- 
portant technological  innovations.  De- 
mand was  outrunning  the  productive  pos- 


sibilities of  existing  units  of  production 
and  a  horizontal  extension  of  produclicjn 
over  the  earth's  surface  found  quick  cc:o- 
noniic  justification.  The  myth  of  the 
frontier  as  a  place  where  enterprise  found 
its  own  reward  in  a  kind  of  economic 
vacuum  does  not  stand  up  even  to  elemen- 
tary analysis.  If  a  moving  frontier  brings 
prosperity  to  a  nation  and  allows  its  people 
to  demonstrate  their  enterprising  charac- 
ter, the  dynamic  factor  in  the  situation  is 
always  commercial  outlets  for  the  goods 
produced.  Markets  are  as  inescapable 
accompaniments  of  successful  pioneering 
as  are  natural  resources. 

All  too  often  the  worth  of  frontier  areas 
is  assessed  in  purely  technological  terms. 
It  is  asserted  that  such  and  such  an  area 
will  grow  this  crop  or  that.  No  one  will 
deny  that  the  technical  possibilities  of 
production  in  many  such  areas  are  ex- 
cellent. But  to  argue  from  that  cir- 
cumstance to  the  conclusion  that  people 
should  immediately  be  sent  to  carry  on  the 
production  is  a  peculiar  kind  of  folly. 
Even  areas  technologically  acceptable 
should  not  be  settled  if  markets  for  the 
produce  are  not  clearly  in  sight.  The  Aus- 
tralians, who  have  immense  experience  in 
this  field,  though  some  of  their  public  men 
seem  impervious  to  the  lessons  of  that  ex- 
perience, have  long  seen  the  point  being 
made  here.  In  a  report  published  shortly 
after  the  First  World  War,  when  immi- 
gration was  being  hotly  debated,  it  is 
stated: 

Australia  may  be  eminently  suited  in  the  mat- 
ter of  soil,  climate,  and  other  factors  necessarily 
precedent  to  the  production  of  a  marketable 
commodity  in  large  quantities,  but  it  is  of  little 
avail  to  Australia,  in  a  national  sense,  if  the  quan- 
tity be  increased  and  the  ultimate  reward  of  in- 
dustry, viz.,  disposal  at  a  profit,  be  lacking.  In- 
deed, the  question  of  markets  is,  in  the  last  resort, 
an  all-important  one.  .  ;  ; 

The  same  reasoning  can  be  applied  to  any 
portion  of  the  earth's  surface. 

Thus  far  it  has  been  tacitly  assumed 
that  there  are  vast  frontier  areas  crying 
out  for  settlement,  immensely  rich  areas 
currently  standing  vacant.  It  is  in  such 
areas  that  the  migration  enthusiasts  pic- 
ture the  settlement  of  their  millions.  But 
they  are  victims  of  the  "myth  of  the  great 
open  spaces."  Pin  them  down  to  partic- 
ulars and  you  will  find  them^^extremeh 

GAM  £ 
IRRARY 


S^ly 


26 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


vague  as  to  where  the  large,  fertile,  virgin 
areas  are  actually  located.  They  can 
point  to  various  countries  which  can 
stand  increases  in  their  pepulations,  but 
a  close  examination  of  the  situations  in 
those  countries,  markets  aside,  shows  that 
few  if  any  of  them  have  vast  open  spaces 
into  which  people  can  hopefully  flock. 
It  is  perhaps  characteristic  of  the  true 
situation  that  an  Australian,  a  man  from 
a  country  ordinarily  viewed  as  containing 
unusually  vast  open  spaces,  published 
last  year  a  closely  reasoned  book,  carefully 
fortified  with  data  of  an  indisputable  kind, 
entitled  The  Myth  oj  Open  Spaces.  W.  D. 
Forsyth  is  under  no  illusions  about  open 
spaces.  That  pleasure  he  leaves  to  those 
who  study  maps  without  ever  attempting 
to  assemble  the  information  which  may 
explain  why  large  segments  of  some  na- 
tions are  empty — and  will  remain  empty 
to  the  end  of  time. 

The  controlling  factor  in  the  Australian 
situation  is  rainfall,  plus  the  closely 
associated  factors  of  reliability  of  the  fall 
and  the  rate  of  evaporation.  If  the 
problem  is  examined  it  is  clear  at  once 
that  most  of  the  great  open  spaces  of  that 
country  are  open  because  rainfall  does 
not  permit  their  close  exploitation.  It 
has  even  been  argued  by  Professors 
Wadham  and  Wood  in  their  Land  Utiliza- 
tion in  Australia  that  an  intensive  survey 
would  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  when 
you  subtract  from  the  twenty  per  cent  of 
the  country  that  has  reliable  rainfall  the 
rough  country  that  cannot  be  cultivated, 
only  enough  land  will  be  left  to  take  care 
of  the  natural  increase  of  the  population, 
thus  excluding  land  settlement  by  numer- 
ous incoming  immigrants.  This  perhaps 
overstates  the  case  a  bit  but  surely  to  no 
disqualifying  degree.  So  persistent  how- 
ever are  the  errors  about  Australia  that 
Wadham  and  Wood  interrupt  the  calm 
course  of  their  scientific  study  to  burst  out 
with  these  harsh  words: 

Recent  pronouncements  in  Great  Britain  and 
elsewhere  regarding  the  capacity  of  Australia  to 
absorb  population  have  condemned  the  policy  of 
the  Commonwealth  in  severe  terms.  The  people 
responsible  for  these  statements  have  usually  been 
distinguished  by  a  total  ignorance  of  local  con- 
ditions, if  not  a  perverse  unwillingness  to  investi- 
gate the  facts.  The  wide  publicity  given  to 
irresponsible    statements,    compared    with    the 


restricted   circulation  of  scientific  studies,  is  a 
constant  source  of  embarrassment. 

The  truth  is  that  the  Australian  frontier 
is  a  permanent  frontier  and  while  its 
economic  character  and  exact  location 
may  change  from  time  to  time,  the  future 
of  the  country  can  no  longer  be  thought  of 
in  terms  of  advancing  the  frontier  into 
ever  new  areas.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
characteristic  movement  in  recent  years 
has  been  back  from  the  farthest  advanced 
outposts  of  agricultural  settlement.  The 
Australians  have  found  themselves  in 
marginal  areas  from  which  withdrawal  is 
the  only  sensible  course.  The  Australian 
future  is  therefore  not  unlike  the  Ameri- 
can: it  is  a  matter  of  using  more  intensively 
the  areas  already  clearly  staked  out  for 
exploitation.  From  this  standpoint  Aus- 
tralia's possibilities  as  a  country  of  immi- 
gration should  be  assessed.  If  markets 
appear  for  the  products  of  the  land  in- 
dustries, intensification  of  production  in 
areas  already  settled  can  take  care  of  that 
demand  in  full  measure.  If  expansion  of 
industrial  production  is  warranted  by 
rising  markets,  then  the  new  factories 
also  will  be  located  within  the  already 
defined  area  of  settlement;  for  the  re- 
sources required  are,  except  for  some 
minerals,  located  to  an  overwhelming 
degree  precisely  in  those  parts  of  the 
continent  where  people  to-day  are  most 
numerously  present.  Australia's  great 
open  spaces  are  a  reality,  but  they  are 
barren  and  will  not  absorb  numbers  of 
immigrants. 

In  its  details  the  Australian  situation  is 
probably  unique.  But  it  is  necessary  to 
realize  that  the  fundamental  conclusion 
one  draws  from  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  of 
universal  application.  Most  of  the  milk- 
and-honey  frontiers  of  the  world  exist  only 
in  the  imaginations  of  those  who  have 
never  troubled  themselves  to  explore  the 
facts.  This  is  certainly  the  case  of  the 
areas  of  white  settlement  in  Africa,  the 
character  of  which  was  shown  incidentally 
in  an  article  in  Harper'' s  for  April,  1943. 
The  very  soils  of  Africa  are  suspect. 
Clement  Gillman  says:  "Much  that  has 
been  written  about  the  fertility  of  tropical 
soils  has  been  relegated  to  the  realm  of 
fairy  tales  .  .  .  oftener  than  not  they  are 
deficient  in  important  minerals,  the  ab- 


POSTWAR    MIGRATION:    A    MIRAGE 


27 


sence  of  which  afTccts  both  the  plants 
grown  on  them  and  those  who  Hve  on  the 
plants."  This  is  perhaps  a  little  less  true 
in  South  America  and  Central  Asia  than 
elsewhere  in  the  world.  The  latter  region 
however  is  reserved  for  Russian  and  Chi- 
nese emigrants  and  is  not  available  to  the 
world  in  general.  The  South-American 
frontiers,  according  to  expert  testimony, 
are  more  technological  possibilities  than 
economic  feasibilities.  Any  argument 
which  emphasizes  the  "vast  land  re- 
sources" of  Brazil,  Colombia,  Peru,  Chile, 
Ecuador,  and  so  on  should  be  read  with 
skepticism  unless  the  author  clearly  dem- 
onstrates how  the  institutional  obstacles  to 
occupation — like  land  titles — are  to  be 
hurdled,  and  unless  it  is  also  shown  where 
the  products  of  the  new  land  industries  are 
to  find  markets  at  prices  high  enough  to 
pay  out  on  the  tremendous  capital  invest- 
ment involved  in  opening  them  up.  Es- 
pecially should  one  be  skeptical  if  the  arti- 
cle includes  a  boner  that  is  so  complete  a 
give-away  as  a  comparison  with  "great  un- 
occupied plains,  like  those  of  Texas  or 
Australia." 

The  frontiers  supposedly  existing  for 
white  settlers  within  the  tropic  zone  are  to 
be  similarly  described,  if  we  are  to  be  can- 
did. Mindanao,  Philippine  Islands  (in- 
vestigated before  the  war  as  a  site  for  a 
Jewish  settlement),  is  no  lush  frontier. 
"Mindanao,"  an  expert  familiar  with  Far 
Eastern  settlement  conditions  begins  his 
report,  "is  popularly-^ajid  quite  errone- 
ously— thought  of  as  still  having  vast 
empty  expanses  of  arable  land  awaiting 
settlement."  In  fact,  the  more  intensively 
the  great  open  spaces  of  the  hot  countries 
are  expertly  studied  the  more  they  shrink 
in  size,  quality,  and  availability  for  any- 
thing approaching  normal  settlement. 
They  cannot  be  exploited  without  capital 
investment  far  in  excess  of  what  is  charac- 
teristic in  the  development  of  frontier  areas 
in  the  temperate  zone.  The  tropical 
frontiers  are  also  more  technological  pos- 
sibilities than  economic  prospects.  And 
unless  we  are  going  to  live  in  a  high-cost, 
subsidized,  deficit  world,  economics  must 
play  a  part  in  our  decisions. 

The  arctic  frontiers  are  not  much  bet- 
ter. There  is  the  celebrated  gold-plated 
colony  in  the  Matanuska  Valley  in  south- 


ern Alaska.  While  a  considerable  range 
of  crops  can  be  grown  there  in  good  sea- 
sons, it  nevertheless  is  not  a  neglected 
paradise.  W.  A.  Rockie,  a  government 
expert,  in  the  Geographical  Review  for  July, 
1942,  says  that: 

The  summer  at  Matanuska  is  cooler  than  in 
any  at^ricultural  section  of  the  United  States;  the 
fall  and  winter  are  much  warmer  than  in  a  lar_,'c 
part  of  the  Northern  States;  and  the  spring  is  very 
much  colder  than  in  any  agriculturally  settled 
part  of  the  United  States.  .  .  .  In  early  summer 
it  is  occasionally  too  dry  for  the  quickest  growth 
of  crops;  in  late  summer  it  is  generally  too  wet  for 
the  easy  harvesting  of  any  crop.  .  .  .  The  s'^il 
begins  to  thaw  in  April,  and  plants  show  signs  of 
new  life  in  late  April  and  in  May.  Because  of 
the  almost  constant  cold  since  the  preceding 
October,  the  spring  sunshine  is  very  slow  in  dissi- 
pating the  accumulation  of  below-freezing  tem- 
peratures. Until  plant  growth  gets  started,  the 
spring  is  probably  the  most  discouraging  season 
of  the  year,  because  the  daytime  warmth  is  ample 
for  plant  growth  for  weeks  before  plants  show  any 
response.  They  are  held  back  by  the  tightly 
frozen  soil,  which  controls  the  root,  bulb,  or  seed 
temperatures. 

II 

i- 

T^HE  frontier  obsession  is  therefore  not 
justified  by  the  existence  of  large, 
rich,  virgin  areas  of  country  into  which 
settlers  from  Europe  can  be  encouraged  to 
flock  after  the  war.  Suppose  this  is  so. 
What  about  the  idea  that  the  migrants 
should  nevertheless  be  placed  on  the  land, 
but  within  the  boundaries  of  settlement 
already  laid  down? 

This  brings  up  the  question  of  markets 
again.  For  if  the  underdeveloped  areas 
replace  the  undeveloped  in  our  calcula- 
tions, such  a  move  will  mean  the  intensi- 
fication of  production  within  the  areas  al- 
ready occupied.  This  may  seem  like  a 
wise  and  desirable  line  of  action.  Most  of 
the  countries  described  as  underdeveloped 
have  wide  areas  in  which  the  fundamental 
public  works,  like  railways,  roads,  and 
communications  generally,  and  also  water 
conservation  and  distribution  schemes, 
were  planned  in  relation  to  an  intensive 
use  which  has  never  come  to  pass.  The 
reason  for  their  construction  was  over- 
optimism  about  the  rate  of  increase  of 
population.  If  these  public  works  can  be 
brought  into  more  intensive  use  the  profit 
to  these  countries  will  be  immense.  The 
intensification  will  extend  also  to  the  de- 


28 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


tails  of  farm  practices:  "The  improvement 
of  soils  and  pastures  and  of  herds  and 
flocks,  the  eradication  of  pests  and  dis- 
eases, the  economic  application  of  me- 
chanical power,  the  perfection  of  farm 
management,  the  determination  of  the 
extent  and  nature  of  the  most  economic 
farm  unit,  the  utilization  of  by-products, 
the  economic  application  of  the  principle 
of  fodder  conservation,  the  establishment 
of  industries  utilizing  agricultural  prod- 
ucts and  by-products,  the  introduction  of 
first-class  systems  of  marketing  .  .  .  ad- 
vances like  these  give  a  new  productive 
value  to  land  and  offer  inducements  for 
bringing  it  under  intense  cultivation." 

There  is  hardly  an  underdeveloped 
country  in  the  world  that  would  not  wel- 
come a  chance  to  go  ahead  along  these 
lines.  Some  progress  is  constantly  being 
made  in  improving  the  position  of  farmers 
currently  on  the  land.  But  real  progress 
along  this  road  depends  upon  markets, 
for  intensification  of  land  use  invariably 
means  heavier  production  for  sale.  So 
immense  are  the  possibilities  that  an  in- 
crease in  the  demand  for  foodstuffs  and 
raw  materials  can  be  met  more  quickly 
and  cheaply  by  intensified  agriculture 
than  by  a  renewal  of  the  old  method  of 
dispersing  production  into  absolutely,  vir- 
gin areas — the  frontiers. 

In  the  past  the  way  to  greater  produc- 
tion in  the  land  industries  was  to  place 
new  farmers  in  new  areas — a  horizontal 
extension  of  the  agricultural  plant;  to-day 
the  logic  of  the  situation  is  a  vertical  ex- 
tension of  the  farm  plant,  or  the  increase 
of  production  in  already  settled  areas 
through  the  full  use  of  modern  knowledge 
of  farm  technology  and  management  in 
all  its  phases.  If  needed — if  economic 
markets  appear — the  world's  supply  of 
farm  products  can  be  increased  manyfold 
without  any  marked  extension  of  the  areas 
of  settlement.  The  possibilities  here  are 
almost  infinite. 

Such  a  state  of  affairs  more  than  dis- 
counts the  importance  of  frontiers.  It 
forecasts  also  a  reduction  of  the  numbers 
already  engaged  in  agriculture.  In  certain 
directions  intensification  is  accomplished 
by  an  increase  in  the  number  of  workers 
employed,  their  wages  being  guaranteed 
by    the    increase    in    production    or    the 


greater  worth  of  the  production;  but  on 
the  whole  the  increased  employment  is  not 
so  very  great.  In  this  connection  it 
should  be  recalled  that  while  the  capacity' 
to  produce  farm  products  has  increased  in 
all  commercial  farming  countries  since 
the  First  World  War,  there  has  at  the  same 
time  been  a  steady  drift  of  farm  population 
away  from  the  farms — except  when  de- 
pression has  driven  people  back  into  the 
rural  areas  for  survival. 

Under  conditions  of  economic  health 
the  farm  plants  of  the  world  will  probably 
continue  to  give  up  workers  without  en- 
dangering total  production  in  the  least. 
If  demand  warrants  wide  use  of  intensifi- 
cation the  outward  movement  of  workers 
may  be  arrested  to  a  degree,  but  how  far 
it  will  lead  to  an  absorption  of  new 
workers  is  a  difficult  question  to  answer. 
There  is  small  prospect  that  the  farms  of 
the  world  will  ever  again  offer  a  way  out 
for  the  millions  who  may  feel  it  necessary 
to  seek  new  homes  and  better  economic 
conditions. 

Since  the  agricultural  industries  have 
been  giving  up  workers  it  naturally  fol- 
lows that  the  urban  industries  have 
been  absorbing  them.  This  movement 
is  known,  from  the  rural  end,  as  the  drift 
to  the  cities.  This  drift  is  often  senten- 
tiously  deplored,  especially  by  sentimental 
people  who  love  the  notion  of  farming  as  a 
"way  of  life"  and  who  believe  that  there  is 
something  inherently  fine  in  working  the 
land.  But  deplorable  or  not,  the  trend 
toward  urbanization  is  a  phenomenon 
which  can  be  observed  not  only  in  coun- 
tries like  the  United  States  but  also  in 
countries  like  Argentina,  Australia,  New 
Zealand,  and  South  Africa.  Even  "Bed- 
ouins of  the  desert  are  becoming  towns- 
men in  the  cities  of  Palestine."  In  all 
these  nations  the  cities  are  growing  faster 
than  the  country,  and  at  its  expense.  The 
world  is  moving  into  an  urbanized  age. 
The  facts  which  support  this  conclusion 
stand  as  an  insurmountable  obstacle  to 
those  who  would  ship  their  millions  to  the 
frontiers,  or  even  to  already  settled  rural 
areas.  If  these  millions  are  to  move  at  all 
they  are  going  to  move  into  the  urbanized 
areas  where  economic  opportunities  exist. 
But  the  urban  areas  are  not  necessarily 
the  very  great  cities  already  in  existence, 


POSTWAR    MIGRATION:    A    MIRAGE 


29 


though  they  too  will  probably  continue  to 
grow  in  many  parts  of  the  world.  Rather, 
the  drift  will  be  to  those  areas  which  are 
already  closely  settled,  in  which  the  char- 
acteristic jobs  are  found  in  factories  and 
the  service  industries.  The  actual  town 
or  city  of  residence  may  be  relatively  small 
— decentralization  of  industry  from  con- 
gested centers  will  make  this  increasingly 
possible — but  it  will  be  one  point  in  a 
mesh  of  settlement  which  will  allow  for 
urban  living.  So  strong  is  the  conviction 
of  some  students  that  this  is  the  case  that 
they  allow  only  for  the  migration  of  per- 
sons who  will  be  indispensable  technicians 
associated  with  urban  industries  and  the 
services. 

As  long  ago  as  1936  Professor  Allan  G. 
B.  Fisher,  one  of  the  most  astute  of  living 
economists,  said,  "The  type  of  migrant 
who  is  needed  to-day  is  the  man  or  woman 
who  is  skilled  in  the  production  of  the 
things  with  which  the  world  is  still  inade- 
quately supplied,  perhaps  the  skilled  tech- 
nician or  engineer,  with  whose  aid  we  can 
raise  the  standard  of  efficiency  in  those  in- 
dustries where  we  have  so  far  lagged  be- 
hind, certainly  the  man  whose  special 
training  fits  him  to  offer  Australia  services 
of  a  kind  which  are  still  quite  rare  in  this 
country,  or  in  some  cases  quite  unknown." 

The  South- African  economist  S.  H. 
Frankel  almost  echoed  this  sentiment  with 
regard  to  his  country  when  he  wrote  that 
the  immigrants  he  would  like  to  see  en- 
tering South  Africa  would  not  do  "what 
others  are  already  doing,"  but  rather 
"the  accession  of  new  population  will 
create  the  opportunities  for  more  em- 
ployment simply  because  it  will  make 
economic  innumerable  activities  which 
are  now  uneconomic."  A  similar  view  is 
taken  of  prospects  in  South-American 
countries  like  Argentina  and  Brazil  where 
great  efforts  are  being  made  to  industrial- 
ize. These  countries  need  people  to  help 
in  those  industries  and  services  which  are 
associated  with  the  urbanization  of  the 
population.  But  it  does  not  appear  that 
this  will  allow  places  for  many  of  the 
twenty  million  allegedly  bound  to  escape 
from  postwar  Europe. 

Two  paradoxical  reactions  to  the  diffi- 
culties can  now  be  brought  forward.  The 
first  paradox  is  this:  the  future  of  commer- 


cial farming  in  a  country  like  Australia  in 
competition  with  other  producing  areas  in 
the  international  market  is  regarded  as 
such  a  poor  prospect  that  the  only  way  out 
is  argued  to  be  "a  fair  division  of  the  mar- 
kets of  the  world  by  means  of  interna- 
tional cartels.  .  .  .  Competition  for  mar- 
kets .  .  .  would  have  to  give  way,  and  it 
would  probably  be  found  that  price  fixa- 
tion (minima  and  maxima),  instead  of  be- 
ing abolished  after  the  war,  would  have  to 
be  extended."  This  hardly  forecasts  the 
successful  introduction  of  new  millions 
into  commercial  agriculture.  Nor  is  this 
the  opinion  of  an  urbanized  theoretician. 
It  is  the  considered  conclusion  of  G.  J. 
Evatt,  Chairman  of  the  Water  Conserva- 
tion and  Irrigation  Commission  of  New 
South  Wales.  It  is  not  surprising  there- 
fore that  others  who  are  concerned  about 
Australia's  population  problem,  but  who 
are  discouraged  by  the  prospects  of  com- 
mercial farming,  and  yet  are  convinced 
that  land  settlement  must  continue,  are 
taking  refuge  in  the  thesis  that  the  only 
road  to  salvation  is  to  spread  over  selected 
areas  numerous  subsistence  farmers.  This 
is  the  second  paradox:  that  the  meanly 
circumscribed  poverty  of  subsistence  farm- 
ing is  recommended  as  a  way  out  in  an  age 
characterized  by  an  efficiency  in  produc- 
tion which  is  without  parallel.  And  it 
should  be  strongly  emphasized  that  Aus- 
tralia is  not  a  unique  case.  It  is  cited 
here  simply  because  the  writer  knows  the 
situation  there  with  greater  intimacy  than 
elsewhere;  and  also  because  that  country 
is  so  often  cited  as  a  land  that  should  ab- 
sorb unnumbered  millions  after  the  war. 


HI 

|UT  if  population  increases  through 
settlement  on  the  land  for  commer- 
cial agriculture  are  doubtful,  what  are  the 
prospects  in  the  factory  and  service  indus- 
tries? With  the  exception  of  a  few  odd 
pockets  and  corners  of  the  world,  the  areas 
in  which  settlement  of  millions  is  allegedly 
possible  are  precisely  the  areas  which  hope 
for  constantly  increasing  industrial  devel- 
opment. Some  of  them  have  gone  a  good 
distance  in  this  field  already.  Industrial 
development  in  the  new  countries  natu- 
rally takes  place  at  the  highest  levels  of 


30 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


technological  efficiency  achiev^ed  in  the 
older  countries  from  which  the  tech- 
niques and  machinery  are  imported. 
This  means  a  fairly  high  productivity  per 
workman.  But  as  the  market  is  usually 
small  it  is  quickly  saturated,  and  no  mass 
employment  opens  up  in  any  particular 
industry  or  in  all  the  industries  in  the  ag- 
gregate. The  most  that  is  accomplished 
is  to  give  employment  to  the  workers  be- 
ing released  by  agriculture  and  the  annual 
increment  to  the  labor  market.  For  a 
considerable  period  the  new  factory  in- 
dustries serve  as  an  alternative  and  profita- 
ble way  of  using  the  national  labor  force, 
but  they  do  not  provide  the  basis  for  in- 
troducing numerous  immigrants. 

How  far  this  can  go  is  shown  by  the  ex- 
perience of  the  new  countries  during  the 
present  war.  They  have  expanded  in- 
dustrial production  markedly  at  a  time 
when  immigration  has  ceased.  At  best 
they  have  been  able  to  import  some  tech- 
nicians on  an  advisory  basis.  To  a  large 
extent  they  have  had  to  rely  on  blueprints 
of  the  new  products  and  even  have  had  to 
build  their  own  machine  tools  to  produce 
the  goods  wanted.  The  new  factories, 
some  of  them  very  large  as  compared  with 
prewar  units,  have  been  stafTed  at  a  time 
when  thousands  of  the  most  vigorous  and 
teachable  men  have  been  mobilized  into 
the  armed  forces.  This  has  been  done  by 
bringing  in  all  the  prewar  unemployed, 
draining  workers  from  the  farms  at  an 
even  faster  pace  than  hitherto,  calling  re- 
tired people  back  into  the  labor  market 
(while  protecting  their  pension  rights  for 
the  postwar  period),  and  making  use  of 
hitherto  unemployed  women.  This  may 
be  an  emergency  way  of  utilizing  the  do- 
mestic labor  force,  but  it  certainly  shows 
what  can  be  done  without  letting  in  nu- 
merous immigrants. 

How  far  the  expanded  industrial  facili- 
ties can  be  returned  to  peacetime  uses  is 
not,  it  would  seem,  so  much  a  matter  of 
labor  supply  as  of  finding  markets  for  the 
goods  it  will  be  possible  to  turn  out.  It  is 
possible  however  that  once  the  labor  mar- 
ket returns  to  something  approaching  its 
normal  size  and  composition,  especially  if 
expanding  markets  turn  up,  room  may  be 
found  after  a  short  time  for  workers  from 
the  outside.     But  the  volume  of  produc- 


tion would  have  to  be  expanded  very  con- 
siderably to  make  much  of  a  dent  on  the 
vast  numbers  waiting  to  pour  out  of  Eu- 
rope. It  looks  as  if  the  real  opportunities 
would  be  for  limited  numbers  of  skilled 
persons  able  to  assist  in  advancing  indus- 
try to  the  highest  possible  levels,  rather 
than  masses  of  mere  operatives.  I  doubt 
that  the  wartime  expansion  of  industry  in 
the  new  countries  promises  to  provide  a 
basis  for  mass  immigration. 

So  it  is  with  the  service  industries.  On 
the  lower  levels,  for  example,  there  are  the 
wholesale  and  retail  trade,  in  all  their  in- 
finite variety.  These  may  well  experi- 
ence a  boom  when  the  wartime  restric- 
tions on  civilian  consumption  are  lifted. 
If  so,  they  will  provide  lots  of  jobs,  but 
how  far  they  can  expand  without  exhaust- 
ing local  resources  is  a  question.  In  the 
beginning  they  will  do  little  more  than 
welcome  back  the  workers  siphoned  out 
of  them  into  war  production.  No  doubt 
however  opportunities  will  be  great  in  ex- 
ploiting the  wider  distribution  of  prod- 
ucts hitherto  known  only  as  expensive  im- 
ports, and  the  provision  of  services  hith- 
erto novel.  But  they  will  not,  I  think, 
encourage  mass  migration.  What  may 
absorb  many  at  the  unskilled  levels  is  the 
construction  of  public  service  works 
needed  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
changed  economy  and  the  redistributed 
population.  Some  optimism  is  allowable 
here,  but  in  terms  of  a  few  thousands  of 
immigrants,  not  millions.  If  wisely  man- 
aged, there  will  be  opportunities  in  the 
field  of  higher  services.  Changed  con- 
ceptions of  education,  including  the  de- 
velopment of  libraries  and  art  museums, 
may  allow  the  importation  of  groups  of 
highly  trained  teachers.  But  this  is  far 
from  mass  migration. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  it  is 
slow  and  costly  work  to  move  millions 
of  people.  The  population  of  Australia 
grew  from  0  to  7,000,000  in  about  half  the 
time  it  took  the  United  States  and  Canada, 
but  this  took  place  in  a  period  of  rapid  ex- 
pansion, mostly  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
In  the  past  fifty  years  the  two  most  satis- 
factory periods  of  immigration  into  the 
country  were  1907-1913,  when  an  annual 
average  of  41,690  persons  was  received, 
and    1920-1929,     when    an    annual    av- 


POSTWAR     MIGRATION:     A     MIRAGE 


31 


erage  of  34,91 1  was  achieved.  This  gives 
an  annual  average  for  these  two  good 
periods  of  38,300.  Assuming  a  higiily 
prosperous  postwar  period,  let  us  accept 
a  suggested  annual  average  of  80,000 
(Colin  Clark's  prediction  in  The  Economics 
oj  1960,  the  largest  figure  I  have  ever  seen), 
or  an  increase  of  over  one  hundred  per 
cent.  Between  1859  and  1933  the  Aus- 
tralian population  increased  by  5,655,809, 
of  whom  the  immigrants  constituted  24 
per  cent,  or  1,357,394  persons  in  74  years 
of  normal  economic  growth.  The  intro- 
duction of  an  equal  number  of  immigrants 
at  the  rate  of  80,000  a  year  would  be  to 
arrange  a  comparable  increase  in  the 
population  through  immigration  in  about 
17  years!  But  since  the  resident  Aus- 
tralian population  has  now  assumed  a 
statistical  position  forecasting  decline  it  is 
highly  unlikely  that  the  population  would 
do  more  than  rise  to  about  10,000,000  in 
the  next  quarter-century,  or  to  half  the 
figure  of  20,000,000  so  often  cited  by  poli- 
ticians as  the  desirable  postwar  objective. 
I  myself  think  Mr.  Clark's  figure  is  ex- 
tremely high;  and  I  should  not  expect  the 
10,000,000  figure  to  be  reached  in  less 
than  twice  the  time  his  figures  suggest. 

Reasoning  very  similar  to  this  would 
apply  also  to  Brazil,  where  in  the  111  years 
between  1820  and  1931  the  population  in- 
crease through  immigration  was  4,546,- 
869,  or  at  the  rate  of  about  41,000  a  year. 
Argentina  in  75  years  managed  to  retain 
only  about  half  of  the.  immigrants  who 
hopefully  entered  its  borders,  or  roughly 
2,870,000  people— about  38,000  a  year. 
Palestine  from  1922  to  1940  absorbed 
312,338  Jews,  an  average  of  17,352  per- 
sons per  year,  with  a  peak  year,  1935, 
when  61,854  entered.  This  is  universally 
considered  the  most  amazingly  successful 
example  of  planned  migration  in  recent 
years  and  of  course  it  operated  under 
"forced  draft"  some  of  the  time.  It  took 
the  Greek  government,  working  in  close 
collaboration  with  a  League  of  Nations 
commission,  about  seven  years  to  settle 
650,000  persons  driven  from  Asia  Minor 
by  the  Turks.  These  individuals  were 
being  repatriated,  not  expatriated,  and  were 
being  settled  in  areas  previously  occupied 
by  others.  Even  usable  houses  were 
found  for  some  of  the  incoming  people. 


CEvon  so,  foreign  loans  obtained  by  the 
(Jrcc'k  government  to  help  the  project 
"contril)utcd  to  its  bankruptcy  in  1932.") 
A  project  in  the  Dominican  Republic  was 
designed  to  take  in  100,000  settlers  over  a 
period  of  years.  In  three  yeans — from 
1940  until  now-  it  has  absorbed  only 
500.  The  project — never  executed — to 
settle  Jews  in  Mindanao,  Philippine 
Islands,  involved  only  10,000  persons. 

It  would  require  a  vast  number  of  move- 
ments of  comparable  magnitude  to  take 
care  of  20,000,000  people  overseas. 

The  costs  are  even  more  difficult  to  esti- 
mate. But  ignoring  the  unknown  charges 
for  transporting  the  emigrants  out  of 
Europe  and  landing  them  in  Australia,  it 
will  take  at  the  very  least  £1,000  of  capital 
per  worker  to  provide  a  job  for  each  im- 
migrant seeking  employment.  Australia 
between  wars  added  about  100,000  per- 
sons to  its  labor  market  each  year  through 
natural  increment.  If  we  add  40,000 
working  immigrants  to  this  total,  the  bal- 
ance being  dependent  women  and  chil- 
dren, then  capital  for  about  140,000  work- 
ers per  year  has  to  be  found,  or,  at  the 
present  rate  of  exchange,  not  less  than 
$448,000,000  per  year.  To  find  it  year 
after  year  for  several  decades  will  tax  the 
financial  ingenuity  of  the  country;  and  if  a 
proportion  of  it  is  imported  from  overseas 
the  old  marketing  problem  will  again  have 
to  be  faced  and  solved.  People  cannot 
be  moved  around  the  world  by  a  wave  of 
a  wand.     It  costs  money;  it  takes  time. 

Even  admitting  that  the  world  is  going 
forward,  though  severely  qualifying  popu- 
lar conceptions  of  how  and  in  what  fields, 
the  bases  for  mass  immigration  on  the 
scale  suggested  are  exceedingly  difficult 
to  discover.  Is  it  necessary  to  accept  the 
20,000,000  European  emigrants  as  a  fixed, 
immutable  total? 

IV 

FIRST  of  all,  it  is  necessary  to  understand 
where  in  Europe  the  20,000,000  are 
mostly  located  at  present.  They  are  found 
in  southern  and  eastern  Europe,  in  Italy, 
Rumania,  Bulgaria,  Greece,  Poland,  and 
such  countries.  Few  of  them  are  found  in 
northern  and  western  Europe — in  Scan- 
dinavia, France,  Holland,  or  the  United 
Kingdom.     One  basis  for  this  conclusion 


32 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


is  the  state  of  development  in  the  divisions 
of  Europe;  but  another  of  equal  impor- 
tance is  the  fact  that  in  the  former  coun- 
tries the  populations  are  still  rapidly 
expanding,  whereas  in  the  north  and  west 
the  nations  quite  uniform.^/  find  themselves 
on  the  verge  of  population  decline.  It  is 
not  necessary  of  course  to  imply  that  no 
one  will  leave  the  countries  where  the 
populations  are  about  to  begin  to  decline. 
Some  will,  perhaps  thousands.  But  it 
should  be  emphasized  that  the  great  con- 
tributions to  the  emigrant  horde  will  be 
made  by  countries  where  the  population  is 
still  on  the  upgrade  and  where  the  shape  of 
the  economies  is  unfavorable  to  the  ab- 
sorption of  mounting  numbers  at  rising 
levels  of  economic  welfare.  Indeed  in 
most  of  them  the  opposite  trend  has  been 
observed:  thousands  of  persons  are  being 
pushed  down  to,  or  forced  below,  the  level 
of  subsistence,  with  a  concentration  of 
workers  in  agriculture  which  is  almost 
Asiatic  in  character. 

It  is  incorrect  to  assume  that  the  condi- 
tion of  these  people  can  necessarily  be  im- 
proved by  encouraging  them  to  move  else- 
where. Emigration  taken  alone  will  not 
solve  the  problem  of  these  countries. 
Even  in  the  great  century  of  migration  the 
movement  of  peoples  out  of  Europe  did 
not  reduce  the  total  number  of  people  in 
Europe.  On  the  contrary,  the  popula- 
tion continued  to  mount.  It  has  been  es- 
timated that  during  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury "the  number  of  migrants  leaving 
Europe  was  equal  to  about  one-fifth  the 
total  natural  increase  in  stocks  resident  in 
Europe  in  1800."  Difi'erently  put,  out  of 
every  hundred  persons  added  to  the  pop- 
ulation only  twenty  went  abroad.  The 
remaining  eighty  stayed  at  home.  This 
was  possible  because  the  European  econ- 
omy was  expanding  at  a  tremendous  rate, 
offering  employment  opportunities  to  the 
millions  who  felt  no  urge,  or  were  unable, 
to  go  overseas.  It  was  because  the  Eu- 
ropean economy  was  expanding  that  even 
the  one-fifth  who  did  go  abroad  were  able 
to  do  so.  The  eff'ects  of  the  European  ex- 
pansion were  felt  overseas  and  allowed 
economic  expansion  to  take  place  there 
and  so  provide  the  basis  of  life  for  the 
emigrants  from  Europe.  We  encounter 
here  another  paradox  of  migration:  heavy 


migration  out  of  Europe  is  hardly  possible 
if  Europe  itself  is  in  a  depressed  state.  Or 
conversely,  the  ability  of  overseas  coun- 
tries to  accept  immigrants  is  dependent 
upon  an  upsurge  of  prosperity  in  Europe. 

It  is  however  impossible  to  create  pros- 
perity in  Europe  merely  by  subtracting 
what,  stacked  up  against  population  totals, 
is  a  handful  of  peoples  from  a  depressed 
economy.  European  prosperity  is  a  con- 
dition which  must  precede  any  successful 
movement  of  peoples  to  the  newer  coun- 
tries of  the  world.  The  first  step  toward 
a  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  20,000,000 
is  therefore  to  adopt  sensible  economic 
policies  in  Europe.  The  great  necessity  is 
to  clean  up  conditions  at  the  existing  cen- 
ters of  population  in  the  hope  that  rising 
demands  there  will  provide  a  firm  founda- 
tion for  a  gradual  expansion  at  the  periph- 
eries. This  was  the  procedure,  prob- 
ably unconscious,  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, and  it  worked.  To  try  to  force  the 
pace  at  the  peripheries  after  the  war  can 
only  lead  to  disaster,  can  only  result  in 
creating  chaos  there.  This  is  the  gist  of 
the  matter:  prosperity  in  Europe  will  cut 
down  the  need  for  emigration;  depression 
in  Europe  will  cut  down  the  willingness 
and  ability  of  other  countries  to  receive 
large  numbers  of  immigrants. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  overseas  coun- 
tries should  do  nothing  to  improve  their 
economic  positions  until  Europe  has  acted. 
Neither  is  it  to  demand  that  Europe  keep 
all  its  20,000,000  at  home.  It  is  simply  to 
cast  doubt  upon  the  utility  of  planning  to 
move  the  20,000,000  out  of  Europe  with- 
out first  looking  into  the  possibility  of  im- 
proving their  condition  within  Europe. 
Unless  Europe  makes  every  efibrt  to  im- 
prove its  own  position  the  overseas  coun- 
tries will  not  be  in  the  best  position  to 
absorb  immigrants. 

How  Europe  can  improve  its  situation 
is  not  a  matter  which  can  be  indicated  in  a 
paragraph.  There  is  no  known  formula 
for  economic  prosperity,  no  matter  what 
you  may  read  in  the  advertisements.  But 
at  least  one  point  can  be  made  which  has 
direct  relation  to  the  population  problem. 
It  has  been  emphasized  that  the  great  ex- 
cess of  peoples  is  to  be  found  in  southern 
and  eastern  Europe.  As  is  well  known, 
many  of  the  countries  in  these  areas  have 


POSTWAR    MIGRATION:    A    MIRAGE 


33 


not  made  any  great  effort  to  adopt  eco- 
nomic policies  designed  to  improve  the 
condition  of  their  people.  Some  atten- 
tion to  better  internal  economic  policies 
will  help  relieve  the  pressure.  But  if  the 
whole  enterprise  is  conducted  on  the  basis 
of  a  fragmented  Europe,  the  forward 
movement  will  not  be  very  great.  What 
Europe  needs  above  all  else  is  to  think  of 
its  problems  on  a  continental  basis.  If 
the  excess  peoples  can  hope  to  move  freely 
across  international  boundaries,  out  of 
depressed  rural  areas  in  the  south  and 
east  into  the  urban  areas  of  opportunity 
in  the  north  and  west,  they  won't  have  to 
go  overseas.  This  makes  it  indispensable 
that  all  Europe  be  considered  a  unit  in 
economic  policy,  that  no  country  be  de- 
pressed by  international  policy,  and  that 
the  entire  economy  of  Europe  be  worked 
for  the  benefit  of  all  the  peoples  of  Europe. 
No  doubt  this  is  a  counsel  of  perfection,  but 
if  European  nations  persist  in  policies  and 
practices  which  create  great  groups  of  de- 
pressed peoples,  then  it  will  be  legitimate 
to  warn  them  that  they  cannot  take  the 
easy  way  out  of  dumping  the  unwanted 
peoples  overseas.  No  country  has  any 
right  to  engage  in  wholesale  "pauper 
shoveling"  simply  to  protect  reactionary 
vested  interests;  and  no  country  is  under 
the  obligation  to  accept  the  paupers 
shoveled  out  for  such  anti-social  reasons. 

A  rational  approach  to  the  problem  of 
Europe's  so-called  excess  peoples  suggests 
that  the  numbers  involved  can  be  ma- 
terially reduced  by  a  concerted  attack 
upon  the  internal  economic  problems  of 
Europe,  especially  on  a  continent-wide 
basis.  In  any  case  there  is  no  hope  of 
solving  the  difficulties  of  these  people 
merely  by  transporting  them  across  the 
earth's  face  to  new  locations,  even  though, 
as  the   President   wrote   to   the    Pope    in 


December,  1939,  "millions  of  people  of  all 
races,  all  nationalities,  and  all  religions 
may  s('(^k  new  lives  l)y  migration  to  other 
lands.  .  .  ."  The  numbers  it  would  be 
p(jssible  to  move  under  the  most  favorable 
conditions  would  not,  taken  alone,  solve 
the  problem.  The  peoples  must  be  moved, 
if  at  all,  in  relation  to  markets,  nine  times 
out  of  ten,  international  markets.  There 
is  no  present  reason  to  place  any  faith  in 
movement  to  the  so-called  frontiers.  The 
persuasive  notion  of  frontier  pioneering  is 
to-day  a  two-faced  myth.  No  large,  at- 
tractive, rich,  virgin  areas  for  frontier  life 
any  longer  exist.  This  is  the  truth  about 
the  myth  of  the  great  open  spaces.  The 
produce  of  frontier  enterprises  is  not,  under 
current  conditions,  likely  to  be  needed  to 
satisfy  present  and  prospective  demand, 
for  this  can  best  be  met  by  intensification 
of  production  in  areas  already  settled. 
This  destroys  the  myth  of  inevitable  pros- 
perity on  the  frontiers. 

The  prospects  are  that  such  people  as 
emigrate  successfully  in  the  predictable 
future  will  go  to  areas  already  staked  out. 
In  the  new,  as  in  the  old  countries,  the 
predominant  trend  is  toward  concentra- 
tion of  population — toward  urbanization 
— not  toward  further  dispersion.  Any 
sizable  movement,  however,  is  contingent 
upon  rising  prosperity  in  Europe,  for  a 
depressed  Europe  will  make  it  impossible 
for  the  overseas  countries  to  receive  nu- 
merous immigrants.  The  hope  that  mil- 
lions can  be  moved  in  anything  properly 
to  be  described  as  "a  short  time"  is  a  de- 
lusion; and  that  the  job  can  be  done 
cheaply  is  an  even  worse  delusion.  Above 
all,  heavy  migration  is  dependent  upon 
general  world  prosperity.  By  no  magic 
can  it  be  a  prelude  to  the  prosperity  all  will 
be  seeking.  Migration  is  a  consequence 
of  healthy  economic  conditions  in  the 
world  in  general,  not  a  cause  of  them. 


WAR    IN    THE    AIR 

Four  Poems 
JOHN    PUDNEY 


A  SORRY  WORLD 

A  SORRY  world,  bereft  of  simple  tongue, 
Had  not  a  word  for  honor,  saved  its  smile 
For  the  philosopher  and  wished  the  young 
The  idiot  happiness,  the  decent  pile. 
Peace  was  this  troubled  bargain,  though  some  tried 
To  fix  the  brokers  in  the  market,  some 
Dared  to  consider  how  the  prices  lied, 
And  bought  insurance  for  the  doom  to  come. 
Yet  none  had  simple  speech  for  simple  deed 
And  none  could  match  the  action  with  the  soul; 
Until  you  lived,  and  died  in  taking  heed 
Of  duty  and  a  routine  job;  till  whole 
You  grew  and  served.     So  honor  may  be  said 
To  be  the  decent  shroud  to  serve  the  dead. 


FOR  JOHNNY 

Do  NOT  despair 
For  Johnny-head-in-air; 
He  sleeps  as  sound 
As  Johnny  underground. 

Fetch  out  no  shroud 
For  Johnny-in-the-cloud; 
And  keep  your  tears 
For  him  in  after  years. 

Better  by  far 

For  Johnny-the-bright-star 
To  keep  your  head, 
And  see  his  children  fed. 


WAR    IN    THE    AIR  35 


AIR   GUNNER 

THE  eye  behind  this  gun  made  peace 
With  a  boy's  eye  which  doubted,  trembled, 
Guileless  in  the  mocking  light 
Of  frontiers  where  death  assembled. 

Peace  was  as  single  as  the  dawn, 
Flew  straightly  as  the  birds  migrating, 
Timelessly  in  tune  with  time. 
Purposeful,  uncalculating. 

So  boyish  doubt  was  put  away: 
The  man's  eye  and  the  boy's  were  one. 
Mockery  and  death  retreat 
Before  the  eye  behind  this  gun. 


SECURITY 

EMPTY  your  pockets,  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry, 
Strip  your  identity;  leave  it  behind. 
Lawyer,  garage-hand,  grocer,  don't  tarry 
With  your  own  country,  your  own  kind. 

Leave  all  your  letters.     Suburb  and  township, 
Green  fen  and  grocery,  slip-way  and  bay, 
Hot  spring  and  prairie,  smokestack  and  coal  tip, 
Leave  in  our  keeping  while  you're  away. 

Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  plain  names  and  numbers, 
Pilot,  observer,  and  gunner  depart. 
Their  personal  litter  only  encumbers 
Somebody's  head,  somebody's  heart. 


THE  Easy  Chair  "Bema/rdD^cflJO 


E 


VERY  journalist  is  entitled  to  write 
one  piece  about  Washington  in  war- 
J  time.  I  propose  to  exercise  the 
franchise,  though  I  have  nothing  to  say 
about  the  bureaucracy.  I  spent  a  few 
days  in  Washington  in  early  October,  the 
first  visit  I  had  made  there  since  about  six 
weeks  before  Pearl  Harbor.  The  town's 
current  cliches  held  good  for  me  in  only 
one  respect — I  was  not  able  to  get  a  hotel 
room.  I  found  the  restaurant  food  excel- 
lent and  I  had  no  trouble  getting  taxis 
whenever  I  wanted  one,  several  times 
traveling  as  much  as  five  miles  alone 
without  a  share-the-ride  companion. 
Moreover,  the  Pullman  car  in  which  I 
forehandedly  reserved  a  seat  a  week  in 
advance  had  nine  vacancies  from  New 
York  to  Baltimore  and  five  the  rest  of  the 
way.  But  I  found  the  crossroads-of-the- 
world  notion  reasonably  true.  Three  peo- 
ple from  the  Western  town  where  I  used 
to  live  sauntered  up  to  me  and  restored  a 
contact  that  had  been  broken  for  twenty- 
five  years.  As  for  Cambridge,  it  was 
everywhere  in  Washington;  I  was  out  of 
sight  of  Harvard  Square  for  only  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time,  and  need  never  have 
been.  Everybody's  home  town  seems  to 
be  there  in  force.  Mr.  Dos  Passos  was 
lately  wondering  in  this  magazine  whether 
a  new  Greenwich  Village  may  not  be 
forming  in  Washington.  Very  likely,  and 
a  new  Los  Angeles  too,  or  a  new  St. 
Petersburg. 

I  can  recall  but  little  of  the  feel  of 
Washington  during  the  last  war;  I  was 
there  for  only  a  few  hours  at  a  time, 
passing  through  on  leave  from  the  Army. 
My  most  vivid  memory  is  of  a  com- 
panion's paralysis  in  the  Union  Station 


when  we  were  on  our  way  north  after 
being  discharged.  We  had  come  up  from 
Richmond  late  at  night  in  an  early-nine- 
teenth-century train.  Our  reflexes  were 
military,  we  talked  about  our  organiza- 
tions, we  were  prepared  to  stand  reveille 
in  the  morning.  But  when  we  came  into 
the  bright  station  an  hour  past  midnight 
something  suddenly  made  my  friend  real- 
ize that  the  war  was  over.  Without  a 
drop  to  drink,  he  was  dead  drunk  in  thirty 
seconds,  so  drunk  that  I  had  to  buy  his 
berth  for  him  and  support  him  out  to  it 
and  call  a  porter  to  help  me  hoist  him 
into  it.  His  name  was  Tom  but,  walking 
the  town's  avenues  this  month,  I  couldn't 
dredge  his  last  name  out  of  the  past.  I 
kept  remembering  his  big  drunk,  kept 
wishing  the  same  intoxication  for  the 
thousands  of  young  men  in  uniform  in 
Washington. 

But  last  time  the  uniforms  were  brighter. 
Our  allies  ran  to  greens  and  golds,  crim- 
sons and  scarlets.  You  would  turn  a 
corner  and  run  into  a  Bersagliere  captain 
who  seemed  to  be  coming  downstage  to 
sing  something  by  Sigmund  Romberg. 
He  would  seem  the  ultiinate  in  decorative- 
ness  for  a  block  or  so;  then  the  red  and 
gold  and  blue  of  a  French  staff"  officer 
would  erase  him.  The  Frenchman 
wouldn't  last  long  either,  for  presently  you 
would  meet  a  British  naval  officer  of  high 
rank  and  diplomatic  standing,  heading 
somewhere  in  full  dress.  Now  you  can 
see  the  off'-grays  of  Australians  and  New 
Zealanders,  but  most  armies  and  even  the 
navies  have  gone  into  khaki.  It  is  not  an 
operatic  shade. 

I  remember  a  furious  resentment. 
Eventually  I  was  a  shavetail,  and  there 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


37 


was  one  rank  which  shavetails  could  not 
love.  Everybody  else  in  the  Army  had  a 
job  to  do  but  not,  apparently,  lieutenant 
colonels.  They  had  nothing  to  do,  so 
they  spent  their  time  bawling  out  shave- 
tails. One  of  us  lowly  had  been  a  railroad 
brakeman  in  civilian  life.  He  kept  prom- 
ising us  that  when  he  got  back  to  his  job 
anybody  in  uniform  could  ride  his  blind 
baggage,  anybody  except  lieutenant  colo- 
nels. The  hope  of  peace  meant  a  chance 
to  boot  lieutenant  colonels  off  into  the 
cinders.  And  Washington  on  those  brief 
visits  seemed  to  be  full  of  them,  each  one 
with  a  chauffeur  and  one  of  the  little 
brown  Dodge  cars  that  were  the  last  war's 
closest  approximation  of  the  jeep.  Next 
time,  I  determined,  I  was  going  to  be  a 
lieutenant  colonel  in  Washington,  with 
Dodge  and  chauffeur.  It  didn't  work  out 
that  way. 

BUT  it  is  not  the  last  war  that  dominates 
I  Washington.  An  extremely  impor- 
tant fact  about  the  United  States  is  that 
there  is  one  way  in  which  it  is  not  even 
this  war.  To  sum  up  the  worthless  im- 
pressions of  a  few  trivial  contacts,  you  get 
the  feeling  in  Washington,  as  you  do 
everywhere  else  I  have  been,  that  this 
war  is  being  managed  incomparably  bet- 
ter than  the  last  one.  In  Washington  or 
anywhere  else  you  have  only  to  think  of 
the  present  Army  as  compared  with  the 
amateur  organization  I  belonged  to,  or 
the  achievements  of  OWI  :as  compared 
with  what  the  Creel  Committee  did,  or 
the  production  of  planes  with  the  story 
of  the  Liberty  motor,  or  Ordnance  or 
Supply  or,  in  fact,  anything  else  with  its 
forerunner  of  1918 — you  have  only  to 
make  the  comparison  and  your  liveliest 
doubts  are  cut  off  short.  Even  the  Wash- 
ingtonians  know  that.  Of  course  they 
have  only  two  moods — foreboding  and 
despair.  They  have  only  one  topic  of 
conversation:  how  badly,  how  ruinously 
in  fact,  their  superiors  or  their  rivals  or 
they  themselves  are  doing  the  job.  The 
Republic  crumbles  all  over  town;  I  heard 
it  crash  into  ruins  at  the  Carlton,  the 
Mayflower,  in  private  houses,  and  always 
with  the  same  cheery  eagerness  of  absorbed 
minds.  A  historian  finds  this  gloom  re- 
assuring.    From  the  time  when  Jefferson 


tied  his  horse  to  a  stump  on  Pennsylvania 
Avenue,  from  the  time  when  John  Quincy 
Adams  was  writing  in  his  journal  a  daily 
declaration  that  the  doom  we  had  brought 
upon  us  was  at  hand,  Washington  has 
always  been  going  to  hell  across  lots.  A 
certainty  that  doom  is  upon  us  is  the 
first  knowledge  that  transient  Washing- 
tonians  pick  up  from  permanent  ones  in 
acclimatization.  If  you  say  so,  they  read- 
ily agree.  Sure,  they  say,  it  was  dreadful 
in  the  last  war,  but  the  last  war  was  out 
of  this  world;  you  could  afford  to  shake 
dice  with  ruin  last  time.  We  couldn't 
help  doing  better,  but  it  isn't  enough,  it 
isn't  enough,  and  midnight  is  about  to 
strike.  It  has  always  been  just  a  few 
minutes  short  of  midnight  and  the  Senate 
clock  stopped,  probably,  as  long  as  there 
has  been  a  Washington. 

Once,  one  remembers,  midnight  nearly 
did  strike — in  the  war  which  you  never 
get  away  from  in  Washington.  Mr.  Dos 
Passos  found  himself  obliged  to  write 
about  the  Civil  War;  it  was  inseparable 
from  this  war  in  his  mind  and  it  was  part 
of  the  tradition  of  the  city  he  knew.  You 
are  always  running  into  physical  reminders 
of  it,  not  only  Grant  looking  down  the 
Mall  and  statues  of  McPherson  or  Mc- 
Clellan  or  dozens  of  other  generals  seen 
through  the  trees,  but  the  names,  the  dis- 
tances, the  places.  Off  that  way  is  Ar- 
lington or  Silver  Spring  or  the  Long 
Bridge.  Or  you  are  walking  along  and 
suddenly  identify  a  locality  or  an  address. 
Seward  lived  here,  or  Alexander  Stephens 
was  living  here  when  Secession  came,  or 
this  is  where  the  commissioners  met  in  '61, 
or,  even,  there  was  a  bawdy  house  here 
whence  highly  accurate  intelligence  re- 
ports used  to  go  South.  (A  careful  anti- 
quarian tells  me  that  successors  of  some  of 
its  rivals  in  '61  have  always  been  doing 
business  at  the  same  addresses.)  But 
physical  reminders  are  the  least  powerful. 
It  is  a  Northern  town  in  statuary,  it  is  a 
Southern  village  in  mood  and  in  the  voices 
heard  everywhere,  and  yet  it  is  a  national 
city.  What  keeps  pressing  in  on  you  is 
remembrance  of  the  four  years  that  made 
it  a  national  city — the  agony,  the  fear, 
the  violence,  the  strain,  the  suspense. 
You  are  always  in  sight  of  ambulances 
coming  up  from  the  wharves  where  boats 


38 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


used  to  land  the  wounded.  Late  at  night 
men  work  behind  curtained  windows — 
and  there  really  was  a  doubt,  then, 
whether  the  Republic  would  go  down  or 
could  be  saved.  The  uniforms  on  the 
sidewalks  are  sometimes  mud-stained  blue. 
Rumors  and  alarms  dead  for  eighty  years 
pulsate  in  the  gold  October  weather  of 
1943.  From  a  height  you  could  see 
Early's  troops  a  couple  of  miles  out  on 
Seventh  Street.  Or  you  could  see  smoke 
on  the  horizon — the  smoke  of  American 
homes  burning—or  hear  the  throb  of 
guns  killing  Americans. 

There  is  a  persisting  awareness,  I  mean, 
of  the  thing  when  it  was  in  course  of 
demonstration.  There  was  in  us  what  we 
had  begun  by  saying  we  were — or  there 
wasn't.  We  could  maintain  the  hope  of 
becoming  what  we  had  intended — or  we 
couldn't.  The  broken  society  could  be 
repaired  and  forged  into  what  it  had  never 
been,  a  nation — or  we  had  always  been 
wrong  and  would,  the  President  said,  lose 
the  last,  best  hope  of  earth.  That  is  the 
indecision,  the  suspense,  that  made  Wash- 
ington through  four  years  of  war  the  true 
creator  of  the  nation.  The  hope  was 
saved,  the  continuing  possibility  of  becom- 
ing. Remembering  what  those  years  did 
to  us,  North  and  South,  the  marble  seen 
through  the  city's  trees  asserts  not  triumph 
in  the  fact  that  the  nation  won  out,  but 
does  assert  a  vindication.  We  had  been 
right  to  hope,  in  the  beginning  and  from 
then  on.  We  could  go  on  hoping,  go  on 
becoming.  It  was  settled.  We  have  stood 
on  that  settlement  ever  since.  We  stand 
on  it  now. 

That  is  why.  Southern  village  or  North- 
ern town,  Washington  is  Lincoln's  city 
even  to-day,  even  in  this  war.  And  this 
is  not  just  the  fancy  of  a  tourist  outfitted 
with  appropriate  sentiments.  I  spent  an 
hour  at  the  Lincoln  Memorial.  It  was 
swirling  with  a  crowd  that  kept  changing. 
A  guard  told  me  that  more  people  are 
visiting  it  these  days  than  ever  before. 
Most  of  that  crowd  were  young  men  in 
uniform.  A  surprising  number  of  them 
wore  service  ribbons  from  all  the  theaters 
of  war,  many  with  the  stars  that  signify 
major  engagements.  It  is  something  not 
easily  shrugged  away  that  these  veterans  of 
the  new  war  should  spend  half  an  hour  of 


a  leave  in  which  all  half-hours  are  in- 
finitely precious  visiting  a  formal  pile  of 
marble  reared  to  the  memory  of  Lin- 
coln. 

Inside  that  structure  there  are  only  the 
statue  of  Lincoln  and  the  texts  of  the 
speeches  he  made  at  Gettysburg  and  at  his 
second  inauguration.  Impressive  as  the 
statue  is,  one  presently  ignores  it;  the 
texts  count  more.  One  sees  them  working 
an  effect  on  the  uniformed  boys.  On  the 
approaches  and  the  steps  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  talk,  laughter,  and  horseplay.  It 
becomes  a  whisper  and  presently  dies  out; 
the  place  is  quiet.  They  stand  reading 
those  texts,  they  loiter  for  a  while,  and 
few  of  them  say  anything  as  they  go  away. 
There  are  those  ribbons  and  stars — North 
Africa,  the  Solomons,  the  Aleutians,  the 
sea  frontiers,  Sicily,  the  sky  over  France 
and  Germany.  Some  of  these  boys  have 
been  there,  the  rest  are  on  their  way — and 
they  might  have  spent  this  half-hour  with 
their  friends,  their  wives,  or  their  girls. 
They  don't  talk  much  as  they  go  away,  and 
one  becomes  aware  that  they  came  here 
to  be  in  touch  for  a  moment  with  the 
highest  expression  ever  made  of  what  gives 
them  meaning.  A  man  is  speaking  to 
them  out  of  an  earlier  testing,  an  earlier 
proof.  They  know  what  he  is  talking 
about. 

What  found  expression  in  the  Gettys- 
burg Address  and  the  Second  Inaugural 
was  the  belief  and  the  hope  that  merged  to 
create  the  American  faith.  Facing  death 
for  it,  no  man  may  think  of  it  as  a  faith 
fulfilled  but  only  as  the  maintained  pos- 
sibility of  becoming,  a  possibility  in  which 
death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory,  against 
which  the  gates  of  hell  have  not  prevailed. 
There  it  is.  That  is  what  we  mean  or  else 
we  don't  mean  anything.  The  testimony 
of  these  new  veterans  is  that  we  mean  it. 

T  IS  the  classic  statement  of  our  faith. 
Purified  away  from  the  dross,  there  is 
the  highest  meaning  of  American  life. 
The  solemn  music  of  those  words  stays 
with  you  after  the  Memorial  is  hidden  by 
the  trees  again.  Yet  it  was  not  that  music 
that  I  kept  hearing  throughout  wartime 
Washington  seventy-nine  years  after  Lin- 
coln's war.  I  say  seventy-nine  years  be- 
cause presently  it  became  evident  that  a 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


39 


number  of  things  had  blended  together  in 
my  reverie,  that  what  I  was  thinking  of 
was  less  exalted,  more  painful — Washing- 
ton in  the  late  summer  of  1864. 

They  were  calling  Grant  "the  Butcher"; 
the  Crater  and  the  siege  of  Petersburg 
continued  the  long  hemorrhage  of  the 
Wilderness.  Sherman  was  held  off  from 
Atlanta,  was  seldom  heard  from,  might 
be  marching  into  disaster.  Actually  the 
armies  had  already  won  the  war,  but  the 
nation  sank  steadily  closer  to  losing  it  from 
weariness,  hope  deferred,  the  creeping 
paralysis  of  despair.  It  was  the  moment 
of  weakest  nerve.  The  national  will 
flagged  toward  extinction.  And,  with  a 
sizable  chance  that  the  United  States 
might  perish  right  then,  in  August  of 
1864,  there  was  a  Presidential  campaign 
to  be  fought.  In  all  our  history  there 
have  been  exactly  three  generals  who 
could  see  themselves  or  whom  others 
could  see  as  military  dictators.  A  schism 
in  Lincoln's  party  had  nominated  one  of 
them  against  him,  the  arch-fool  Fremont. 
It  was  certain  that  the  opposition  party 
in  a  week  or  so  would  nominate  another 
of  them,  McClellan,  on  a  platform  which 
would  declare  that  the  war  was  already 
lost.  Some  of  the  staunchest  minds  re- 
maining among  Lincoln's  supporters  caved 
and  panicked  under  the  weight  of  sus- 
pense. They  agreed  with  the  appeasers, 
the  supporters  of  a  negotiated  peace,  that 
the  war  was  lost — or  at  least  that  it  must 
soon  be  lost  if  Lincoln  rem-ained  in  office. 
So  they  formally  called  on  him  to  with- 
draw from  the  campaign  in  favor  of  some 
stronger  man,  some  man  who  could  give 
them  some  faint  hope  of  winning.  One 
thinks  over  these  despairers  name  by 
name;  one  wonders  just  which  man  they 
could  have  had  in  mind. 

It  was  on  August  23rd  that  Lincoln 
wrote  a  few  lines,  sealed  them  up,  and  had 
his  Cabinet  sign  their  names  on  the  back 
without  reading  them.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  documents  ever  written 
by  a  President.  Lincoln's  awareness  of 
the  failure  of  national  morale  was  behind 
it.     It  acknowledged  the  probability  of 


his  defeat  in  the  coming  election.  In  the 
event  of  that  defeat  it  pledged  the  Admin- 
istration to  co-operate  with  the  President- 
elect "to  save  the  Union  between  the 
election  and  the  inauguration,  as  he  will 
have  secured  his  election  on  such  ground 
that  he  cannot  possibly  save  it  afterward." 

It  happened  that  two  Ohio  regiments 
passed  through  Washington  just  then,  one 
the  evening  before  Lincoln  wrote  that 
memorandum,  the  other  two  days  earlier. 
They  were  on  their  way  home  from  the 
front  for  discharge.  Like  many  regi- 
ments, they  paraded  through  the  town  to 
the  White  House  and,  as  he  often  did,  he 
came  out  to  acknowledge  their  cheers.  It 
is  a  casual,  commonplace  scene,  the  bare- 
headed country  lawyer,  the  war  President, 
speaking  in  the  warm  August  evening  to 
young  men  who  were  veterans  of  the  war, 
speaking  informally,  without  the  exalta- 
tion of  those  heroic  texts  now  carved  on  the 
Memorial. 

It  is  not  merely  for  the  day  but  for  all 
time  to  come,  Lincoln  truthfully  told  the 
166th  Ohio,  that  we  should  perpetuate  for 
our  children's  children  that  great  and 
free  government  which  we  have  enjoyed 
all  our  life.  It  is  for  this  that  the  struggle 
should  be  maintained,  that  we  may  not 
lose  our  birthrights.  The  nation,  Lincoln 
said,  speaking  unemphatically  in  the  eve- 
ning, the  nation  is  worth  fighting  for.  And 
he  said  to  the  164th  Ohio,  in  this  great 
struggle  this  form  of  government,  and 
every  form  of  government,  is  endangered 
if  our  enemies  succeed.  There  may  be 
mistakes  made  sometimes,  and  things  may 
be  done  wrong.  But  .  .  .  this  struggle 
is  too  large  for  you  to  be  diverted  from  it 
by  any  small  matter.  When  you  return 
to  your  homes,  rise  up  to  the  height  of  a 
generation  of  men  worthy  of  a  free  gov- 
ernment, and  we  will  carry  out  the  great 
work  we  have  commenced. 

The  words  have  none  of  the  music  of  the 
Second  Inaugural.  They  were  spoken 
from  the  shadow  of  the  most  terrible  threat 
ever  made  against  us,  to  young  veterans, 
seventy-nine  years  ago.  .  •  .  Washington 
is  still  Lincoln's  city. 


THE     DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED 
WORLD    HISTORY 


MAURICE     ZOLOTOW 


THIS  IS  the  story  of  a  man  and  an  idea. 
The  man  is  a  New  York  dentist 
named  Maurice  William;  the  idea — 
which  he  expressed  in  a  397-page  book 
called  The  Social  Interpretation  of  History^ 
published  at  his  own  expense  in  1921  and 
practically  unnoticed  by  anyone  in  Amer- 
ica— abruptly  altered  the  political  philos- 
ophy of  Sun  Yat-sen,  the  founder  of 
the  Chinese  Republic,  and,  as  a  result, 
changed  the  whole  history  of  Asia  and  the 
modern  world. 

William,  the  son  of  a  Russian  immi- 
grant whose  name  had  been  Ilyin  before 
the  immigration  inspectors  went  to  work 
on  it,  grew  up  in  a  mean,  disorderly 
neighborhood  in  downtown  Brooklyn. 
His  father — a  once-prosperous  merchant 
tailor  of  Kharkov — had  brought  his  wife 
and  ten  children  to  America  in  1889,  when 
Maurice  was  eight  years  old,  and  they  had 
found  a  five-room  cold-water  flat  in  one  of 
the  red-brick  tenements  on  Navy  Street. 
The  district  was  dotted  with  saloons  and 
houses  of  prostitution;  there  were  no  play- 
grounds for  the  swarms  of  children.  The 
William  flat  had  no  sink  in  the  kitchen 
(they  washed  dishes  out  in  the  hall)  and 
no  toilet  (they  shared  a  latrine  in  the  yard 
with  two  other  families). 

Maurice  attended  public  school,  selling 
newspapers   after   hours   and   picking   up 


extra  pennies  on  odd  jobs  on  Saturdays 
and  in  the  evenings.  He  did  well  at 
school,  but  a  few  months  before  gradua- 
tion the  family  needed  money  so  badly 
that  he  had  to  leave  and  go  to  work. 

When  he  was  sixteen  he  joined  the 
Socialist-Labor  Party.  Two  of  his  older 
brothers  had  been  active  socialists  ever 
since  coming  to  this  country;  it  had  been 
their  participation  in  the  anti-tzarist  ter- 
rorist movement  in  Russia  during  the 
eighties  which  had  brought  the  whole 
family  under  suspicion  and  had  prompted 
wealthy  customers  to  desert  Ilyin  senior. 
But  life  in  Brooklyn  as  Maurice  had 
known  it  was  a  sufficiently  stringent  argu- 
ment for  socialism. 

The  Brooklyn  department  of  the  So- 
cialist-Labor Party,  which  in  1896  con- 
sisted of  about  forty-five  comrades,  met 
several  nights  a  week  in  Mrs.  Chambers' 
School  of  Dramatics  and  Ballroom  Danc- 
ing, 515  Fulton  Street.  Its  most  color- 
ful member  was  Charles  H.  Matchett,  a 
tall,  picturesque  gentleman,  part  Iroquois 
Indian,  who  ran  for  President  in  1896  and 
received  seventy-four  thousand  votes.  He 
lived  right  across  the  street  from  the  Wil- 
liams, working  by  day  as  a  linesman  for 
the  Telephone  Company,  and  in  the  eve- 
nings— especially  in  spring — orating  on 
socialism  to  crowds  at  the  corner  of  Fulton 
Street  and  Flatbush  Avenue. 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CIJy\NGED    VVORIJ)    illS'lORY 


41 


Maurice  used  to  go  along.  He  and 
MatchcU  would  slop  at  party  hcadcjuru-- 
ters  and  pick  up  a  collapsible  speaker's 
stand  and  a  large  banner  inscribed  all 

WELCOME SOCIALIST-LABOR    PARTY    in    big 

red  letters.  He  would  carry  also  a  bundle 
of  pamphlets  which  sold  for  a  penny  each. 
One  of  the  most  popular  pamphlets  was 
"Think — or  Surrender!"  by  Ben  Hanford, 
a  Fulton  Street  socialist  who  ran  with 
Eugene  V.  Debs  on  the  Socialist  ticket  in 
1904. 

Maurice  held  the  banner  aloft  in  one 
hand  during  Matchett's  oratory,  and  in  his 
other  perspiring  hand  he  clutched  a  hun- 
dred copies  of  "Think — or  Surrender!" 
Matchett  made  very  fine  speeches  when  he 
was  worked  up  into  a  frenzy;  and  he  was 
always  being  worked  up  into  a  frenzy. 
His  favorite  phrase  was:  "Root  and  branch 
— you  cannot  patch  up  the  capitalist  sys- 
tem— you  must  tear  it  out  root  and 
branch."  He  would  raise  a  clenched  fist 
and  cry,  "William  Jennings  Bryan,  friends, 
is  the  mouthpiece  of  the  capitalist  class. 
The  Democratic  and  the  Republican  Par- 
ties are  Tweedledee  and  Tweedledum. 
Free  silver  is  a  fake  issue  to  lure  away  the 
minds  of  the  working  class  from  the  only 
vital  issue  of  the  day.  Reform — or  Revo- 
lution.    There  are  no  two  ways  about  it." 

The  Bryan  forces  often  sent  emissaries 
over  to  the  Brooklyn  socialists  in  1896  to 
enlist  their  votes  for  the  silver-tongued 
orator.  One  Sunday  evening  Darwin 
Meserole,  then  a  youthful  disciple  of 
Bryan  and  now  a  confirmed  socialist, 
dropped  over  to  the  weekly  socialist 
forum  on  Fulton  Street  and  argued  in 
favor  of  voting  for  Bryan.  William,  re- 
plying to  Meserole,  timidly  made  his 
maiden  speech. 

"We  socialists,"  he  proudly  explained, 
"are  not  interested  in  any  petty  quarrels 
either  of  you  capitalist  parties  may  have. 
We  don't  care  to  dissipate  our  strength  by 
supporting  any  capitalist  parties.  We  ex- 
pect that  in  the  next  ten  or  fifteen  years 
we  will  be  living  in  a  socialist  society,  so 
why  should  we  waste  our  time  and  en- 
ergy?" Socialism  did  not  seem  a  Utopian 
dream  in  1896. 

"At  that  time,"  recalls  Dr.  William,  "I 
was  absolutely  convinced  that  the  only 
thing  worth  living  for  was   the  socialist 


movement.  We  lived  in  our  own  little 
world.  We  thought  we  would  bring 
about  a  social  revolution  by  talking." 
Although  he  had  read  many  pamphlets, 
William  had  not  bothered  to  investigate 
firsthand  the  classics  of  Marx  and  Engels. 
He  was  willing  to  let  Daniel  De  Leon, 
Morris  Hillquit,  and  the  other  theoreti- 
cians of  American  socialism  plow  through 
the  difiicult  books  and  do  his  thinking  for 
him. 

Although  everybody  at  socialist  head- 
quarters believed  that  the  revolution  was 
right  around  the  corner,  Brooklyn,  on  the 
whole,  was  skeptical.  In  the  1898  elec- 
tion there  the  socialists  received  only  4,145 
votes.  But  they  consoled  themselves  with 
the  reflection  that  the  capitalist  machine- 
politicians  had  unquestionably  stolen  thou- 
sands of  socialist  votes. 

Right  after  the  election  the  party  was 
torn  by  a  feud  which  threatened  to  wreck 
it  completely.  The  left  wing,  led  by  De 
Leon,  and  the  right  wing,  led  by  Hillquit, 
were  at  loggerheads.  The  quarrels  and 
the  confusion  upset  William  for  the  first 
time  in  his  intellectual  life.  There  was 
apparently  a  snake  in  the  socialist  garden 
of  Eden.  But  who  was  the  snake?  He 
now  began  to  investigate  basic  socialist 
theory  and  to  ask  himself  some  funda- 
mental questions.  Now,  in  his  free  hours, 
instead  of  carrying  banners,  he  began  to 
read  Marx,  Engels,  and  weighty  books  on 
economics  and  political  science.  The  so- 
cialists seemed  to  have  the  answer  to  the 
question  of  what  was  wrong  with  society 
and  why.  But  how  explain  the  inter- 
necine disagreements?  "I  tried  to  read 
every  book  on  economics  I  could  find, 
Adam  Smith,  Ricardo,  Lasalle,"  recalls 
William.  "My  quest  never  seemed  to 
have  an  ending.  Nothing  I  found  really 
satisfied  me.  Too  many  questions  of 
everyday  life,  what  the  socialists  dismissed 
under  the  heading  of  'tactics,'  disturbed 
me.  But  while  the  question  of  how  so- 
cialist dogmas  could  be  applied  to  the 
American  scene  continued  to  bother  me, 
I  still  did  not  question  the  doctrines  of 
Marx.  I  accepted  the  reality  of  the  class 
struggle  and  the  irrepressible  enmity  of 
employer  and  worker.  I  accepted  Marx's 
theory  of  profit  as  surplus  value  wrung 
from  the  worker  at  the  point  of  production. 


42 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


I  accepted  the  necessity  of  an  immediate 
socialization  of  all  the  means  of  produc- 
tion— the  socialist  commonwealth.  But 
after  the  split,  the  old  confidence,  the  old 
blind  faith  in  my  leaders  and  their  catch- 
words began  to  weaken.  Deep  down  in 
my  conscience,  I  felt  chaos." 

In  his  personal  life  there  was  chaos  too. 
He  was  trying  to  find  some  way  of  earning 
a  living  in  which  he  could  be  of  service  to 
the  working  class  during  this  interim  pe- 
riod till  socialism  had  conquered  America. 
He  decided  to  become  a  lawyer,  mainly 
because  Morris  Hillquit,  the  leader  of  the 
right-wing  socialists,  was  a  lawyer  and  was 
always  defending  pickets,  rioters,  and 
other  victims  of  the  police.  When  he 
was  nineteen  he  enrolled  in  the  evening 
classes  at  St.  John's  Law  School;  during 
the  daytime  he  was  an  insurance  collec- 
tor for  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance 
Company. 

That  fall  during  his  first  semester  at  law 
school  he  went  to  a  lecture  on  socialism 
by  Meyer  London.  London,  who  later 
became  the  first  and  only  Socialist  con- 
gressman from  New  York  City,  was  the 
idol  of  the  lower  East  Side.  He  was  a 
more  human  person  than  most  socialists, 
with  a  brisk  sense  of  humor,  and  quizzical 
eyes  that  smiled  through  thick  glasses. 
He  was  also  a  lawyer,  having  been  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar  two  years  before.  But 
London,  who  had  not  practiced  the  law 
long  enough  to  take  its  duplicities  for 
granted,  was  in  a  state  of  profound  disgust 
with  his  profession.  Although  it  did  not 
have  much  to  do  with  the  theme  of  his  lec- 
ture, he  threw  in  a  criticism  of  lawyers. 

"Lawyers,"  said  London,  "are  para- 
sites. Under  a  socialist  system  of  society 
there  will  be  no  place  for  lawyers.  For  a 
five-dollar  bill  a  lawyer  will  swear  that  his 
mother  is  a  Saratoga  chicken." 

William  did  not  know  what  a  Saratoga 
chicken  was,  but  he  had  a  deep  respect  for 
the  sincerity  of  London's  opinions.  Lon- 
don, after  all,  was  a  lawyer  himself  and  he 
should  know  what  he  was  talking  about. 
William  walked  out  of  that  meeting 
stunned.  He  was  literally,  physically 
dizzy.  "I  don't  know  how  I  managed  to 
stagger  home,"  he  says.  "Here  I  was  a 
socialist  and  living  a  lie,  preparing  myself 
to  become  a  parasite.     The  inconsistency 


between  my  theories  and  my  life  shocked 
me." 

He  was  tormented  by  this  contradiction 
for  many  days  but  didn't  know  what  to  do 
about  it.  Then  one  day  he  went  to  his 
dentist  to  have  a  tooth  extracted.  The 
dentist  was  also  a  socialist,  Charles  L. 
Furman.  William  suddenly  found  him- 
self relaxing  and  pouring  out  his  heart. 
"I  can't  see  any  purpose  in  my  going  to 
college,  in  all  my  studies,"  he  said. 
"What  can  an  honest  socialist  do  in  this 
world?" 

Without  hesitating,  Furman  replied: 
"Become  a  dentist,  comrade.  Under  the 
most  perfect  system  of  society  there  will 
still  be  rotten  teeth." 


II 

THE  idea  of  practicing  one  of  the  heal- 
ing arts  had  never  occurred  to  William, 
but  he  took  to  the  idea  forthwith.  He  im- 
mediately stopped  attending  law  classes  at 
St.  John's  and  found  a  new  job  as  a  travel- 
ing salesman  so  that  he  could  save  money 
and  go  to  a  dental  school  in  the  daytime. 
For  about  four  years  he  was  on  the  road 
taking  orders  for  made-to-measure  clothes 
and  at  the  same  time  enlarging  his  concept 
of  the  geography  and  social  strata  of 
America. 

In  1904,  having  saved  $2,500,  he  en- 
tered the  New  York  College  of  Dentistry. 
In  1907  he  received  his  degree  and  was 
licensed  by  the  State  Board  of  Regents 
to  practice.  Now  twenty-six  years  old,  he 
did  not  make  a  striking  appearance.  He 
was  a  slender  chap  who  walked  in  a  shy, 
shambling  manner,  and  his  shoulders  were 
rounded  because  of  lack  of  exercise.  His 
face  was  long,  oval,  and  distinguished  by 
oversize  ears.  His  thick  hair  was  parted 
in  the  center,  drawing  attention  to  his 
large,  luminous  eyes,  eyes  full  of  illusion. 
He  could  hardly  wait  until,  as  a  dentist, 
he  could  begin  to  help  suffering  humanity. 
In  those  days  the  poor  sections  of  New 
York  were  serviced  by  dental  parlors. 
The  dental  parlors  advertised  for  young 
dentists  in  the  same  way  that  factories  ad- 
vertised for  lathe-hands.  William  an- 
swered an  advertisement  in  the  New  Tork 
World  for  a  registered  dentist,  good  con- 
tractor.    The  teachers  at  the  dental  col- 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORLD    HISTORY 


43 


lege  had  never  mentioned  contracting,  but 
he  was  sure  he  could  do  it.  While  he 
had  not  heard  anyone  speak  favorably  of 
the  dental  parlors,  he  decided  to  answer 
the  advertisement  since  he  had  no  money 
to  invest  in  the  revolving  chairs,  drilling 
machine,  X-ray  instruments,  and  the 
other  expensive  equipment  necessary  to 
open  a  private  oflicc. 

It  was  a  warm  morning  in  July  when  he 
took  the  Fulton  Street  ferry  over  to  Man- 
hattan, and  rode  uptown  to  Fourteenth 
Street  on  the  trolley.  He  was  sweating 
under  his  stiff  collar  as  he  walked  upstairs 
to  the  main  offices  of  the  Guarantee  Den- 
tal Parlors,  whose  slogan  was,  "All  our 
work  guaranteed  to  last  for  twenty  years." 

Although  it  seemed  contrary  to  pro- 
fessional ethics,  the  Guarantee  Dental 
Parlors,  which  had  several  branches  in 
Brooklyn,  the  Bronx,  and  Manhattan,  ad- 
vertised heavily  in  the  World  and  the  Eve- 
ning Journal.  They  made  broader  claims 
than  any  other  dental  parlor,  the  others 
guaranteeing  their  work  for  ten  years  only. 
The  branch  offices  were  agleam  with  flash- 
ing electric  signs,  huge  painted  strips  in  all 
the  windows  repeating  the  adjective  pain- 
less.   .    .    .    PAINLESS.    .    .    .    PAINLESS. 

This  was  the  era  when  a  dentist's  office 
was  distinguished  by  the  mammoth  re- 
production of  a  molar,  sculptured  out  of 
wood  and  painted  a  flashing  gilt,  which 
hung  over  the  entrance.  About  ten  per 
cent  of  the  ethical  dentists  managed  to 
earn  a  decent  income;  the.  rest  either  ex- 
perienced the  qualms  of  malnutrition  or 
aped  the  trumpet-blowing  tactics  of  the 
dental  parlors.  In  the  lower  middle-class 
parts  of  the  city  an  ethical  dentist  worked 
twelve  to  fourteen  hours  a  day  to  eke  out  a 
livelihood.  In  the  poorer  sections  he  was 
defeated  from  the  start.  He  was  not  only 
struggling  against  the  dental  parlors,  but 
he  was  also  competing  against  unlicensed 
dentists,  men  and  women  who  had  never 
studied  the  science. 

When  young  Dr.  William  nervously  en- 
tered the  main  office  of  the  Guarantee 
Dental  Parlors  he  was  imbued  with  the 
sense  of  embarking  on  a  worthy  crusade. 
In  the  outer  office,  whose  chief  decoration 
was  a  sporting  print  of  Snapper  Garrison 
riding  the  winner  of  the  Derby  at  Epsom 
DownSj  a  girl  sat  on  a  table  waving  a  paper 


fan.  He  told  her  his  name  and  she  sig- 
naled him  to  go  inside.  He  walked 
through  a  beaded  curtain  that  tinkled  as 
he  passed.  He  patted  his  inside  pocket  to 
see  if  his  license  was  safely  there. 

Inside,  he  found  another  lady,  in- 
terviewing several  young  dentists.  He 
awaited  his  turn.  He  was  afraid  that  he 
had  perhaps  arrived  too  late  and  that  the 
job  was  filled.  But  the  lady  was  hiring 
them  as  fast  as  they  came  up.  She  did 
not  ask  to  see  anyone's  license.  When 
it  was  his  turn  to  be  interviewed  she  stud- 
ied him  up  and  down.  She  was  fat,  with  a 
mustache  and  gold  earrings,  and  looked 
as  if  she  were  wearing  a  wig.  She  was  not 
dressed  in  a  nurse's  uniform  but  in  a  red 
crepe  de  chine  dress  over  which  she  wore 
what  seemed  to  be  an  expensive  fur  jacket. 
She  was  sweating  very  badly.  On  the 
wall  there  were  a  photograph  of  James  J. 
Corbett  and  a  print  of  the  Sullivan-Cor- 
bett  match.  William  felt  a  shiver  of  un- 
easiness. The  fat  lady's  eyes  gleamed 
shrewdly  as  she  measured  the  young 
dentist. 

"Ever  done  dental  work  before?"  she  in- 
quired in  a  bored  tone. 

He  shook  his  head.  She  wanted  to 
know  if  he  had  ever  done  any  other  kind  of 
work  before  studying  dentistry.  He  stam- 
mered out  that  he  had  been  on  the  road 
for  a  made-to-measure  suit  company. 

She  was  amused.  *T  think  you  could 
make  a  smart  operator,"  she  purred. 
"The  tooth  game  is  a  business,  young  man, 
like  selling  suits;  only  you're  selling  bridge- 
work  or  plates.  You  think  you  could  be 
a  good  operator?" 

He  said  he  would  try  very  strenuously 
and  added  that  he  needed  the  money  in 
order  to  get  married. 

"We  can  use  smart  young  men  like  you 
that  want  to  get  married  and  set  up  a  nest 
and  have  a  fine  future.  When  a  patient 
comes  in  you  give  her  an  estimate  on  the 
program  for  her  work,  and  that  is  the 
contract.  We  don't  take  cash  in  a  lump 
sum.  Easy  payments  is  our  motto.  And 
nothing  cheap  about  our  fillings  either — 
22-karat  gold."  She  chuckled.  "Not 
14,  not  18,  but  22-karat  gold.  You  re- 
member that,  Dr.  William." 

He  began  work  the  next  morning  at  the 
149th  Street  and  Third  Avenue  branch. 


44 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


His  hours  were  11  a.m.  to  10  p.m.  He 
received  a  twenty-dollar  salary,  and  ten 
per  cent  of  his  contracts.  The  branch 
office  was  in  charge  of  another  fat  lady 
with  calculating  eyes.  She  supervised 
three  nurses  and  three  dentists.  When  a 
patient  walked  in,  whichever  of  the  three 
dentists  was  free  was  supposed  to  take 
over. 

William's  first  patient  was  a  carpenter, 
a  brute  of  a  man  in  a  blue  work  shirt, 
dirty  corduroy  pants,  and  muddy  laced-up 
boots.  William  looked  into  the  patient's 
mouth.  He  found  two  bad  cavities,  one 
so  deep  that  he  would  have  to  drill  away 
half  the  surface  of  enamel,  prepare  a 
foundation,  and  set  up  a  gold  inlay.  He 
found  also  a  wisdom  tooth  so  badly  cor- 
roded that  it  would  have  to  be  removed 
before  its  infection  spread  to  the  gums. 
The  man  asked  in  badly  broken  English 
how  it  was  coming  along. 

"Your  teeth  are  in  a  very  sad  condition, 
mister,"  said  William.  "You  should  have 
come  to  a  dentist  a  long  time  ago." 

The  man  stared  up  wonderingly.  "But 
I  been  here  t'ree,  four  time  already, 
doc." 

William  looked  up  the  man's  records 
and  found  this  was  his  sixth  visit.  He 
saw  that  the  man  was  down  for  three 
extractions,  a  gold  cap,  a  gold  inlay. 
The  contract  called  for  $185  and  the  man 
had  already  paid  $50.  Apparently  he 
had  received  no  treatment.  William  asked 
him  what  the  other  dentists  had  done  on 
his  previous  visits.  Oh,  they  had  cleaned 
it  around  and  put  a  piece  of  cotton  in  and 
the  cotton  she  fell  out,  but  it  never  hurt, 
it  was  absolutely  one  hundred  per  cent 
right  what  it  say  on  the  sign  and  in 
the  paper  about  painless  hundred-per 
cent.  .  .  . 

As  William  treated  more  and  more 
patients  he  found  that  this  case  was  typ- 
ical. He  discovered  that  his  patients  had 
never  heard  of  mouth  hygiene — they 
never  brushed  their  teeth  or  cleaned  them 
with  dental  floss.  Many  of  them,  who 
had  been  reading  the  advertisements  of 
dental  parlors  for  years,  were  even  under 
the  impression  that  the  natural  teeth  were 
inefficient  and  that  it  was  a  smart  idea  to 
have  all  your  teeth  pulled  and  have  a  set 
of  false  teeth,  which  could  never  decay. 


One  Saturday  evening  as  William  was 
finishing  the  day's  work  and  was  prepar- 
ing to  leave,  Dr.  Stuker,  an  older  man  who 
had  been  employed  by  the  Guarantee 
Dental  Parlors  for  many  years,  was  leav- 
ing also  and  he  invited  William  to  stop 
at  the  corner  saloon  for  a  nightcap.  Wil- 
liam did  not  drink,  but  his  mind  was  teem- 
ing with  questions.  They  sat  at  the  bar 
and  he  ordered  a  glass  of  vichy  water. 
Dr.  Stuker  rapidly  downed  two  ponies 
of  brandy.  He  munched  on  a  piece  of 
cheese  and  sipped  a  third  brandy. 

"This  is  more  like  it,  man,"  he  mut- 
tered to  himself.  Dr.  Stuker  was  a  dig- 
nified gentleman  in  a  state  of  slow  decay. 
He  was  divorced  from  his  wife  and  sup- 
ported her  and  two  children.  He  lived 
by  himself  and  cooked  his  own  meals. 
His  coat  and  tie  were  always  soiled  with 
grease  spots. 

After  his  fourth  brandy  Dr.  Stuker 
thawed  out.  "My  boy,"  he  began,  "I'm 
glad  you're  here  with  me  to-night.  We're 
friends.  I  like  you  and  wish  to  give  you 
the  benefit  of  my  experience.  I  have 
been  hearing  reports  about  you,  b-a-a-ad 
reports.  They  say  you  are  a  slow  op- 
erator. They  say  you  are  not  a  good 
contractor,  accordin'  to  Missus  Kindle- 
sheim."  As  his  tongue  relaxed  Dr.  Stuker 
began  to  reveal  the  tricks  of  the  trade. 
"Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  cotton-change, 
my  friend?  That's  the  secret  of  our  busi- 
ness. You  don't  waste  any  time  ex- 
cavatin'  around  or  filiin'  it  up,  you  just 
swab  it  around  and  you  push  in  a  squinch 
of  cotton."  He  illustrated  the  size  of  a 
squinch  by  holding  up  his  thumb  and 
index  finger  in  the  air.  "If  they  com- 
plain of  an  ache  you  give  'em  a  shot  of 
cocaine.  Cocaine,  young  man,  is  the 
foundation,  the  keystone,  and  likewise 
the  foundation  of  painless  dentistry.  If 
they  insist  on  it — pull  'er  out.  Makes 
'em  feel  good  when  they  see  the  old  tooth. 
They  don't  have  to  know  it  was  a  good 
tooth.  But  the  main  idea  is — work  fast. 
Fast  cash — and  out.  In  that  way  you  get 
the  most  credit  on  your  contract.  When 
they're  paid  up  let  another  dentist  worry 
about  doing  the  work." 

"Is  that  what  they  mean  when  they 
speak  of  a  good  contractor?'!  William 
asked. 


1 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORLD    HISTORY 


45 


"I   should   know.     Ain't   I   one  of  the 
best  in  the  business?" 


HI 

WILLIAM  rode  the  elevated  down  to 
Fulton  Street.  All  the  way  the 
clanking  of  the  trains  set  up  a  rhythm  in  his 
brain:  (^.an-such-things-be?  Can-such- 
things-bc?  Can  decent  human  beings  be 
so  cruel?  Of  course  it  was  the  outgrowth 
of  the  capitalist  system.  He  remembered 
vividly  that  place  in  the  Communist  Man- 
ifesto where  Marx  describes  how  the 
bourgeoisie  has  stripped  away  all  senti- 
ments and  left  no  other  nexus  between 
man  and  man  than  naked  selfishness  and 
callous  cash  payment.  The  bourgeoisie  has 
stripped  of  its  halo  every  occupation  hitherto 
honored  and  looked  up  to  with  reverent  awe. 
It  has  converted  the  physician^  the  lawyer.,  the 
priest^  the  poet,  the  man  oj  science.,  into  its  paid 
wage  laborers.  Dr.  Stuker  was  not  respon- 
sible for  his  cold-blooded  attitude.  He 
merely  reflected  the  mercenary  atmos- 
phere of  bourgeois  society. 

But  surely  other  groups — say  the  doc- 
tors— had  some  ethical  standards.  Even 
under  capitalism  there  was  a  better  and 
a  worse.  The  doctors  had  fought  the 
quacks  and  driven  them  out  of  business. 
As  a  socialist  William  felt  that  the  effort 
to  improve  the  people's  livelihood  implied 
that  each  social  agency  must  prove  the 
sincerity  of  the  principles  it  professed. 
When  a  socialist  found^  himself  in  an 
agency  that  might  help  the  workers  it  was 
his  duty  to  put  it  in  the  best  possible  con- 
dition for  helping  the  workers.  He  began 
to  visualize  the  outlines  of  an  adventurous 
way  to  reform  the  dental  profession.  .  .   . 

He  stuck  it  out  at  the  Guarantee  Dental 
Parlors  for  a  month.  It  was  a  month  in 
purgatory.  He  saw  things  that  fright- 
ened him — more  disease  and  ignorance 
than  he  believed  could  have  existed  and 
grinding  poverty  without  hope. 

He  left  finally  and  rented  the  practice 
of  a  dentist  who  had  recently  died.  "It 
was  an  ethical  practice,"  recalls  William, 
^'without  a  paying  patient."  Weeks 
would  pass  without  a  single  patient  paying 
him  for  work  done,  and  all  this  time  he 
thought  about  plans  for  wiping  out  dental 
parlors,   driving  illegal   and  unregistered 


dentists  out  of  the  profession,  and  of  per- 
suading the  State  Legislature  to  pass 
stiffer  laws  for  dentists. 

He  began  to  agitate  among  other  so- 
cialist dentists  whom  he  knew  in  the 
Party.  He  proposed  that  the  left-wing 
dentists  set  up  an  organization  in  rivalry 
with  the  staid  conservative  Second  Dis- 
trict Dental  Society,  and  that  they  loudly 
agitate  for  a  wholesale  reform  of  the  dental 
profession. 

In  1908  William  persuaded  three  of 
his  brothers  to  underwrite  a  note  and  he 
purchased  the  dental  equipment  neces- 
sary to  open  an  office  in  the  Grcenpoint 
section  of  Brooklyn,  where  he  remained 
for  some  twelve  years.  "I  saw  again  and 
again  that  the  dental  parlors  were  the 
standard  by  which  the  masses  gaged  the 
qualifications  of  a  dentist,"  he  says.  "I 
saw  that  the  reform  must  begin  by  elim- 
inating the  parlors." 

William  wrote  letters  to  every  dentist 
he  had  known  at  college;  he  secured 
a  list  of  socialist  dentists  at  party  head- 
quarters and  went  to  see  each  of  them 
himself  and  talked  endlessly.  Finally,  in 
1909,  he  organized  the  Eastern  District 
Dental  Society,  whose  slogan  was 
"Combating  Commercialized  Dentistry." 
Most  of  the  socialist  dentists  had  joined 
with  misgivings.  The  leading  Marxians 
among  the  dentists  were  Dr.  Maurice 
Caiman  and  Dr.  Herman  Chayes,  the 
inventor  of  Chayes  movable-removable 
bridgework.  They  jibed  at  William's 
schemes  for  social  reform  and  pointed  out, 
with  appropriate  quotations  from  Marx 
and  Kautsky,  that  you  could  not  eradicate 
the  surface  ailments  of  capitalist  society 
until  you  struck  at  the  roots.  It  was  an 
echo  of  Matchett's  1896  slogan: — "Root 
and  branch  .  .  .  you  cannot  reform  the 
capitalist  system;  you  must  tear  it  out 
root  and  branch." 

But  Dr.  William  continued  on  his  ob- 
stinate way.  Many  of  the  socialist  den- 
tists joined  his  Eastern  District  Dental 
Society  because  they  thought  it  provided 
a  camouflage  for  spreading  the  Marxian 
gospel  among  the  less  intellectual  breth- 
ren of  their  profession.  As  for  William's 
dream  of  oral  hygiene,  free  clinics,  the 
eradication  of  the  parlors — that  they  re- 
garded as  the  illusion  of  an  adolescent. 


46 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


William  needed  an  organ  to  spread  his 
opinions,  and  in  1912  the  opportunity 
offered  itself.  That  year  the  Intercol- 
legiate Socialist  Society  was  formed  by 
Upton  Sinclair,  Jack  London,  and  Walter 
Lippmann. 

A  branch  of  the  ISS  was  formed  at  the 
New  York  College  of  Dentistry,  and  the 
members  were  fired  by  William's  zeal. 
A  tiny  six-page  magazine,  The  Progres- 
sive Dentist,  was  started.  The  fight  on 
the  dental  quacks  now  became  open, 
unremitting  warfare.  Two  years  later 
four  of  the  local  dental  groups  in  the  five 
boroughs  amalgamated  into  the  Allied 
Dental  Council  of  Greater  New  York, 
and  Maurice  William  was  elected  its  first 
president.  Its  organ  was  The  Dental 
Outlook — a  periodical  combining  articles 
on  the  art  of  filling  a  tooth  with  exposes 
of  dental  quacks. 

From  three  sides  William  now  found 
himself  under  attack.  First,  there  was 
the  expected  enmity  from  the  dental 
parlors.  The  most  important  foe  of  the 
Allied  Dental  Council  was  that  eminent 
practitioner,  Painless  Parker,  whose  career 
reached  its  heights  in  Brooklyn  from  1910 
to  1915.  At  one  time  Parker  operated 
twelve  branches  in  New  York.  He  was  a 
master  of  showmanship  and  ballyhoo,  and 
made  painless  dentistry  a  household  word. 
He  would  drum  up  trade  with  a  specially 
built  open  wagon  drawn  by  four  snow-white 
stallions.  On  the  wagon  were  a  barber's 
chair,  dental  forceps,  and  a  hypodermic 
of  cocaine.  Painless  Parker,  who  later 
legally  changed  his  name  from  Edgar 
Randolph  Parker,  would  park  his  wagon 
at  a  busy  corner  and  proceed  to  deliver  a 
pungent  harangue  on  the  history,  art,  and 
science  of  dentistry,  in  which  his  specialty 
was  satiric  descriptions  of  the  old-fashioned 
dentist.  The  climax  of  his  lecture  came 
when  he  offered  to  give  a  free  demonstra- 
tion in  front  of  everybody's  eyes  to  prove 
that  his  method  of  treatment  was  posi- 
tively painless.  He  would  ask  if  there  was 
anybody  in  his  audience  who  had  a  tooth- 
ache. By  the  time  Painless  had  finished 
his  gruesome  oration  most  of  the  audience 
was  feeling  profound  twinges.  When 
Painless  had  secured  a  guinea  pig  he 
would  seat  him  in  the  chair,  shoot  a  lib- 
eral dose  of  cocaine  into  his  gums,  and 


proceed  coolly  to  extract  a  tooth.  Then 
he  would  flaunt  the  uprooted  molar  in  the 
air  and  shout  to  his  victim,  "Did  you  feel 
any  pain,  my  friend?"  And  the  victim, 
whose  entire  face  was  practically  paralyzed 
by  cocaine,  would  whisper,  "No." 

When  Dr.  William  began  to  take  com- 
mittees of  dentists  up  to  Albany  to  testify 
favorably  in  defense  of  such  legislation  as 
the  Seeley  Bill,  which  would  have  pre- 
vented any  layman  from  owning  or  con- 
trolling a  dental  establishment,  the  dental- 
parlor  operators  resisted  by  resorting  to 
legal  technicalities  and  threats  of  vio- 
lence. 

William's  fight  for  dental  reform  was  op- 
posed also,  at  first,  by  the  conservative 
dentists,  who  considered  the  Allied  Dental 
Council  a  gang  of  irritating  upstarts.  But 
finally  Dr.  William  took  his  case  directly  to 
them  and  opened  their  eyes  to  the  disease 
and  ignorance  among  the  poor  people. 
Even  though  they  still  voted  Republican 
and  thought  of  William  as  an  "anarchist" 
they  now  supported  his  program. 

But  what  shocked  him  most  of  all  was 
that  the  greatest  opposition  to  his  fight 
for  decent  dentistry  came  not  from  the 
parlors,  not  from  the  successful  surgeons 
of  Park  Avenue — but  from  his  fellow- 
socialists  in  the  Allied  Dental  Council. 
The  Marxians  largely  refused  to  back  up 
his  campaign,  refused  to  fight  for  State 
legislation  to  stiffen  standards  and  outlaw 
quacks.  They  said  it  would  dissipate 
their  energies  to  engage  in  such  a  super- 
ficial struggle.  Abolish  capitalism  and 
you  abolish  dental  parlors. 

William  called  his  opponents  "impos- 
sibilists,"  and  characterized  their  argu- 
ments as  "revolutionary  platitudes."  He 
was  fast  coming  to  the  conclusion  that 
most  Marxians  were  phrasemongers.  In 
1915,  just  as  the  Allied  Dental  Council  was 
beginning  to  develop  into  the  important 
social  group  that  it  is  to-day,  and  just  as 
The  Dental  Outlook  was  gaining  in  influ- 
ence, the  socialist  bloc  engaged  in  a  guer- 
rilla warfare  against  William  that  threat- 
ened to  split  the  whole  reform  movement 
in  two.  He  was  forced  to  write  a  series 
of  articles  for  The  Dental  Outlook:  "Must 
the  Reform  of  the  Dental  Profession  Wait 
for  the  Coming  of  Socialism?"  He  now 
had  to  reconsider  carefully  his  ideas  and 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORLD    HISTORY 


47 


set  them  down  in  a  coherent  argument] 
He  found  he  had  traveled  a  long  way  from 
the  dogmatic  youth  of  1896  who  had 
argued  against  William  J.  Bryan. 

Now  he  was  writing,  "When  I  realize 
to  what  an  extent  the  physical  condition 
of  the  working  class  is  undermined  as  a 
result  of  neglect  of  the  mouth,  I  am  com- 
pelled to  consider  a  socialist  dentist  no 
less  than  a  traitor  to  the  working  class 
and  the  socialist  movement  when  he  seems 
satisfied  to  permit  the  present  ignorance  to 
continue  until  the  arrival  of  socialism." 

His  Marxian  enemies  retorted  with  a 
threat  to  have  him  expelled  from  the 
Socialist  Party  as  a  renegade.  William 
took  his  case  directly  to  Algernon  Lee. 
He  had  known  Lee  since  the  days  when 
Lee  had  come  from  Minnesota,  a  young 
labor  journalist,  to  take  over  the  copy 
desk  of  the  socialist  newspaper  after  the 
split  in  1899.  Lee  was  now  an  influential 
leader  in  the  Socialist  Party.  He  studied 
the  arguments  pro  and  con,  and  pro- 
nounced his  benediction:  William  was  an 
orthodox  Marxist,  and  he  appended  sev- 
eral lines  from  Father  Marx  to  prove  his 
conclusion.  Dr.  Caiman  and  Dr.  Chayes 
did  not  dare  to  flout  the  authority  of 
Algernon  Lee,  and  the  socialist  sabotage 
of  dental  reform  died  down.  A  series 
of  State  laws  passed  after  1916  finally 
brought  decent  standards  to  the  dental 
profession,  and  by  1921  the  last  of  the 
dental  parlors  in  New  York  City  took  down 
its  gilded  wood  tooth  and  closed  its  doors. 

William  had  also  been  campaigning 
for  an  emphasis  in  public-school  educa- 
tion on  oral  hygiene.  He  wanted  to  have 
textbooks  that  included  advice  on  the 
care  of  the  teeth.  He  wanted  hygiene 
teachers  to  explain,  and  to  understand 
themselves,  that  healthy  teeth  were  the 
basis  of  general  well-being.  He  also  agi- 
tated for  free  dental  clinics  in  the  public 
schools.  He  appeared  before  the  Board 
of  Estimate  in  1914  to  argue  for  his  plan, 
but  the  Board  was  not  anxious  to  spend 
the  money.  So  out  of  their  own  pockets 
William  and  several  associates,  bought 
enough  dental  equipment  to  set  up  a 
clinic  in  P.S.I 09,  in  the  heart  of  Browns- 
ville. The  principal,  Oswald  Schlockow, 
was  a  forward-looking,  sensitive  teacher, 
and  he  gave  Dr.  William  a  free  hand. 


"Now  I  felt  I  had  really  found  myself," 
he  says.  "Found  myself  as  a  socialist  and 
as  a  man,  made  myself  a  useful  part  of  the 
society  in  which  I  was  living  now.  And 
I  was  living  my  socialism,  instead  of  talk- 
ing about  it  and  voting  for  Debs  every 
four  years." 

IV 

MEANWHILE  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
Europe  in  1914  had  split  the  inter- 
national socialist  movement  wide  open. 
Before  1914  the  socialists  almost  alone 
had  predicted  the  inevitability  of  an  in- 
ternational war  over  markets  and  raw 
materials.  They  had  said  over  and  over 
again  that  the  bourgeois  mode  of  produc- 
tion was  a  threat  to  world  peace.  Worker 
must  not  fight  worker  in  any  of  the  internal 
squabbles  of  capitalism.  The  world  was 
his  country,  and  the  red  banner  of  the 
International  was  the  only  one  to  which 
he  owed  allegiance. 

But  when  the  crisis  came  Dr:  Wil- 
liam was  appalled  to  see  the  Second 
(Socialist)  International  split  up  sharply 
on  national  lines,  rather  than  hold  to  class 
lines.  The  Socialist  members  in  the  Ger- 
man parliament  voted  for  war  budgets 
against  France.  The  French  Socialists  in 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  voted  for 
war  budgets  against  their  German 
"comrades." 

All  this  added  to  the  confusion  and 
doubt  which  had  troubled  William  when 
he  had  seen  Marxist  fighting  Marxist 
during  the  Socialist-Labor  Party  schism 
in  1899  and  when  Marxian  dentists  had 
sneered  at  his  "reformistic"  campaign  to 
clean  up  the  dental  profession.  Then 
in  1917  and  1918  came  the  Russian  and 
German  Revolutions,  in  both  of  which  he 
saw  again  not  a  united  front  of  socialists 
against  the  "common  enemy,"  but  frat- 
ricide: comrade  against  comrade. 

He  could  not  sleep  unless  he  solved 
these  contradictions.  Early  in  1918  he 
hired  an  assistant  to  take  care  of  his 
practice  on  Sunday,  Monday,  Tuesday, 
and  Wednesday.  During  these  days  he 
would  sit  in  his  study  at  87  Norman 
Avenue  in  Greenpoint  and  read.  In  the 
afternoon  hours  he  strode  through  the 
quiet  streets  of  Greenpoint,  thinking  as 
he  had  never  thought  before. 


48 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


He  read  and  annotated  about  four 
hundred  books  between  January  and  De- 
cember, 1918,  including  HiWquifs  Socialism 
in  Theory  and  Practise,  Lenin's  The  Soviets 
at  Work,  Karl  Kautsky's  The  Proletarian 
Revolution  and  The  Roaa  to  Power,  all  the 
works  of  Karl  Marx  and  Friedrich  Engels, 
the  works  of  many  minor  and  major 
Marxians,  and  of  the  bourgeois  critics 
of  Marxian  ideology.  He  analyzed  in- 
numerable party  manifestoes  and  hun- 
dreds of  editorials  in  the  socialist  New 
York  Call.  But  he  could  not  find  the 
answer  to  his  problem.  He  would  have 
to  formulate  his  own  answers.  .  .  . 

He  set  down  his  first,  fumbling  thoughts 
in  December,  1918.  His  home  and  office 
were  on  the  top  floor  of  a  three-storey 
building  on  the  corner  of  Norman  and 
Manhattan  Avenues,  in  the  shopping  cen- 
ter of  Greenpoint.  Greenpoint  was  then 
a  slow-moving,  tranquil  petty-bourgeois 
neighborhood.  The  atmosphere  was 
quaint,  like  that  of  a  small  Dutch  city. 

In  the  afternoons  William  would  take 
several  economics  books  and  a  sheaf  of 
yellow  paper  and  pencil  and  walk  to 
McCarran  Park,  a  small  square  with  cir- 
cular walks  and  a  few  scrubby  trees. 
There  on  a  bench,  as  the  slightly  pungent 
breeze  from  nearby  Gowanus  Canal  ruf- 
fled his  sheets  of  paper,  he  would  slowly 
write  in  pencil.  He  sweated  blood  over 
every  word,  often  taking  an  hour  over  a 
sentence  or  a  phrase.  Composition  did 
not  come  easily  to  William,  and  The  Social 
Interpretation  oj  History  is  not  a  fluid  classic 
of  prose  as  are  the  Marxian  classics  by 
Engels  or  Trotsky.  It  has  not  even  the 
scornful  bitterness  that  makes  Lenin's 
The  State  and  Capitalism  an  epic  of  invec- 
tive. The  Social  Interpretation  of  History  has 
the  flavor  of  an  American  primitive  paint- 
ing of  the  early  1 9th  century — crude  but 
sincere,  direct  and  powerful  for  all  its 
clumsiness.  Greenpoint  was  a  good  place 
to  write  the  book.  The  houses  were  low 
and  you  could  always  see  the  sky.  The 
tempo  was  even  and  unhurried;  it  was 
the  tempo  of  genial  Americans  going 
about  their  classless  business,  accepting 
their  useful  place  in  the  social  framework. 
He  began  to  write  the  book  in  December, 
1918,  and  it  was  completed  eight  months 
later,  in  July,  1919. 


Dr.  William  had  no  intention  then  of 
ever  submitting  his  ideas  to  the  general 
public.  It  was  to  be  a  book  by  a  social- 
ist, for  socialists  alone.  He  felt  deeply 
ashamed  of  the  fratricide  in  the  movement. 
He  did  not  want  to  wash  the  dirty  linen  of 
Marxism  in  public.  The  first  edition  of 
the  book  consisted  of  three  hundred  copies 
which  were  sent  only  to  socialist  leaders 
and  to  Marxian  theoreticians  of  every 
faction  on  the  right  wing  and  left  wing. 
He  hoped  to  receive  criticisms  or  that 
his  basic  concept  of  the  social-idea  would 
be  challenged. 

For  a  long  time  socialists  had  believed 
that  their  difl'erences  were  merely  difler- 
ences  of  opinion  as  to  the  tactics  of  achiev- 
ing socialism,  and  that  on  basic  principles 
both  wings  saw  eye  to  eye.  But  this, 
William  now  saw,  was  not  so.  He  wrote, 
"If  there  is  controversy  within  the  move- 
ment, if  there  is  factionalism  and  disrup- 
tion and  if  there  is  general  instability,  the 
cause  must  be  sought  not  in  diflerences 
over  policy  and  tactics  but  in  the  very 
principles  themselves." 

In  Marxian  thinking  the  class  struggle 
is  the  dynamo  of  all  history;  it  is  this 
conflict  between  an  owning  class  and  an 
exploited  class  which  results  in  progress. 
The  class  struggle,  in  turn,  is  caused  by 
the  fact  that  the  owning  class  under  cap- 
italism extracts  a  surplus  value  from  the 
worker,  exploiting  him  at  the  point  of 
production  by  returning  to  him  less  than 
the  value  of  what  he  produces  at  the 
machine. 

According  to  the  Marxist  theory  of  sur- 
plus value,  an  increase  in  profit  corre- 
sponds to  an  intenser  exploitation  of  the 
working  class.  In  fact  according  to  Marx, 
the  misery  of  the  working  class  would 
increase  as  time  went  by  until  it  became 
insufl'erable.  Yet  as  William  looked 
about  him  it  seemed  to  him  clear  that  in 
the  forty  years  since  Marx  had  died  the 
conditions  of  the  worker  had  become 
pleasanter.  He  worked  fewer  hours.  He 
was  protected  in  his  factory.  His  children 
received  a  free  education.  He  received 
many  medical  services  free.  If  he  was 
permanently  injured  on  the  job  he  re- 
ceived a  monthly  income  for  years.  And, 
oddly  enough,  this  increasing  happiness  of 
the   working  class   did   not  in   the  least 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORLD    HISTORY 


49 


disturb  the  profits  of  private  enterprise. 
Apparently  the  capitalist  made  more  money 
than  ever  out  of  the  surplus  value  of  his 
wage-slaves. 

In  this  country  both  the  Socialist-Labor 
Party  and  the  Socialist  Party  appealed  to 
the  workers  for  support.  "The  former," 
William  wrote  in  his  book,  "is  consistently 
Marxian  and  is  an  'incoherent  sect'  in 
consequence.  The  Socialist  Party,  on  the 
other  hand,  runs  its  campaigns  on  some 
such  issue  as  cheaper  milk  and  creates  a 
furore."  Perhaps  labor  ought  to  follow 
the  advice  of  the  purists  and  shun  social 
reforms.  But  whether  labor  ought  or 
ought  not  to  favor  reforms  was  beside  the 
point.  The  fact  was  that  the  votes  of 
laboring  men  were  always  solidly  lined  up 
in  support  of  reforms.  William  came  to 
the  unorthodox  conclusion  that  "capital 
and  labor  have  some  interests  in  common 
after  all!" 

Dr.  William  now  began  to  hew  out  his 
most  striking  concept.  What  had  in- 
spired the  worker  to  support  these  reforms 
was  his  interest  as  a  consumer.  William 
focused  a  new  light  on  the  worker.  Marx 
had  studied  him  only  from  the  perspective 
of  a  producer.  William  now  looked  at 
him  as  a  consumer. 

"The  masses  have  progressed  and  pro- 
gressed rapidly,  but  the  gains  came  to 
them  not  as  producers,  but  as  consumers, 
as  social  beings,"  he  said. 

An  examination  of  the  reforms  of  the 
past  forty  years  showed  a  continuous 
improvement  of  the  conditions  of  the 
masses.  Surely  this  was  social  evolution. 
But  there  was  nothing  in  Marx  to  explain 
it.  This  evolution  revolved  about  the 
consumer;  Marxism  concerned  itself  with 
the  producer.  This  evolution  developed 
round  consumable  wealth;  Marxism  was 
interested  in  productive  capital.  Social  evo- 
lution developed  out  of  exploitation  at  the 
point  of  consumption,  Marxism  out  of  ex- 
ploitation at  the  point  oi production.  Social 
evolution  was  concerned  with  the  dis- 
tribution of  consumable  wealth,  Marxism 
with  the  production  of  social  wealth. 

Marxism  was  based  on  an  irrepressible 
conflict  between  the  employer  and  worker. 
But  social  evolution  operated  in  response 
to  the  common  interests  of  employer  and 
worker ! 


The  political  agenda  which  Marx  lines 
up  for  the  proletariat  is  violent  revolution 
and  a  bloody  civil  war  against  the  police 
and  army  of  the  capitalist  class.  But 
"civil  wars  and  violent  revolutions  are 
no  Sunday-school  picnics,"  William  com- 
mented. "They  bring  chaos,  destruction, 
famine  and  ruthless  butchery.  Upon 
none  do  these  fall  with  more  crushing 
force  than  upon  the  proletariat.  .  .  .  And 
what  is  the  reward?  Socialism?  The 
Co-operative  Commonwealth?  Not  at 
all !  The  proletariat,  according  to  Marx, 
will  use  its  political  supremacy  to  wrest, 
by  degrees,  all  capital  from  the  bour- 
geoisie, and  then — and  then  .  .  .  proceed 
to  enact  a  series  of  social  reform  measures ! 
And  what  is  the  nature  of  the  reforms 
suggested  by  Marx?  Why  most  of  them 
haven't  the  slightest  bearing  on  exploita- 
tion at  the  point  of  production,  but  con- 
cern themselves  chiefly  with  the  welfare 
of  the  consumers,  as  social  beings." 

The  Social  Interpretation  of  Historjy  declares: 

"The  propelling  motive  power  behind 
all  social  change  is  the  quest  for  a  solution 
to  the  problem  of  existence. 

"All  social  advance  has  been  registered 
not  as  the  result  of  conflict  of  interest  at 
the  point  of  production,  but  in  response 
to  the  common  interests  of  the  majority 
as  social  beings. 

"The  economic  interests  of  the  major- 
ity as  consumers  coincide,  and  society 
advances  in  response  to  the  economic 
interests  of  the  majority  as  social  beings 
and  consumers. 

"This  majority  is  usually  formed  through 
a  combination  of  the  powerful  and  useful, 
as  against  the  remnants  of  the  past  and 
the  useless  of  the  present." 

When  our  political  leaders  misunder- 
stand the  driving  force  of  history  these 
statesmen  become  a  drag  on  social  prog- 
ress. So  that,  instead  of  social  progress — 
here  understood  as  an  increase  in  con- 
sumable wealth — we  witness  a  more  or 
less  temporary  regression  of  social  welfare. 
Civil  war  and  wars  between  nations  are 
examples  of  the  social  drag.  Civilized 
societies  arose  because  primitive  man  be- 
came aware  that  continuous  warfare,  with 
every  man  raising  a  clenched  fist  against 
his  brother,  was  a  less  efficient  way  of 
solving  the  problem  of  existence  than  the 


50 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


peaceful  community.  War  is  the  supreme 
anti-social  phenomenon,  and  because  the 
Marxian  version  of  socialism  emphasizes 
the  necessity  and  the  value  of  the  class 
war,  William  characterizes  it  as  anti- 
social. 

William  considers  that  the  most  im- 
portant chapter  of  his  book  is  Chapter 
XII,  "Expropriating  the  Expropriators." 
Here  he  traces  the  directions  that  social 
evolution  is  taking  in  our  time. 

"Although  the  operations  of  social  ev- 
olution in  capitalist  society  are  bewilder- 
ing in  their  complexity,"  he  wrote  in  1919, 
"it  is  yet  possible  to  discern  that  they  are 
working  out  in  four  well-defined  forms: 
(1)  social  and  industrial  reforms;  (2) 
public  ownership  of  the  means  of  trans- 
portation and  communication;  (3)  direct 
taxation;  (4)  governmental  activity  in  the 
distribution  of  consumable  wealth." 

The  majority  of  our  society — that  ma- 
jority formed  by  a  combination  of  the 
useful  and  powerful,  against  the  rem- 
nants of  the  past  and  the  useless  of  the 
present — is  unified  in  support  of  these 
four  methods,  William  asserts.  The  pow- 
erful of  the  present  are,  of  course,  the 
industrialists;  the  useful  are  the  factory 
workers,  the  ofllice  workers,  the  salesmen, 
the  advertising  copywriters,  the  efficiency 
experts,  the  foremen,  and  the  managers. 
The  useless  are  the  middlemen,  who  ham- 
per the  distribution  of  consumable  wealth 
by  their  parasitic  activity:  the  whole- 
saler, the  speculator,  the  trader;  the  rem- 
nants of  the  past  are,  for  example,  the 
owners  of  outmoded  forms  of  production 
or  transportation. 

Absolute  socialism,  William  saw,  was 
still  a  distant  prospect.  "Of  all  forms  of 
capital,"  he  wrote,  "producing  capital 
alone  has  not  outlived  its  usefulness.  It 
is  still  capable  of  advancing  social  progress 
and  in  consequence  is  the  powerful  ele- 
ment in  society  which,  in  combination 
with  the  useful,  forms  the  majority  neces- 
sary to  set  social  evolution  in  motion. 
When  society  assumes  the  economic  func- 
tions of  transportation,  communication, 
and  distribution,  the  barriers  which  these 
have  hitherto  offered  to  production  is 
removed.  Crises  and  over-production  be- 
come automatically  abolished.  Produc- 
tive capital  is  for  the  first  time  compelled 


to  answer  the  imperative  historic  question, 
'Can  you  fulfill  social  needs?  Can  you 
solve  the  basic  economic  problem,  the 
problem  of  existence,  to  the  solution 
of  which  all  social  history  has  been 
devoted?'  ". 


THE  limited  private  edition  of  The 
Social  Interpretation  of  History  was  pub- 
lished in  July,  1 920,  and  copies  were  sub- 
mitted to  the  leading  Marxian  thinkers  of 
this  country,  including  Upton  Sinclair, 
Morris  Hillquit,  Charles  Ruthenberg, 
Louis  Waldman,  Ben  Gitlow,  William  Z. 
Foster,  Max  Eastman,  and  others  of  every 
wing  and  warring  sect.  In  a  brief  pref- 
atory note,  William  told  his  fellow-Marx- 
ians, "Your  judgment  of  my  contribution 
will  be  gratefully  received." 

The  disillusionment  with  his  old  ideal 
had  not  been  a  cheerful  experience.  He 
rather  hoped  that  some  socialists  might 
be  able  to  tear  apart  his  arguments,  and 
find  errors  in  his  conclusions.  He  found 
himself  instead  bumping  hollowly  against 
a  wall  of  thick  silence.  The  orthodox 
Marxians  chose  neither  to  deny  nor  af- 
firm his  arguments.  He  received  no  com- 
ments and  only  one  acknowledgment — 
from  Louis  Waldman,  who  wrote:  "You 
caught  me  at  a  time  when  careful  reading 
of  the  book  is  almost  impossible.  ...  I 
am  awaiting  the  opportunity  to  be  able, 
from  a  careful  reading,  either  to  wallop 
hell  out  of  you,  or  acclaim  you  as  one  who 
has  done  what  others  tried  and  failed." 
Neither  the  walloping  nor  the  acclaim 
was  forthcoming. 

At  the  meetings  of  the  Socialist  Party 
branch  in  Brooklyn  to  which  he  belonged, 
the  plump,  long-faced  dentist  was  greeted 
by  his  old  comrades  with  shakings  of  the 
head,  with  silence.  Discouraged  by  this 
conspiracy  of  silence,  William  resigned 
from  the  Party  and  went  in  search  of  a 
bourgeois  publisher.  When  it  developed 
that  no  publisher  was  willing  to  bring 
the  book  out  on  a  royalty  basis,  William 
took  $2,000  of  his  savings  and  paid  for  a 
trade  edition  of  2,000  copies.  William 
was  not  only  the  writer  and  publisher,  he 
was  also  the  salesman.  He  put  a  price 
of  three  dollars  on  the  book.  He  took 
sample  copies  in  a  suitcase  and  called 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORIJ)    HISTORY 


51 


on  the  leading  bookstores,  assuring  tho 
buyers,  "I  can  recommend  this  book 
highly.  I  personally  know  the  author. 
You  will  hear  a  lot  about  this  book.'' 
His  first  customer  was  Brentano's,  which 
took  25  copies.  Baker  &  Taylor  took  25 
copies.  One  morning  he  dropped  over 
to  see  the  manager  of  the  American  News 
Company,  which,  he  had  heard,  sold  books 
throughout  the  country  and  throughout 
the  world.  He  tried  his  best  to  persuade 
the  manager  to  place  an  order.  'T  won't 
buy  it,"  said  the  manager,  "but  if  you 
want  to  leave  a  sample  copy  I'll  keep  it 
around  and  maybe  something  will  turn 
up." 

In  1921  William  received  a  letter  from 
Timothy  Y.  Jen,  a  Chinese  student  at 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  who  said 
they  had  discussed  the  book  in  seminar 
and  that  he  wanted  to  secure  a  copy  to 
take  back  with  him  to  China  for  use  in 
combating  communism.  Two  years 
later  the  manager  of  the  American  News 
Company  telephoned  William  and  asked 
him  to  quote  an  export  price  on  the  book, 
explaining  that  he  had  an  order  from 
China  for  39  copies.  (The  canny  man- 
ager sent  along  the  sample  copy  to  fill  out 
the  order  for  40  copies.)  Dr.  William 
wondered  about  this  strange  order  from 
China,  but  he  never  thought  of  asking 
the  American  News  Company  who  had 
placed  it. 

In  short,  the  general  edition  fared  no 
better  in  the  capitalist  press  than  the 
private  edition  had  fared  in  the  circles  of 
socialism.  It  was  reviewed  briefly  in  a 
few  papers.  But  that  was  all.  At  times, 
as  he  went  about  his  bicuspid  business, 
William  was  visited  by  a  presentiment 
that,  as  he  had  told  the  bookstores,  his 
volume  would  yet  make  a  noise  in  the 
world;  but  the  prospects  seemed  to  be 
growing  rather  dim  by  1928,  when  he 
happened  to  be  visiting  at  the  home  of 
a  cousin  of  his  wife,  and  the  cousin  men- 
tioned that  he,  in  turn,  had  recently 
visited  a  friend  of  his  who  was  an  instruc- 
tor in  history  at  the  College  of  the  City 
of  New  York.  During  a  lull  in  the  con- 
versation the  cousin  had  picked  up  an 
old  copy  of  Asia  magazine  and  had  no- 
ticed therein  an  article  which  stated  that 
Dr.  Sun  Yat-sen  had  been  influenced  by  a 


book  called  'J  he  Social  Interpretation  of 
History  by  a  ])r.  William.  "Didn't  you 
write  some  kind  of  a  book  once?"  in- 
quired the  cousin. 

The  next  day  William,  considerably 
excited,  hurried  over  to  the  Fifth  Avenue 
library  and  began  to  leaf  through  back 
numbers  of  Asia  until,  in  the  May,  1927, 
number,  he  found  an  article  by  John 
McCook  Roots,  who  had  recently  returned 
to  the  United  States  from  China.  The 
article  was  headed:  "Sun  Yat-senism, 
The  Doctrines  of  That  Leader  Whose 
Writings  Are  the  Kuomintang  Political 
Bible."  Transfixed,  frozen,  he  turned 
the  pages  and  saw  in  unmistakable  cold 
print: 

"On  the  question  of  Marxian  Socialism, 
or  Bolshevism,  Sun  Yat-sen  leaves  no 
room  for  doubt.  Sun  is  a  social  evolu- 
tionary. Marx  is  a  social  revolutionary. 
Marx  preaches  class  war.  Sun  believes 
in  the  necessity  for  co-operation  between 
the  classes.  He  bases  his  anti-Marxian 
position  almost  verbatim  upon  a  little- 
known  work  from  the  pen  of  an  American 
author — The  Social  Interpretation  of  History, 
by  Maurice  William,  published  in  1921. 
With  the  aid  of  this  volume,  which  is  a 
refutation  of  the  Marxian  economic  inter- 
pretation of  history,  he  refutes  the  father 
of  modern  Bolshevism  on  all  three  of  his 
principal  positions — the  economic  inter- 
pretation of  history,  the  theory  of  surplus 
value,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  class  war." 

The  significance  of  Sun's  reading  of 
William's  book  has  been  commented  on 
by  at  least  one  eminent  historian,  Dr. 
James  T.  Shotwell,  professor  of  history  at 
Columbia  University  and  former  chair- 
man of  the  Research  Committee  of  the 
Institute  of  Pacific  Relations,  who  wrote: 

Of  all  the  strange  chapters  in  the  history  of 
the  East  and  West,  there  can  be  none  stranger 
than  this,  that  the  founder  of  the  Chinese  Re- 
public and  the  spiritual  leader  of  the  new  China 
found  in  the  writings  of  an  unknown  American 
author  so  clear  a  statement  of  the  solution  of  the 
hardest  problem  in  his  political  philosophy  that 
he  made  the  American's  formulation  his  own. 
The  reading  by  Dr.  Sun  Yat-sen  of  The  Social 
Interpretation  of  History  may  yet  turn  out  to 
have  been  one  of  the  most  important  single  in- 
cidents in  the  history  of  modern  Asia,  for  the 
consequences  were  immediate  and  far-reaching 
and  have  only  just  begun  to  show  their  full  extent 
in  the  orientation  of  China. 


52 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


We  might  put  it  this  way.  You  cannot 
understand  modern  China's  political  and 
economic  aspirations  without  knowing 
something  about  the  Saji  Min  Chu  I,  a 
Chinese  phrase  meaning  The  Three  Prin- 
ciples of  the  People,  ifou  cannot  grasp 
the  implications  of  the  three  principles — 
which  are  nationalism,  democracy,  and 
livelihood — without  knowing  about  The 
Social  Interpretation  of  History. 

The  San  Min  Chu  I  are  sixteen  lectures 
which  Sun  delivered  to  the  members  of 
the  Kuomintang  in  Canton  in  1924.  Al- 
ready fifty-eight  years  old,  he  felt  it  would 
help  if  he  crystallized  the  thoughts  and 
experiences  of  his  forty  years  as  a  revolu- 
tionary. He  began  his  lectures  as  a 
thoroughgoing  Marxian.  He  had  effected 
a  close  rapprochement  with  Russia,  and 
in  the  mind  of  the  Kremlin  there  was  little 
doubt  that  China  would  shortly  be  a 
member  of  the  Union  of  Socialist  Soviet 
Republics.  In  the  early  part  of  1924  Sun 
seemed  to  be  tending  toward  a  more  and 
more  radical  interpretation  of  Karl  Marx. 
He  had  been  fascinated  by  the  ideas  of  the 
German  dialectician  for  many  years;  in 
1918  he  had  made  his  sympathies  clear 
when  he  sent  a  telegram  to  Lenin  con- 
gratulating him  on  the  success  of  the 
Russian  Revolution.  The  Russians,  on 
their  part,  reciprocated  with  assurances  of 
friendship  and  with  material  help  in  unify- 
ing China.  They  lent  China  millions  of 
dollars  to  organize  an  army,  and  Sun  sent 
the  young  Chiang  Kai-shek,  one  of  his 
secretaries,  to  Moscow  to  study  the  Red 
Army. 

Sun  returned  to  Canton  in  1923  and  in 
December  of  that  year  the  famous  Michael 
Borodin  and  General  Vassily  Bluecher  ar- 
rived from  Moscow.  Borodin  handled 
political  maneuvers  and  propaganda. 
Bluecher  set  up  the  \Vhampoo  Military 
Academy,  staffed  with  instructors  from 
the  Red  Army,  of  which  Chiang  was 
named  president.  Communists  seeped 
into  control  of  labor  unions  and  influenced 
the  press.  Borodin  advised  Dr.  Sun  on 
how  to  reorganize  the  Kuomintang  along 
the  centralized  lines  of  the  Bolshevik 
Party.  The  Communists  were  admitted 
to  auxiliary  membership  in  the  Kuomin- 
tang, and  Borodin  himself  was  appointed 
''High  Adviser*'  to  the  Central  Committee. 


It  was  against  this  background  of  com- 
munist collaboration  that  Dr.  Sun  started 
his  lectures.  ''Gentlemen,"  he  began,  "I 
have  come  here  to-day  to  speak  to  you 
about  the  San  Min  principles.  What  are 
the  San  Min  principles?  They  are,  by  the 
simplest  definition,  the  principles  for  our 
nation's  salvation." 

The  first  lecture  was  given  on  January 
27,  1924,  and  once  a  week  thereafter  for 
eleven  weeks  Sun  gave  other  lectures.  The 
first  twelve  concerned  nationalism  and 
democracy,  and  nobody  was  surprised  to 
hear  Sun  speak  as  a  confirmed  Marxist. 
He  spoke  of  the  class  struggle  as  a  historical 
fact.  He  described  socialism  as  the  im- 
mediate aim  of  the  Kuomintang,  and 
favored  the  socialization  of  land  and  pro- 
ductive capital.  On  April  26th,  he  had 
concluded  his  twelfth  lecture,  an  analysis 
of  democracy.  He  had  left  his  audience 
in  an  anti-capitalist  mood. 

But  on  May  3d  the  schedule  was  inter- 
rupted. No  lecture  was  given.  No  lec- 
ture was  given  the  following  week.  Sun 
had  secluded  himself  and  for  three  months 
was  studying  The  Social  Interpretation  of  His- 
tory. In  August,  when  he  came  out  of  his 
retreat,  he  shocked  his  listeners  by  making 
a  complete  intellectual  about-face.  He 
now  repudiated  Marxism  in  toto.  He  now 
declared  that  the  materialist  interpreta- 
tion of  history  was  a  great  mistake,  that  the 
theory  of  the  class  struggle  was  inaccurate, 
that  the  capitalist  and  working  classes  had 
common  interests,  and  that  it  was  by 
harmonizing  these  interests  that  China 
would  make  progress. 

Sun's  lectures,  developing  this  new  line 
of  thought,  were  interrupted  by  his  sudden 
death  from  cancer  early  in  1925.  But  the 
significance  of  his  final  credo  had  already 
made  a  deep  impression  on  many  Chinese, 
and  most  of  all  on  Chiang  Kai-shek. 
Chiang,  whom  Lin  Yutang  has  aptiy  de- 
scribed as  "the  master  strategist,"  did  not 
dare  to  risk  an  immediate  break  with  the 
communists.  They  were  too  strongly  en- 
trenched in  the  political  and  military  ma- 
chinery. He  knew,  also,  that  he  could 
use  them  in  accomplishing  the  "national 
salvation"  of  his  country. 

On  May  30,  1925,  the  modern  unifica- 
tion of  China  really  began.  A  strike  had 
taken    place    in    the    Shanghai    spinning 


THE    DENTIST    WHO    CHANGED    WORLD    HISTORY 


53 


mills.  The  police  fired  on  the  pickets. 
Forty  years  of  propaganda  to  instill  a  na- 
tional consciousness  into  the  minds  of  the 
family-conscious  Chinese  had  not  been 
wasted.  Suddenly,  at  the  Shanghai  out- 
rage, all  China  like  dry  hay  took  fire  from 
the  shots.  A  nationwide  anti-British  boy- 
cott began.  A  general  strike  in  Canton, 
Hongkong,  and  Shanghai  paralyzed  com- 
merce. The  strikers  of  Canton,  now 
unemployed,  provided  a  mass  base  for 
Chiang's  disciplined  nucleus  of  Whampoo 
cadets.  The  Revolutionary  Army  of  Can- 
ton was  born,  and  it  rapidly  cleaned  up 
Canton  and  the  Kwangtung  Province. 
In  August,  1926,  the  army  began  its  march 
to  the  Yangtze  Valley,  and  everywhere  it 
was  welcomed  by  the  peasants,  the  stu- 
dents, the  workers,  all  classes,  including 
the  merchants  and  bankers,  who  supported 
the  army  with  gifts  of  money.  Wuhan, 
the  triple  city  which  comprises  Hankow, 
Wuchang,  and  Hangchang,  was  taken. 
And  it  was  around  Hankow  that  the  split 
between  pro-communists  and  anti-com- 
munists, which  Dr.  Sun's  last-minute 
change  of  mind  had  precipitated,  came  to 
a  head.  For  in  Hankow  the  communists 
were  consolidating  their  power  and  had 
come  out  in  the  open. 

During  these  critical  days  Chiang  said, 
"I  know  that  Sun  Yat-sen  admitted  the 
Communists  as  auxiliaries  of  the  Party.  I 
have  done  nothing  against  them,  and  I 
have  often  admired  their  energy.  But 
now,  instead  of  being  coatent  to  remain 
auxiliaries,  they  set  themselves  up  as  mas- 
ters and  violently  aspire  to  govern  the 
Kuomintang.  I  warn  them  that  I  shall 
oppose  these  excessive  pretensions,  which 
go  beyond  what  was  stipulated  at  the 
time  of  their  admission."  In  April,  1927, 
he  moved  on  them  and  they  were  crushed. 
Shortly  Hankow  was  taken,  and  the 
Comintern  intriguers  ran  for  their  lives  to 
the  countries  they  had  come  from. 


A  book  written  by  an  American  had 
frustrated  world  revolution,  because  the 
defeat  of  Borodin  in  Hankow  was  more 
than  a  local  setback. 

As  Vincent  Sheean  has  said,  "The  fall  of 
Hankow  was  to  determine  the  conduct  of 
the  Communist  International  for  years 
afterward;  it  was  to  turn  the  mind  of  the 
Russian  Soviet  government  away  from  the 
militant  internationalism  of  Trotsky  to  the 
national  socialism  of  Stalin;  it  was  to 
chasten  the  impatience  of  communists 
all  over  the  world  more  than  any  single 
event  since  1917." 

Now  sixty-two  years  old,  William  is  a 
plump,  slow-moving,  mellowed  man  with 
rolls  of  fat  round  his  neck  and  cheekbones 
and  shrewd  smiling  eyes  that  glance  from 
his  thick,  black-shell-rimmed  glasses.  He 
walks  across  a  room  in  a  careful,  almost 
ponderous  fashion,  and  he  utters  his  opin- 
ions in  a  long-drawn-out,  patient  manner 
that  drives  nervous  persons  frantic.  He 
still  works  seven  hours  a  day  at  the  pro- 
fession of  dentistry,  but  in  his  office  and 
parlor  are  the  evidences  of  the  part  China 
has  come  to  play  in  his  life. 

On  one  wall  of  his  office,  almost  above 
the  revolving  dentist's  chair  and  the  white 
basin,  hangs  a  large  portrait  of  Sun  Yat- 
sen,  done  in  silk  embroidery,  and  pre- 
sented to  William  several  years  ago  by 
Sun  Fo,  the  son  of  Sun  Yat-sen.  On  an- 
other wall,  near  the  cabinet  of  drills  and 
forceps,  hangs  a  citation  in  beautiful  black 
Chinese  calligraphy  awarding  him  the 
Order  of  the  Jade,  signed  by  Chiang 
Kai-shek  and  presented  in  1941.  On 
another  wall  is  a  citation  stating  that  Dr. 
William  is  a  member  of  the  Kuomintang 
Party.  William,  the  only  non-Chinese 
member  of  the  Party  in  the  U.  S.,  was  in- 
ducted in  1936,  his  membership  sponsored 
by  C.  T.  Wang,  then  Chinese  ambassador, 
and  is  paid  up  for  life. 


THE   THREE   R'S    OF   POSTWAR  EUROPE 


What  Does  Reconstruction  Mean? 


HIRAM     MOTHERWELL 


T 


^HE  reconstruction  of  Europe  has  be- 
gun. In  Sicily  and  much  of  Italy 
AMG  is  distributing  food,  prop- 
ping up  the  political  edifice,  and  super- 
vising all  aspects  of  civil  administration. 
"In  Sicily,"  said  a  report  to  the  The  New 
Tork  Times  not  long  ago,  "the  allies  found 
chaos.  .  .  .  Yet  the  AMG  has  a  small 
problem  here  in  Palermo  compared  to 
what  it  will  be  in  Rome.  And  Rome  will 
be  easy  compared  to  Berlin.  We  are 
beginning  to  get  some  idea  now  [in  Pa- 
lermo] of  what  reconstruction  is  going  to 
mean."  The  chaos  in  Sicily  was  of  an 
exceptionally  placid  sort,  but  sufficient  to 
give  AMG  "some  idea  of  what  recon- 
struction is  going  to  mean." 

What  is  it  going  to  mean,  and  how  can 
it  be  handled?  I  shall  undertake  the  risky 
task  of  trying  to  forecast  some  aspects  of 
the  reconstruction  job  that  will  have  to  be 
done  by  somebody  if  Europe  is  ever  to 
become  a  peaceful  going  concern  again. 

Such  forecasting  may  prove  erroneous 
in  every  detail,  and  yet  total  up  to  a  faith- 
ful picture  of  the  whole.  For  we  know 
enough  about  what  has  already  happened 
to  Europe  to  be  able  to  see  with  appalling 
clarity  something  of  the  size  and  nature  of 
the  labor  that  lies  ahead.  And  we  might 
as  well  begin  to  discipline  ourselves  by 
trying  to  visualize  how,  concretely,  it  can 
be  done,  what  kinds  of  agencies  can  do  it, 


and  what  political  and  economic  strategy 
should  govern  it. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  in  previous  arti- 
cles by  this  writer,  and  more  authorita- 
tively by  Peter  Drucker,  Frank  Munk,  and 
others,  that  much  of  Europe  at  the  end  of 
this  war  will  be  in  a  state  of  disintegration 
and  revolution  compared  to  which  the 
upheavals  in  west  Europe  in  1918  and 
1919  were  mere  street  riots.  (For  con- 
venience I  shall  use  the  word  "Europe" 
throughout  this  article  to  denote  all  of  the 
continent  west  of  the  Soviet  Union's  1 940 
border,  within  which  the  USSR  em- 
braced the  Baltic  states,  part  of  former 
Poland,  and  Bessarabia.  It  may  well  be 
that  the  Russian  armies  will  be  in  control 
of  much  territory  to  the  west  of  this  border. 
In  such  case  the  Russian  government  will 
undoubtedly  provide  the  administrative 
agencies  for  reconstruction  in  the  lands  its 
armies  occupy,  as  the  British  and  Ameri- 
can governments  will  do  elsewhere.  Such 
division  as  to  administration  need  not  im- 
ply a  division  of  Europe  into  permanent 
political  spheres  of  influence.  Ultimate 
political  settlements  are  outside  the  scope 
of  this  article.  America,  Britain,  and 
Russia  can  unite  in  promoting  the  recon- 
struction of  Europe  under  a  joint  policy, 
pooling  their  resources  while  dividing 
their   administrative  responsibilities  geo 


J 


THE    THREE    K'S    OF    Pc>>Sl\\AR    EUROPE 


55 


graphically.  Indcocl  they  must  if  wc  arc 
going  to  avoid  another  and  fearful  clash 
in  Europe  to-morrow.)  Great  cities  have 
been  virtually  wiped  off  the  map.  Har- 
bors on  which  millions  formerly  depended 
for  their  sea-borne  supplies  have  been 
rendered  incapable  of  receiving  a  single 
ship.  Thousands  of  factories  which  for- 
merly produced  basic  materials  for  entire 
national  industries  have  been  obliterated. 
Railroad  equipment  and  roadbed  have 
been  consumed  without  replacement, 
junctions  reduced  to  shambles,  machines 
worn  to  the  breaking  point  by  constant 
forcing. 

The  agriculturlil  land  has  been  "mined" 
to  the  limit  to  feed  the  war  economy,  with- 
out adequate  replacement  by  fertilizers 
and  rotated  crops.  Livestock  herds  have 
been  pilfered  and  slaughtered  or  half 
starved  for  lack  of  fodder.  Seed  corn  has 
been  requisitioned  for  food  until  on  mil- 
lions of  acres  there  can  be  no  hope  of  a 
spring  sowing,  and  millions  of  others  have 
been  *'scorchcd"  out  of  productivity. 

The  entire  banking  system  of  Europe, 
governmental  and  private,  has  been  so 
completely  integrated  into  the  Nazi  finan- 
cial monopoly  that  when  that  collapses 
there  will  be  little  credit  or  dependa- 
ble money  left.  Even  those  factories  that 
can  secure  raw  materials  may  be  long  un- 
able to  go  into  production  because  there 
will  be  no  place  where  credit  can  be 
procured. 

The  political  organization  of  Europe — • 
Nazi,  Fascist,  or  Quisling — will  crack 
when  the  war  ends,  leaving  a  governmen- 
tal vacuum,  national  and  local.  In  some 
localities,  certainly,  patriotic  or  revolu- 
tionary bodies  will  appear  to  claim  au- 
thority. But  throughout  most  of  Europe 
there  will  be  political  chaos.  Ten  million 
or  more  labor  slaves  are  toiling  far  from 
their  homes.  Huge  armies  of  Axis  soldiers 
will  be  ripe  for  mutiny  when  the  Nazi 
spell  snaps.  And  millions  of  sufferers 
under  Axis  tyranny  are  already  sharpen- 
ing their  knives  for  the  day  of  vengeance. 

What  is  happening  in  liberated  Italy  is 
but  a  faint  foretaste  of  what  will  soon  be 
happening  north  of  the  Alps  and  east  of 
the  Adriatic.  Italy  is  a  tough  social  or- 
ganism which  for  centuries  has  yielded  and 
rebounded  without  cracking.     Elsewhere, 


willi  some  exceptions,  the  social  structure 
is  lik(*  concrete  built  above  an  impending 
cartli(|uakc. 


w; 


II 

HAT  are  the  agencies  now  in  being 
or  contemplated  that  may  aid  in 
the  rebuilding  of  this  Europe?  P'irst  there 
is  AMG.  This  is  the  civil  governmental 
arm  of  the  American  and  British  armies, 
which  claims  unlimited  authority  over 
civilian  affairs  in  the  redeemed  portions  of 
Italy,  and  presumably  in  all  enemy  coun- 
tries yet  to  be  conquered,  during  the 
period  which  it  considers  to  be  one  of 
"military  necessity."  In  countries  to  be 
liberated,  over  which  governments  in  exile 
or  national  committees  enjoy  some  meas- 
ure of  recognized  authority,  there  will  be, 
it  is  announced,  no  AMG,  but  some 
United  Nations  relief  and  reconstruction 
agency  will  certainly  have  to  assume 
comparable  responsibility  for  a  long  time. 
The  agency  which  might  take  over  this 
job  both  for  the  conquered  and  the  liber- 
ated areas  when  AMG  renounces  its  rule 
has  been  set  up  in  skeleton  form  by  Execu- 
tive Order.  This  is  the  Office  of  Foreign 
Economic  Administration,  replacing  the 
Office  of  Foreign  Economic  Coordination 
created  last  summer.  This  newest  agency 
embraces  the  Offices  of  Lend-Lease,  Eco- 
nomic Warfare,  and  Relief  and  Rehabili- 
tation Operations,  but  eliminates  the  par- 
ticipation of  the  Departments  of  State, 
War,  Navy,  and  Treasury,  though  these 
will  obviously  continue  to  have  a  great 
deal  to  say  about  relief  and  reconstruction. 
At  this  writing  OFEA  appears  to  be  but 
the  shadow  of  a  skeleton  destined  to  ac- 
quire bone  and  flesh  later.  Its  principal 
advance  over  the  former  OFEG  seems  to 
consist  in  the  appointment  of  a  business 
executive,  Leo  T.  Crowley,  instead  of  the 
State  Department's  Dean  Acheson,  as 
operating  chief  of  an  economic  assignment. 
Doubtless  Mr.  Acheson's  appointment  was 
ad  interim,  to  bridge  over  the  painful  hiatus 
created  by  Mr.  Sumner  Welles's  sus- 
pended resignation.  The  appointment  of 
another  business  executive,  Mr.  Edward 
R.  Stettinius,  Jr.,  to  the  policy-framing 
post  of  Under-Secretary  of  State  may 
strengthen  the  political  authority  of  OFEA 
very  substantially. 


56 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


This  prodigious  infant  called  OFEA  is 
yet  in  the  womb  because  it  is  clearly  in- 
tended to  become,  on  its  official  day  of 
birth,  a  United  Nation*  organization. 
OFRRO  is  at  this  writing  being  inter- 
nationalized. Lend-Lease  is  in  practice 
an  international  give-and-take.  OEW  is 
in  fact  a  multilateral  international  clearing- 
house for  the  procurement  and  distribution 
of  primary  materials.  War  and  Navy  op- 
erations are  already  under  an  interna- 
tional— that  is,  Anglo-American — GHQ. 
The  Treasury  is  actively  working  with 
the  financial  officers  of  the  other  United 
Nations  on  postwar  financial  policies.  In 
the  coming  months  there  may  well  be 
added  to  the  OFEA  some  such  agencies  as 
an  Office  of  Postwar  Supply  and  Ship- 
ping, an  Office  of  Foreign  Industrial  Re- 
construction, an  Office  of  Reconstruction 
Finance  and  Credit,  all  under  the  auspices 
of  the  future  United  Nations  OFEA.  To- 
gether they  would  be  a  "United  Nations 
organization,"  such  as  was  foreseen  by 
''the  late"  Sumner  Welles,  "for  the  relief 
and  economic  reconstruction  of  the  post- 
war world." 

Most  recently  there  has  been  inaugu- 
rated, or  at  least  envisaged,  a  Mediter- 
ranean Commission,  on  which  Russia  is 
to  have  a  seat  beside  Britain  and  America. 
This  body,  apparently  partly  political  and 
partly  economic,  seems  destined  to  be  a 
clearing-house  for  earliest  relief  and  re- 
construction operations  on  a  scale  larger 
than  AMG  can  undertake. 

OFEA  and  MC  exist  as  yet  mostly  on 
paper,  and  AMG  is  obviously  evolving 
under  pressure  of  realities.  They  will 
necessarily  somehow  merge  their  functions 
in  some  central  executive  ad  hoc  organism. 
Let  us  for  convenience  call  this  interna- 
tional super-agency  the  United  Nations 
European  Reconstruction  Commission. 

Ill 

WHAT  are  the  concrete  tasks  that  it 
will  have  to  discharge?  What  is 
meant  by  European  relief,  rehabilitation, 
and  reconstruction? 

Relief — which  obviously  comes  first  in 
point  of  urgency  and  importance — means 
primarily  the  distribution  of  something  to 
eat    to    tens    of   millions    of   half-starved 


European  men,  women,  and  children. 
The  imperative  task  is  to  get  food  to  all 
parts  of  the  continent  as  quickly  as  possible 
in  as  great  quantities  as  possible,  of  such 
kinds  as  available  stocks  and  shipping 
space  permit.  Any  food  the  United  Na- 
tions can  send  to  Europe  in  the  months 
immediately  following  the  war  will  be  but 
a  fraction  of  what  is  needed.  Yet  this 
marginal  nourishment  will  mean  the  dif- 
ference between  life  and  death  to  many, 
the  difference  between  courage  and  de- 
spair to  countless  millions.  Any  thought 
of  exact  justice  or  scientific  accountancy 
must  be  discarded  in  advance.  The  job 
is  too  vast  and  complex  for  any  but  whole-  h| 
sale  operations. 

True,  in  a  self-sufficient  island  like 
Sicily  AMG  may  collect  local  stocks  of 
food  from  the  nearby  countryside  and  dis- 
tribute them  in  something  like  an  orderly 
manner.  But  in  most  of  the  Continent, 
and  especially  in  the  larger  cities,  the  only 
object  must  be  to  get  the  mostest  food 
there  fustest. 

Retail  distribution  by  United  Nations 
representatives  is  out  of  the  question. 
The  European  peoples  will  have  to  operate 
their  own  soup  kitchens.  The  only  thing 
we  can  do  is  to  consign  the  food  to  local 
organisms  presumed  to  be  honest  and  re- 
sponsible, with  full  realization  that  many 
of  them  will  prove  unworthy  and  that  the 
wrath  of  the  local  population  must  rectify 
abuses.  Broadly  speaking,  food  cannot 
safely  be  entrusted  to  improvised  "govern- 
ments"— in  reality,  political  factions — 
which  will  use  it  to  coerce  opinion  and 
buy  votes.  Food  has  no  politics.  Politics 
must  not  be  permitted  to  traffic  in  food. 

Relief  includes  also  of  course  things 
like  emergency  clothing  and  medicines 
and  supplies  needed  by  public  health 
administrations.  It  includes,  further,  cer- 
tain consumer  goods  "nonessential"  to 
physical  survival,  such  as  the  three  great 
morale-builders,  soap,  coffee,  and  tobacco. 
Soap  comes  first.  Civilized  man  knows 
no  greater  moral  degradation  than  to  be 
deprived  of  soap.  To-day  a  cup  of  real 
coffee  is  the  waking  dream  of  tens  of  mil- 
lions under  Nazism.  And  to  a  myriad  of 
men  the  first  smoke  comes  before  the  first 
meal. 

All  this  may  be  called  emergency  relief 


THE    THREE    R'S    OF    POSTWAR    EUROPE 


57 


-  doing  whatever  may  be  done  quickly. 
Rut  almost  at  the  same  moment  must  begin 
the  work  of  "reconstruction  relief."  This 
means  primarily  such  chemical  fertilizers 
and  concentrated  fodders  as  can  most 
swiftly  and  economically  be  shipped  over- 
seas. It  includes  also  seeds  of  every  sort, 
provided  they  are  adapted  to  the  special 
climate  and  soil  of  the  various  countries 
to  which  they  are  dispatched.  Breeding 
stock  may  be  a  prime  necessity,  for  the 
Nazis  have,  by  all  reports,  stolen  the  best 
sires  from  all  Europe.  Artificial  insemi- 
nation from  selected  sires  may  become  a 
mass  industry  in  the  first  year  after  the 
war's  end. 

We  may  define  relief  as  the  emergency 
feeding  of  Europe's  individuals,  and  re- 
habilitation as  the  emergency  feeding  of 
Europe's  primary  production  plant.  This 
is  implied  in  the  President's  instructions  to 
Governor  Lehman.  But  this  rehabilita- 
tion— the  procurement  of  fertilizers  for 
Europe's  soil  and  factories,  the  quick  feed- 
ing of  milch  cows,  the  distribution  of 
seed,  the  planned  production  of  fodder,  the 
redistribution  of  herds,  the  beating  of  tanks 
into  plowshares,  the  parceling  of  tools  to 
the  farms,  the  transportation  of  every- 
thing from  production  point  or  import 
depot  to  the  individual  user,  the  restoring 
of  lost  families  to  old  or  new  homes,  the 
supplying  of  destitute  artisans  with  new 
equipment,  the  teaching  of  new  skills  to 
men  with  one  leg  or  no  eyes — all  this  in- 
volves industrial,  commercial,  social,  and 
political  problems  at  every  step.  And 
these  of  course  are  at  the  same  time 
primary  problems  of  permanent  recon- 
struction. Indeed,  the  three  R's  of  post- 
war Europe  will  often  be  indistinguishable. 
Woe  to  the  graduate  of  the  Army's  School 
of  Military  Government,  or  of  our  dozens 
of  schools  of  foreign  administration,  who 
goes  to  Europe  with  a  logical,  pigeonholed 
mind!  He  will  discover  within  six  hours 
that  the  gifts  required  of  him  are  chiefly 
those  of  intuition  and  improvisation. 

But  if  we  call  rehabilitation  the  sec- 
ond phase  of  the  process  of  helping  Eu- 
rope to  live  again,  what  of  the  third 
phase — reconstruction?  One  is  apt  to 
think  of  it  as  a  task  of  rebuilding  bomb- 
shattered  factories  and  homes.  But,  ex- 
cept for  vital  ports,  junctions,  and  some  key 


factories,  that  operation  will  be  initiated 
mostly  by  local  enterprise.  Bricks  will  rise 
upon  mortar,  and  new  machines  will  re- 
place the  old  in  good  season,  as  rehabilita- 
tion progresses.  Life  during  this  phase 
will  go  on  somehow  by  improvisation. 
But,  as  Peter  Druckcr  has  said,  "the  one 
thing  that  cannot  be  improvised  is  organi- 
zation."    What,  then,  must  be  organized? 

First  of  all,  the  production  and  trans- 
portation of  primary  commodities — food 
of  course  and  immediately  after  that  coal 
and  iron  and  oil  and  cotton  and  flax,  and 
the  steel  and  cloth  and  raw  or  processed 
products  derived  from  them,  together  with 
the  machinery  needed  to  make  these 
things  roll.  All  demand  fuel.  If  Eu- 
ropean rehabilitation  could  be  summed  up 
in  one  word,  that  word  would  be  Fuel. 

To  get  fuel  out  of  the  ground  and  dis- 
tributed where  it  is  most  needed  will  be 
the  first  task,  and  it  will  override  political 
policy.  Coal  from  the  mines,  oil  from 
the  wells,  wood  from  the  forests,  current 
from  the  waterfalls — this  will  be  far  more 
urgent  than  the  task  of  inserting  Monsieur 
X  into  the  premiership  of  Ruritania. 
There  will  be  some  to  say  that  if  we  do  not 
put  the  right  Monsieur  X  into  control  of 
Ruritania  we  shall  never  be  able  to  fetch 
the  coal  out  of  Ruritanian  ground  or  get 
it  transported  over  Ruritanian  railways. 
But  there  will  be  twenty  or  thirty  Mes- 
sieurs X  claiming  premierships  in  twenty  or 
thirty  countries  of  devastated  Europe,  and 
each  will  assert  his  own  sovereignty  over 
his  country's  coal  and  railways  for  its  own 
national  benefit,  at  the  expense  of  the 
nineteen  or  twenty-nine  other  Messieurs 
X  and  their  respective  fatherlands. 

It  is  coal  miners,  not  prime  ministers, 
who  mine  coal;  raiiwaymen  who  run  rail- 
ways. If  the  European  Reconstruction 
Commission  wants  fuel  and  transportation 
in  a  hurry  it  is  with  organisms  such  as  labor 
unions,  co-operatives,  business  firms  and 
cartels,  municipalities  and  farmers'  leagues 
that  it  will  have  to  deal.  That  is  going  to 
be  the  naked  fact  throughout  most  of 
Europe  the  moment  the  official  shooting 
stops.  To  recognize  this  is  to  recognize 
Item  Number  One  in  the  strategy  of 
reconstruction.  To  ignore  it — to  wait 
until  political  factions  have  fought  out 
their  fights  in  their  several  countries — is  to 


58 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


lose  precious  weeks  and  months  in  the 
work  of  reconstruction,  while  the  peoples' 
suffering  increases  and  the  peoples'  wrath 
builds  revolution. 


IV 

IET  us  now  make  the  effort  to  picture  how 
^  a.  European  Reconstruction  Com- 
mission might  set  about  its  task.  Out  of 
such  an  effort  we  may  achieve  a  realistic 
concept  of  the  size  and  character  of  the 
job.  And  we  may  rid  ourselves  of  the 
boggy  slogans  that  paralyze  our  collective 
imagination — phrases  like  "We  can't  plan 
until  we  know  what  the  problem  is"  or 
"Let  Europe  cure  its  own  headaches." 

Fuel  and  transportation,  as  I  have  said, 
come  first  after  food.  But  to  operate 
transportation  you  must  have  fuel,  and 
to  distribute  fuel  you  must  have  transpor- 
tation. Such  dilemmas  will  bedevil  the 
Reconstruction  Commission  at  every 
step. 

Nevertheless  it  will  have  to  muddle 
through.  It  must  lay  its  plans  with  the 
utmost  foresight  and  then  be  prepared  to 
alter  or  scrap  them  as  new  obstacles  ap- 
pear. Most  of  all  it  will  have  to  possess 
the  wisdom  to  win  to  itself  and  utilize  for 
its  tasks  the  intangible  emotions  and  loy- 
alties of  the  European  peoples. 

Obviously  the  United  Nations  will 
have  to  publish  by  unilateral  decree  the 
scope  and  nature  of  the  Commission's 
authority.  That  authority  will  need  to  be 
all  but  dictatorial  within  its  prescribed 
fields.  But  to  prescribe  and  limit  those 
fields  will  be  essential.  The  Commission 
cannot,  as  AMG  does  in  theory,  take  all 
that  is  human  to  be  its  province.  The  job 
of  replacing  Hitler  as  supreme  arbiter  of 
Europe's  politics,  thought,  and  morals  is 
simply  too  vast  to  be  manageable.  The 
Commission  must  economize  effort  by 
limiting  itself  to  the  operation  of  those 
crucial  processes  on  which  the  physical 
life  of  Europe  depends.  It  must  pump 
blood  and  food  into  the  patient  and  trust 
to  his  natural  stamina  to  achieve  recovery. 

But  over  those  crucial  processes  its  au- 
thority will  have  to  be  unlimited.  Long 
and  detailed  quarrels  over  protocol,  while 
millions  starve,  will  be  intolerable.  We 
may  as  well  accustom  ourselves  to  the  fact 


that  European  reconstruction  will  have  to 
be  directed  by  someone  the  newspapers 
will  call  its  "Tzar." 

Equally  clear  is  the  fact  that  the  Com- 
mission's authority,  within  its  specialized 
fields,  will  have  to  be  virtually  continent- 
wide,  superseding  the  authority  of  national 
governments.  This  will  be  very  hard  for 
nationalistic  statesmen  and  politicians  to 
take.  But  they  will  have  to  take  it  and 
like  it.  It  would  be  unendurable,  for 
example,  that  when  all  Europe  was  gasp- 
ing for  gasoline  to  move  food  and  medi- 
cines, Rumania  should  be  permitted,  on 
the  pretext  of  national  sovereignty,  to  use 
its  quasi-monopoly  to  extort  a  famine 
price.  Whatever  Europe  has  that  Europe 
needs  for  primary  reconstruction  must  be 
made  instantly  available  on  the  spot  where 
it  is  most  needed.  Primary  reconstruc- 
tion materials  must  be  subject  to  requisi- 
tion by  the  Commission  as  required. 

It  is  almost  a  corollary  of  this  strategy 
that  such  primary  goods  as  are  adminis- 
tered by  the  Commission  must  pass  duty- 
free and  unmolested  across  national  fron- 
tiers everywhere.  The  Commission's  seal 
on  a  freight  car  must  be  sufficient  certifica- 
tion for  border  guards  and  customs  in- 
spectors throughout  all  Europe.  The  na- 
tional governments  will  simply  have  to 
accept  free  trade  in  these  basic  reconstruc- 
tion commodities  for  the  duration  or  else 
decline  the  benefits  which  the  Commission 
offers. 

Over  all  Axis  and  other  enemy  terri- 
tories the  Commission  will  have  ample 
authority,  under  the  laws  of  war,  to  en- 
force its  orders.  Can  it  enforce  them  on 
the  nations  now  represented  by  govern- 
ments in  exile  or  on  the  remaining  neu- 
trals? Juridically  speaking,  perhaps  not. 
But  with  the  governments  in  exile  it  can 
surely  reach  prior  agreement,  while  the 
neutrals  will  have  so  much  to  gain  by  sub- 
mitting to  its  authority,  and  so  much  to 
sufTer  by  rejecting  it,  that  their  choice  can 
hardly  be  in  doubt. 

Finally,  what  must  be  the  relations  of 
the  Commission  with  AMG  and  the  mili- 
tary arm  generally?  According  to  present 
military  regulations,  economic  functions 
during  the  period  of  "military  necessity" 
are  subject  to  the  authority  of  the  occupy- 
ing military  force.     But  AMG's  experi- 


THE    THREE    R'S    OF    POSTWAR    EUROPE 


59 


cncc  in  friendly  Sicily  has  already  sug- 
gested that  it  will  eventually  be  liappy  to 
turn  over  much  of  the  burden  to  the 
civilian  specialists  of  the  Commission. 
Where  that  happens  the  Commission  will 
be  free  to  solve  its  engineering  problem 
with  minimum  interference  from  machine 
guns.  And  in  its  vast  reserves  of  basic 
commodities  and  credit  it  will  possess 
weapons  far  more  persuasive  than  bullets. 
Yet  it  will  from  time  to  time  need  protec- 
tion for  its  railway  trains  and  depots,  sanc- 
tions for  its  requisitions,  safe  conduct  for 
its  personnel  and  shipping.  Clearly  the 
civilian  arm  must  decide  where  and  when 
such  protection  is  needed  and  must  be 
empowered  to  request  it  from  the  Army  at 
its  discretion. 

When  military  safety  or  the  successful 
prosecution  of  the  war  is  at  stake  the 
Army  must  be  the  sole  judge.  But  if 
reconstruction  is  to  be  an  efficient  engi- 
neering operation,  military  necessity  will 
have  to  be  construed  strictly,  not  with  the 
all-embracing  liberality  implied  in  our 
present  Army  manuals. 

V 

1ET  US  suppose  the  Commission  has  set 
^  up  central  headquarters  in  Trieste. 
Certainly  it  should  not  be  condemned  to 
operate  from  a  political  fever-spot  like 
Paris  or  Berlin  or  Vienna.  Trieste  is  a 
major  port,  easily  protected  by  United 
Nations  navies.  Its  railway  connections 
with  all  parts  of  Europe  are  superb,  and 
politically  it  lies  athwart  that  ethnical 
boundary  between  Slavic  and  non-Slavic 
Europe.  The  symbolism  of  this  alone 
might  be  decisive  for  its  prestige,  Trieste 
is  a  hard-bitten  commercial  port.  It  has 
no  political  "climate"  whatever. 

The  Commission  would  promptly  pro- 
claim its  areas  of  authority — those  con- 
crete and  basic  installations  of  European 
economy  that  can  be  managed,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  political  and  psycho- 
logical intangibles  which  no  force  can 
coerce.  These  areas  of  authority  would 
include  first  of  all  the  continent-wide 
economic  organism  of  Europe  as  created 
by  Nazism.  The  Commission  must  move 
in  and  take  possession  of  the  economic 
house  that  Hitler  built.     It  must  take  over 


the  conllncnt-widc  trusts,  cartels,  con- 
cerns, trade  assr)ciations,  and  hanking  syn- 
dicates (by  whatever  fancy  names  Schacht 
and  Funk  may  have  called  them)  that  own 
or  operate  Europe's  basic  production  plant. 
It  must  take  over  the  fantastic  agglomera- 
tion of  industries  known  as  the  Hermann 
Goering  Werke]\x?,i  as  Goering  will  have  left 
them  when  he  rats  to  safety.  It  must  take 
over  these  economic  mechanisms  as  is. 
These  monsters  of  Nazism  were  created 
for  evil  purposes,  but  they  have  proved 
monstrously  efficient.  The  devil's  work 
must  be  redeemed  to  the  peoples'  use. 
There  will  be  no  time  to  spare  to  split  them 
into  their  former  national  or  private  com- 
ponents. There  will  be  no  time  to  disen- 
tangle the  network  of  private  ownerships. 
There  will  be  no  time  to  pause  while  new 
governments  throughout  Europe  intrigue 
to  certify  their  right  to  govern.  Europe 
cannot  wait.  It  will  need  food  and  fuel 
without  a  day's  unnecessary  delay. 

And  these  organizations  of  production 
and  transport  are  technically  equipped  (in 
so  far  as  they  have  not  suffered  physical 
destruction  in  the  war)  to  provide  and 
distribute  the  food  and  fuel  and  primary 
materials  which  all  of  Europe  will  so  des- 
perately need.  The  top  Nazi  directors 
will  have  been  booted  out  or  arrested. 
But  the  remaining  ninety-eight  per  cent 
of  the  personnel  will  consist  of  technicians 
and  workers  eager  to  shed  the  stigma  of 
Nazism  and  hold  on  to  their  salaries. 
There  will  be  little  trouble  with  them  so 
long  as  their  jobs  are  secure  in  a  turbulent 
world.  They  have  the  know-how,  the 
habits,  and  the  skills  needed  to  operate 
Europe's  basic  economy  on  a  Europe- wide 
scale.  Problems  of  private  ownership  and 
of  political  authority  must  wait.  The 
Commission  will  have  to  manage  this 
gigantic  primary  installation  as  a  receiver 
would  manage  a  bankrupt  power  house, 
in  trust  for  the  residual  owners,  the  Eu- 
ropean peoples. 

Which  "cartels"  and  which  physical 
properties  should  be  taken  over  by  the 
Commission  is  a  question  for  its  engineers 
to  decide.  But  on  a  layman's  guess  they 
might  include: 

Trunk  Transportation  by  rail,  river,  and  ca- 
nal, coastal  and  Mediterranean  shipping, 
and  air.     The  Commission  will  probably 


60 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


prefer  to  leave  all  local  railways  and  ship- 
ping to  local  authorities.  But  it  must  re- 
tain unrestricted  authority  over  all  major 
ports  of  entry,  all  essential  j^ail  junctions, 
and  all  large  airfields.  Nominal  opera- 
tion of  railways  and  shipping  might  remain 
in  the  hands  of  the  governments  or  private 
corporations  which  owned  them  in  the 
good  old  days,  but  the  Commission's 
power  to  direct  operation  and  prescribe 
priorities  and  schedules  would  have  to  be 
absolute.  It  would  probably  however 
have  to  organize  its  own  air  transport  for 
fast  freight,  receiving  from  the  Army  all 
large  aircraft  that  have  been  captured  or 
can  be  spared,  and  operating  the  system 
as  a  continental  unit. 

Primary  Raw  Materials,  All  coal  and 
iron  mines  and  oil  wells  on  the  Continent 
would  unquestionably  come  under  the 
Commission's  direct  authority,  along  with 
any  other  minerals  it  deemed  essential. 
Almost  certainly  all  large  hydroelectric 
plants  would  be  requisitioned,  along  with 
all  state-owned  forests.  Industrial  raw 
materials  produced  on  the  farm  would  be 
another  matter.  For  administrative  pur- 
poses they  are  ''agriculture"  and  would 
have  to  be  purchased  like  food.  If  Europe 
only  had  efficient  large-scale  farms,  deals 
could  be  made  with  the  responsible 
co-operatives  operating  them.  But,  un- 
fortunately for  reconstruction,  Europe's 
agriculture  is  mostly  a  mixture  of  petty- 
peasant  and  farm-proletariat  economy. 

Basic  Industry.  What  industries  are  basic 
to  reconstruction  is  again  a  question  the 
technicians  must  decide.  Unquestiona- 
bly iron  and  steel  are  among  them.  All 
factories  making  locomotives  and  rolling 
stock  and  every  other  machine  and  mate- 
rial required  for  transportation  will  neces- 
sarily work  on  order  from  the  Commission. 
Oil  refineries  are  obviously  high  on  the  list. 
So  too  are  many  manufactories  of  Ersatz 
or  synthetic  materials.  Some  wholesale 
food  operations,  such  as  industrial  fishing, 
may  well  come  under  the  Commission's 
authority.  The  manufacture  of  cloth  of 
all  kinds  is  clearly  a  primary  industry,  but 
to  what  extent  the  Commission  can  under- 
take to  administer  it  is  questionable. 

Processing  Industries,  It  is  a  highly  tech- 
nical, and  even  political,  question  how  far 
the  Commission  should  assert  its  authority 


"upward"  from  the  mine  and  the  farm 
into  the  processing  and  finishing  indus- 
tries. The  Commission  will  probably  be 
wise  if  it  keeps  its  area  of  authority  as 
"low"  as  possible.  In  the  case  of  food  it 
will  have  done  enough  if  it  gets  grain  by 
the  carload  and  meat  on  the  hoof  and 
milk  in  the  tin  delivered  wholesale  to  dis- 
tribution centers.  In  textiles  it  might 
assert  its  authority  over  manufacture  of 
standard  types  of  cloth  in  the  largest  mills. 
In  certain  specialized  lines,  such  as  vital 
precision  instruments,  it  might  have  to  see 
the  entire  process  through  to  the  finished 
product. 

Imported  Supply,  Besides  food — Europe's 
most  urgent  need — there  will  be  many 
essential  materials  which  must  be  brought 
in  from  abroad.  Which  are  indispensable 
to  the  crippled  European  economy,  and 
which  can  be  most  expeditiously  pro- 
vided, are  again  questions  for  the  experts. 
The  problem  for  the  Commission  is  to 
balance  the  emergency  needs  of  Europe 
between  the  possibility  of  local  production 
and  the  supply  and  shipping  available. 
The  Commission  will  have  to  do  its  im- 
provised best.  It  cannot  aim  at  perfec- 
tion. It  will  have  to  be  satisfied  if  it 
pumps  a  pint  of  new  blood  somehow  into 
its  patient's  economic  veins. 

Transoceanic  Shipping.  Clearly,  if  foreign 
supplies  are  needed  by  the  Commission 
for  its  work,  shipping  will  be  required  to 
fetch  them.  This  will  be  a  United  Na- 
tions problem  which  must  be  solved  in 
common  council.  The  shipping  after  the 
first  few  months  of  the  armistice  will  be- 
come available  in  quantity.  The  problem 
will  be  one  of  allocating  to  the  Commission 
the  shipping  capacity  which  it  decides  it 
needs  for  specific  transport  jobs.  They 
may  be  plenty. 

Credit.  The  Commission  will  have  to 
take  over  most  of  the  large  Nazi-looted 
central  banks  and  banks  of  issue  *  and  find 
ways  of  pumping  emergency  credit  into 
sick  Europe's  bloodstream.     The  problem 


*  Of  all  the  tender  nerves  of  the  recognized 
governments  and  committees  in  exile  this  one  of 
control  over  banks  of  issue  is  the  most  sensitive. 
Nevertheless,  if  their  peoples  are  to  receive  con- 
structive aid  from  their  richer  allies  they  must  place 
their  fiscal  and  monetary  apparatus  under  the 
Commission  for  a  while,  or  else  wallow  in  their  own 
inflations. 


THE    THREE    R'S    OF    POSTWAR    EUROPE 


61 


of  supplying  credit  to  an  economy  that  has 
no  tangible  assets  is  almost  metaphysical  if 
you  look  at  it  from  behind  the  bars  of  a 
bank  teller's  window.  But  if  you  keep 
your  eyes  on  what  Europe  can  physically 
produce  one  year  after  the  armistice  it 
assumes  measurable  proportions.  Europe 
in  the  second  year  after  the  war  (always 
assuming  that  politics  does  not  put  sand 
into  the  machinery)  will  be  able  to  redeem 
most  of  its  promises  to  pay.  For  it  will  be 
producing  wealth  in  ever-increasing  abun- 
dance. By  far  the  largest  part  of  the  debt 
which  Europe  will  contract  for  reconstruc- 
tion it  will  owe  to  itself.  That  debt  can  be 
paid  back  in  one  year,  two  years — at  most, 
five  years.  The  great  difficulty  will  come 
in  providing  the  initial  credit  to  set  the 
first  operations  going.  This  credit  must 
come  from  the  Commission,  which  means 
in  large  part  from  the  U.  S.  A. 

It  must  come,  for  the  most  part,  in  the 
shape  of  primary  commodities.  On  such 
commodities  real  bank  credit  can  be  based. 
But  in  all  probability  these  first  imported 
commodities  can  never  be  paid  for.  That 
is  because  they  could  be  paid  for  only  in 
goods  which  the  supplying  nations  already 
produce  in  abundance.  In  other  words, 
the  first  reconstruction  credit  must  be  in 
the  form  of  goods — cotton  or  oil  or  nickel 
— given  under  United  Nations  Lend-Lease. 
The  governing  principle  will  have  to  be 
that  goods  sent  in  from  the  outside  world 
as  the  foundation  for  new  credit  must  be 
free-will  gifts — an  investment  in  world 
stability — but  that  Europe  must  begin 
paying  its  debts  to  itself  just  as  quickly  as 
possible. 

Money.  The  current  money  which  will 
represent  this  sound  credit — money  with 
which  to  pay  coal  miners  and  railway 
trainmen  and  synthetic  rubber  workers — 
will  be  one  of  the  most  painful  of  all  the 
reconstruction  problems.  Probably  there 
will  have  to  be  two  kinds  of  money 
in  reconstruction  Europe — Reconstruction 
Commission  money,  w^hich  will  be  good 
money,  and  European  money,  which  will 
be  bad  money.  Neither  the  Commission 
nor  any  world  financial  consortium  that 
could  be  organized  could  guarantee  the 
mass  of  paper  that  will  be  issued  in  the 
guise  of  lawful  currency  after  this  war. 
Those   workers   who   labor  for   industries 


which  are  run  by  the  Commission  will  re- 
ceive a  preferred  currency  which  will  buy 
real  groceries.  The  others  must  take  their 
chance.  Commission  employees  will  be 
the  elite  among  the  workers  and  profes- 
sional men  of  Europe.  There  will  be  few- 
strikes  or  complaints  among  those  who  are 
fortunate  enough  to  work  for  the  Com- 
mission. 

Floating  Labor.  Theoretically  the  Com- 
mission should  not  be  concerned  with  so- 
cial or  labor  relations.  It  should  merely 
administer  basic  economic  processes  with 
the  labor  supply  that  happens  to  be  on  the 
spot.  But  there  will  be  ten  million  or 
more  slaves  who  have  been  imported  by 
the  Nazis  from  foreign  lands  to  work  for 
Hitler's  New  Order,  and  at  least  five  mil- 
lions of  undemobilized  soldiers  disarmed 
as  to  heavy  weapons,  but  sometimes  re- 
taining their  military  formations  and  far 
too  many  revolvers  for  the  comfort  of  Eu- 
rope's civil  population.  Shall  these  fifteen 
million  or  more  potential  workers  roam 
the  countryside  as  marauders?  There 
will  also  be  many  millions  of  war  workers 
for  whom  their  respective  national  govern- 
ments can  provide  no  immediate  employ- 
ment. Will  these  twenty  or  twenty-five 
millions  become  a  charge  on  the  Com- 
mission? 

Let  us  try  not  to  say,  or  think,  the  words 
''forced  labor  gangs."  Yet  these  organ- 
ized but  temporarily  useless  millions  will 
find  their  interim  salvation  in  doing  useful 
work  at  real  wages  for  the  Commission. 
Let  us  call  them  Battalions  of  Reconstruc- 
tion, or  any  other  dignified  term  you  can 
think  of.  The  greatest  art  will  be  to 
persuade  them  that  they  are  volunteers  in 
the  task  of  repairing  their  own  continent 
and  to  inspire  them  to  discipline  them- 
selves. It  can  be  done.  Will  the  Com- 
mission have  the  art,  the  will,  the  resource- 
fulness to  do  it? 

Reparations.  Adequate  material  repara- 
tions for  damage  done  by  aggressor  nations 
to  their  victims  in  this  war  is  beyond  all 
possibility  of  computation,  to  say  nothing 
of  payment.  Certainly  all  identifiable 
property  that  has  been  stolen  by  the  Nazis 
must  be  restored  to  its  original  owners. 
But  beyond  this  a  certain  amount  of  physi- 
cal reparation  is  feasible.  It  will  be  just 
and  wholesome  if  the  German  people  are 


62 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


obliged  to  repair  some  small  part  of  the 
damage  their  armies  have  wrought  with 
their  consent.  That  they  should  repair  it 
by  their  own  labor  in  foreign  lands  is  out 
of  the  question.  The  mingling  of  the 
defeated  Herrenvolk  with  their  former  vic- 
tims would  be  a  perpetual  irritant  and 
a  chronic  invitation  to  murder.  Yet  the 
German  people  can,  and  should,  make  the 
maximum  feasible  reparation  for  the  dam- 
age they  have  wrought  upon  their  neigh- 
bors. It  is  not  feasible  for  Germany  to 
pay  reparations  in  money,  but  there  is  no 
economic  reason  why  the  German  people 
should  not  make  a  measure  of  reparation 
in  kind,  over  a  limited  number  of  years, 
in  goods  that  are  acceptable  to  the  peo- 
ple receiving  them.  Germany  could  send 
coal  to  France.  Rumania  could  send  oil 
to  Yugoslavia.  Finland  could  send  tim- 
ber to  Holland.  Reparations  in  kind  are 
feasible  if  they  do  not  disrupt  international 
trade. 

Under  some  such  headings  as  these  we 
may  list  the  tasks  of  the  future  European 
Reconstruction  Commission.  What  are 
the  principles  and  policies  which  must 
govern  its  operations? 

VI 

PERHAPS  the  toughest  job  of  thinking  we 
have  to  do  in  this  matter  of  European 
reconstruction  is  to  realize  that  it  can  be 
achieved  through  nonpolitical  instrumen- 
talities. Reconstruction  will  not  be  poli- 
tics; it  will  be  engineering. 

It  will  be  possible  to  operate  Europe's 
primary  economic  plant  directly,  not 
through  political  controls.  It  is  possible 
to  make  bargains  with  cartels  and  trusts, 
with  trade  unions  and  co-operatives,  with 
farm  unions  and  professional  societies, 
without  sending  a  single  demarche  through  a 
foreign  ministry  or  memorandum  through 
a  Department  of  the  Interior.  For  a  year 
or  more  after  the  First  World  War  many 
cities  and  districts  in  central  and  eastern 
Europe  provided  for  their  immediate  needs 
while  their  paper  governments  issued  de- 
crees and  proclamations  that  meant  ex- 
actly nothing.  So  long  as  food  can  be 
procured,  politicians  are  expendable.  And 
so  long  as  the  Commission  can  provide  the 
minimum  supplies  needed  to  sustain  local 


life  it  can  make  trains  run,  and  ships  sail, 
and  oil  wells  spout,  and  factory  chimneys 
smoke. 

Why  it  will  often  have  to  deal  directly 
with  nonpolitical  bodies  should  be  fairly 
clear.  Unless  a  totalitarian  police  power 
is  to  administer  everything  (and  it  is  un- 
thinkable that  our  armies  should  provide 
or  subsidize  such  forces)  there  can  be  in 
the  more  chaotic  parts  of  Europe  no  re- 
sponsible and  effective  national  political 
authority  for  a  long  time. 

Some  of  the  basic  elements  of  social 
cohesion  can  however  speedily  organize  or 
reorganize  themselves  locally.  In  most  of 
Europe  the  municipalities  have  been  tra- 
ditionally nonpolitical.  The  Commission 
will  often  be  able  to  entrust  to  city 
authorities  not  only  the  distribution  of 
food  but  also  responsibility  for  the  func- 
tioning, under  its  orders,  of  local  factories. 

In  all  industrial  centers  reconstituted 
trade  unions  will  almost  certainly  spring 
up  the  moment  the  top  factory  manage- 
ment and  the  Nazi  police  power  vanish. 
If  the  Commission  does  not  worry  too 
much  about  red  flags  and  speeches,  about 
the  temporary  niceties  of  property  rights, 
and  about  the  fairly  wide  diffusion  of  small 
firearms  among  their  members,  it  will  find 
them — especially  in  central  Europe  and 
north  Italy — surprisingly  responsible  in- 
struments for  instituting  relief  and  medical 
centers,  reorganizing  factory  production, 
and  maintaining  civil  peace  and  order. 

And  made  to  order  for  the  purposes  of 
the  Commission  are  the  agricultural  and 
consumer  co-operatives.  Before  the  war, 
in  the  five  countries  of  Denmark,  Norway, 
Holland,  Belgium,  and  France,  there  were 
some  sixteen  thousand  co-operative  retail 
stores  serving  more  than  three  million 
families,  or  more  than  twenty  per  cent  of 
the  population,  and  several  thousand  dis- 
tributing warehouses  serving  more  than 
half  a  million  small  farms.  In  central 
Europe  and  north  Italy  co-operatives  are 
almost  equally  widespread.  Throughout 
the  depression  of  the  early  thirties  they 
demonstrated  an  extraordinarily  tough 
capacity  for  survival.  Although  they 
have  been  nominally  swallowed  up  in 
Hitler's  New  Order,  it  is  probable  that 
their  installations,  their  lower  personnel, 
and   the   loyalties   of  their   memberships 


THE    rilREE   R'S    OF    POSTWAR   EUROPE 


63 


have  remained  fairly  intact.  In  an  emer- 
gency they  might  serve  several  times  the 
number  of  their  former  members.  Of  all 
the  instruments  which  the  Commission 
might  use — especially  for  distribution  of 
consumer  goods  and  agricultural  supplies, 
none  would  offer  a  more  dependable 
guaranty  of  efhciency  and  political  im- 
partiality than  the  co-operatives. 

The  Commission  can  do  its  job  of  recon- 
struction cleanly  and  swiftly — for  it  will 
have  vast  potential  reserves  of  materials 
and  engineering  genius  at  its  command — 
if  it  receives  an  unequivocal  mandate  to 
reconstruct,  without  interference  from  pol- 
iticians. Europe  will  look  to  the  Commis- 
sion for  a  good  deal  of  pump-priming  and 
initial  GHQ  work.  But  thereafter  it  will, 
by  gradual  stages,  become  master  again  in 
its  own  house  and  manage  its  domestic 
affairs  as  it  may  see  fit. 

But  it  will  reconstruct  itself  farm  by 
farm,  village  by  village,  city  by  ruined 
city.  They — the  peoples  and  the  uncon- 
quered  men  and  women  of  Europe — will 
shoulder  the  job  of  rebuilding.  The  re- 
sponsibility must  be  theirs,  not  the  Com- 
mission's. Where  a  farm  co-operative  can 
distribute  new  seeds,  where  a  trade  union 
can  guarantee  coal  deliveries  for  household 
needs,  where  a  municipality  can  issue 
bonds  for  rebuilding  its  bomb-shattered 
homes,  there  will  be  reconstruction  in  ac- 
tion. No  Commission  or  AMG  can  re- 
lieve the  European  peoples  of  their  re- 
sponsibility for  redeeming  their  own  future 
by  their  own  labor. 

Political  disputes  will  be  the  big  head- 
lines while  the  Commission  is  quietly  pro- 
viding Europe  with  the  stuff  of  life.  But 
eventually  Europe  will  inherit  from  the 


Commission  a  unified,  functioning  mecha- 
nism that  can  satisfy  the  primary  needs  of 
its  economy.  Europe  must  then  decide 
whether  it  wants  to  split  that  mechanism 
into  many  small,  competitive  parts,  or 
retain  it  intact  to  benefit  all  its  peoples 
and  make  possible  peacetime  mass-pro- 
duction which  it  has  never  enjoyed  before. 
It  cannot  chop  in  pieces  the  machine  that 
provides  its  sustenance  without  reducing 
its  own  supply.  It  must  rather  organize 
its  political  life  round  its  productive  ma- 
chine. And  that  means  some  degree  of 
European  federation. 

If  Europe's  basic  production  and  dis- 
tribution plant  is  in  fact  to  be  preserved 
more  or  less  as  a  unit,  then  the  European 
nations  will  perforce  need  to  erect  some 
central  international  agency  to  regulate 
and  perhaps  operate  it.  Such  ad  hoc  eco- 
nomic federation  provides  the  soundest  of 
all  foundations  for  the  growth  of  political 
federation. 

But  if  our  Commission  does  not  provide 
support  to  Europe's  basic  economy  then 
w^e  can  expect  that  that  economy  will 
split  into  bits  like  the  one-hoss  shay.  In 
such  case — in  case  we  cannot  convert  Hit- 
ler's economy  to  humane  uses — we  must 
expect  that  the  European  peoples  will  look 
to  Russia  to  teach  them  how  to  reproduce 
the  miracle  which  the  Bolsheviks  created 
out  of  the  crumbled  remnants  of  Tzarism. 

We  must  do  a  job  of  capitalistic  engi- 
neering in  postwar  Europe  or  Russia  will 
do  a  job  of  socialist  engineering  that  will 
probably  stick.  We  have  the  first  chance 
to  start  Europe's  economy  going  again  to 
provide  Europe's  peoples  with  the  things 
they  need.  If  we  do  not  do  it  they  will 
turn  toward  the  east. 


HEROD    CONSIDERS    THE    MASSACRE 
OF   THE   INNOCENTS 

W.     H.    AUDEN 


This  is  a  passage  jrom  a  Christmas  oratorio  entitled  '^For  the  Time  Being^^ 
on  which  Mr.  Auden  has  been  working,  Herod  is  speaking. — The  Editors 

BECAUSE  I  am  bewildered,  because  I  must  decide,  because  my 
decision  must  be  in  conformity  with  Nature  and  Necessity,  let 
^  me  honor  those  through  whom  my  nature  is  by  necessity  what 
it  is. 

To  Fortune — that  I   have  become  Tetrarch,   that  I   have  escaped 

assassination,  that  at  sixty  my  head  is  clear  and  my  digestion  sound. 
To  my  father — for  the  means  to  gratify  my  love  of  travel  and  study. 
To  my  mother — for  a  straight  nose. 
To  Eva,  my  colored  nurse — for  regular  habits. 
To  my  brother,   Sandy,   who  married  a  trapeze  artist  and  died  of 

drink — for  so  refuting  the  position  of  the  Hedonists. 
To  Mr.  Stewart,  nicknamed  The  Carp,  who  instructed  me  in  the 

elements  of  geometry  through  which  I  came  to  perceive  the  errors  of 

the  tragic  poets. 
To  Professor  Lighthouse — for  his  lectures  on  the  Peloponnesian  War. 
To  the  stranger  on  the  boat  to  Sicily — for  recommending  to  me  Brown 

on  Resolution. 
To  my  secretary.  Miss  Button — for  admitting  that  my  speeches  were 

inaudible. 

There  is  no  visible  disorder.  No  crime — what  could  be  more 
innocent  than  the  birth  of  an  artisan's  child?  To-day  has  been  one  of 
those  perfect  winter  days,  cold,  brilliant,  and  utterly  still,  when 
the  bark  of  a  shepherd's  dog  carries  for  miles,  and  the  great  wild 
mountains  come  up  quite  close  to  the  city  walls,  and  the  mind  feels 
intensely  awake,  and  this  evetiing  as  I  stand  at  this  window  high  up  in 
the  citadel  there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  magnificent  panorama  of 
plain  and  mountains  to  indicate  that  the  Empire  is  threatened  by  a 
danger  more  dreadful  than  any  invasion  of  Tartars  on  racing  camels  or 
conspiracy  of  the  Praetorian  Guard. 


HEROD    CONSIDERS    THE    MASSACRE  65 

Barges  arc  unloading  soil  fertilizer  at  the  river  wharves.  Soft 
drinks  and  sandwiches  may  be  had  in  the  inns  at  reasonable  prices. 
Allotment  gardening  has  become  popular.  The  highway  to  the  coast 
goes  straight  up  over  the  mountains  and  the  truck  drivers  no  longer 
carry  guns.  Things  are  beginning  to  take  shape.  It  is  a  long  time 
since  anyone  stole  the  park  benches  or  murdered  the  swans.  There  arc 
children  in  this  province  who  have  never  seen  a  louse,  shopkeepers  who 
have  never  handled  a  counterfeit  coin,  women  of  forty  who  have  never 
hidden  in  a  ditch  except  for  fun.  Yes,  in  twenty  years  I  have  managed 
to  do  a  little.  Not  enough  of  course.  There  are  villages  only  a  few 
miles  from  here  where  they  still  believe  in  witches.  There  isn't  a  single 
town  where  a  good  bookshop  would  pay.  One  could  count  on  the 
lingers  of  one  hand  the  people  capable  of  solving  the  problem  of 
Achilles  and  the  Tortoise.  Still  it  is  a  beginning.  In  twenty  years  the 
darkness  has  been  pushed  back  a  few  inches.  And  what,  after  all,  is 
the  whole  Empire,  with  its  few  thousand  square  miles  on  which  it  is 
possible  to  lead  the  Rational  Life,  but  a  tiny  patch  of  light  compared 
with  those  immense  areas  of  barbaric  night  that  surround  it  on  all 
sides,  that  incoherent  wilderness  of  rage  and  terror,  where  Mongolian 
idiots  are  regarded  as  sacred  and  mothers  who  give  birth  to  twins  are 
instantly  put  to  death,  where  malaria  is  treated  by  yelling,  where 
warriors  of  superb  courage  obey  the  commands  of  hysterical  female 
impersonators,  where  the  best  cuts  of  meat  are  reserved  for  the  dead, 
where,  if  a  white  blackbird  has  been  seen,  no  more  work  may  be  done 
that  day,  w^here  it  is  firmly  believed  that  the  world  was  created  by  a 
giant  wdth  three  heads  or  that  the  motions  of  the  stars  are  controlled 
from  the  liver  of  a  rogue  elephant? 

Yet  even  inside  this  little  civilized  patch  itself,  where,  at  the  cost 
of  heaven  knows  how  much  grief  and  bloodshed,  it  has  been  made  un- 
necessary for  anyone  over  the  age  of  twelve  to  believe  in  fairies  or 
that  First  Causes  reside  in  mortal  and  finite  objects,  so  many  are  still 
homesick  for  that  disorder  wherein  every  passion  formerly  enjoyed  a 
frantic  license.  Caesar  flies  to  his  hunting  lodge  pursued  by  ennui; 
in  the  faubourgs  of  the  Capital,  Society  grows  savage,  corrupted  by 
silks  and  scents,  softened  by  sugar  and  hot  water,  made  insolent  by 
theaters  and  attractive  slaves;  and  everywhere,  including  this  province, 
new  prophets  spring  up  every  day  to  sound  the  old  barbaric  note. 

I  have  tried  everything.  I  have  prohibited  the  sale  of  crystals  and 
ouija  boards;  I  have  slapped  a  heavy  tax  on  playing  cards;  the  courts 
are  empowered  to  sentence  alchemists  to  hard  labor  in  the  mines; 
it  is  a  statutory  offense  to  turn  tables  or  feel  bumps.  But  nothing  is 
really  effective.  How  can  I  expect  the  masses  to  be  sensible  when,  for 
instance,  to  my  certain  knowledge,  the  captain  of  my  own  guard  wears 
an  amulet  against  the  Evil  Eye,  and  the  richest  merchant  in  the  city 
consults  a  medium  over  every  important  transaction? 

Legislation  is  helpless  against  the  wild  prayer  of  longing  that  rises, 
day  in,  day  out,  from  all  these  households  under  my  protection:  "O 
God,  put  away  justice  and  truth,  for  we  cannot  understand  them  and 
do  not  want  them.  Eternity  would  bore  us  dreadfully.  Leave  Thy 
heavens  and  come  down  to  our  earth  of  waterclocks  and  hedges. 
Become  our  uncle.  Look  after  Baby,  amuse  Grandfather,  escort 
Madam  to  the  opera,  help  Willy  with  his  homework,  introduce  Muriel 
to  a  handsome  naval  officer.  Be  interesting  and  weak  like  us,  and  we 
will  love  you  as  we  love  ourselves." 

Reason  is  helpless,  and  now  even  the  Poetic  Compromise  no  longer 


66  HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 

works,  all  those  lovely  fairy  tales  in  which  Zeus,  disguising  himself 
as  a  swan  or  a  bull  or  a  shower  of  rain  or  what-have-you,  lay  with  some 
beautiful  woman  and  begot  a  hero.  For  the  Public  has  grown  too 
sophisticated.  Under  all  the  charming  metaphors  and  symbols,  it  de- 
tects the  stern  command  "Be  and  act  heroically";  behind  the  myth  of 
divine  origin  it  senses  the  real  human  excellence  that  is  a  reproach  to  its 
own  baseness.  So,  with  a  bellow  of  rage,  it  kicks  Poetry  downstairs 
and  sends  for  Prophecy.  "Your  sister  has  just  insulted  me.  I  asked 
for  a  God  who  should  be  as  like  me  as  possible.  What  use  to  me  is  a 
God  whose  divinity  consists  in  doing  difficult  things  that  I  cannot  do  or 
saying  clever  things  that  I  cannot  understand?  The  God  I  want  and 
intend  to  get  must  be  someone  I  can  recognize  immediately  without 
having  to  wait  and  see  what  he  says  or  does.  There  must  be  nothing 
in  the  least  extraordinary  about  him.  Produce  him  at  once,  please. 
I'm  sick  of  waiting." 

To-day,  apparently,  judging  by  the  trio  who  came  to  see  me  this 
morning  with  an  ecstatic  grin  on  their  scholarly  faces,  the  job  has  been 
done.  "God  has  been  born,"  they  cried,  "we  have  seen  him  ourselves. 
The  World  is  saved.     Nothing  else  matters." 

One  needn't  be  much  of  a  psychologist  to  realize  that  if  this  rumor  is 
not  stamped  out  now,  in  a  few  years  it  is  capable  of  diseasing  the  whole 
Empire,  and  one  doesn't  have  to  be  a  prophet  to  predict  the  con- 
sequences if  it  should. 

Reason  will  be  replaced  by  Revelation.  Instead  of  Rational  Law, 
objective  truths  perceptible  to  any  who  will  undergo  the  necessary 
intellectual  discipline,  and  the  same  for  all,  Knowledge  will  degenerate 
into  a  riot  of  subjective  visions — feelings  in  the  solar  plexus  induced 
by  undernourishment,  angelic  images  generated  by  fevers  or  drugs, 
dream  warnings  inspired  by  the  sound  of  falling  water.  Whole 
cosmogonies  will  be  created  out  of  some  forgotten  personal  resentment, 
complete  epics  written  in  private  languages,  the  daubs  of  school  chil- 
dren ranked  above  the  greatest  masterpieces. 

Idealism  will  be  replaced  by  Materialism.  Priapus  will  only  have 
to  move  to  a  good  address  and  call  himself  Eros  to  become  the  darling 
of  middle-aged  women.  Life  after  death  will  be  an  eternal  dinner 
party  where  all  the  guests  are  twenty  years  old.  Diverted  from  its 
normal  and  wholesome  outlet  in  patriotism  and  civic  or  family  pride, 
the  need  of  the  materialistic  Masses  for  some  visible  Idol  to  worship  will 
be  driven  into  totally  unsocial  channels  where  no  education  can  reach 
it.  Divine  honors  will  be  paid  to  silver  teapots,  shallow  depressions  in 
the  earth,  names  on  maps,  domestic  pets,  ruined  windmills,  even  in 
extreme  cases,  which  will  become  increasingly  common,  to  headaches, 
or  malignant  tumors,  or  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

Justice  will  be  replaced  by  Pity  as  the  cardinal  human  virtue,  and 
all  fear  of  retribution  will  vanish.  Every  corner-boy  will  congratulate 
himself:  "I'm  such  a  sinner  that  God  had  to  come  down  in  person  to 
save  me.  I  must  be  a  devil  of  a  fellow."  Every  crook  will  argue:  "I 
like  committing  crimes.  God  likes  forgiving  them.  Really  the  world 
is  admirably  arranged."  And  the  ambition  of  every  young  cop  will  be 
to  secure  a  deathbed  repentance.  The  New  Aristocracy  will  consist 
exclusively  of  hermits,  bums,  and  permanent  invalids.  The  Rough 
Diamond,  the  Consumptive  Whore,  the  bandit  who  is  good  to  his 
mother,  the  epileptic  girl  who  has  a  way  with  animals  will  be  the  heroes 
and  heroines  of  the  New  Tragedy  when  the  general,  the  statesman,  and 
the  philosopher  have  become  the  butt  of  every  farce  and  satire. 


HEROD    CONSIDERS    THE    MASSACRE  67 

Naturally  this  cannot  be  allowed  to  happen.  Civilization  must  be 
saved  even  if  this  means  sendinp;  for  the  military,  as  I  suppose  it  does. 
How  dreary.  Why  is  it  that  in  the  end  civilization  always  has  to  call  in 
these  professional  tidicrs  to  whom  it  is  all  one  whether  it  be  Pythagoras 
or  a  homicidal  lunatic  that  they  are  instructed  to  exterminate?  Oh  dear ! 
Why  couldn't  this  wretched  infant  be  born  somewhere  else?  Why  can't 
people  be  sensible.  I  don't  want  to  be  horrid.  Why  can't  they  see 
that  the  notion  of  a  finite  God  is  absurd?  Because  it  is.  And  suppose, 
just  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  it  isn't,  that  this  story  is  true,  that 
this  child  is  in  some  inexplicable  manner  both  God  and  Man,  that  he 
grows  up,  lives,  and  dies,  without  committing  a  single  sin.  Would 
that  make  life  any  better?  On  the  contrary  it  would  make  it  far,  far 
worse.  For  it  could  only  mean  this:  that  once  having  shown  them  how, 
God  would  expect  every  man,  whatever  his  fortune,  to  lead  a  sinless 
life  in  the  flesh  and  on  earth.  Then  indeed  would  the  human  race  be 
plunged  into  madness  and  despair.  And  for  me  personally  at  this 
moment  it  would  mean  that  God  had  given  me  the  power  to  destroy 
Himself.  I  refuse  to  be  taken  in.  He  could  not  play  such  a  horrible 
practical  joke.  Why  should  He  dislike  me  so?  I've  worked  like  a 
slave.  Ask  anyone  you  like.  I  read  all  official  dispatches  without 
skipping.  I've  taken  elocution  lessons.  I've  hardly  ever  taken  bribes. 
How  dare  He  allow  me  to  decide?  I've  tried  to  be  good.  I  brush  my 
teeth  every  night.  I  haven't  had  sex  for  a  month.  I  object.  I'm  a 
liberal.     I  want  everyone  to  be  happy.     I  wish  I  had  never  been  born. 


{f=^ 


FUSllC  LIBRARY 


WHAT    SOLDIERS    ARE   THINKING 

ABOUT 


PVT.    DALE    KRAMER 


« 


[OLDiERS  of  the  last  war  who  repeated 
the  slogan  "Make  the  world  safe  for 
democracy"  took  for  granted  that 
implicit  in  it  was  promise  of  more  happi- 
ness on  earth  than  had  existed  before  they 
took  up  arms  against  the  Kaiser.  There 
was  some  cynicism,  and  many  did  not 
think  one  way  or  the  other  about  it,  but 
most  soldiers  felt  that,  should  they  be 
among  those  fortunate  enough  to  return, 
their  own  particular  future  would  be 
brighter  than  had  no  war  been  fought. 

Heard  on  all  sides  to-day,  in  contrast, 
are  allegations  that  American  soldiers  of 
this  war  lack  idealism.  They  have  no 
flamboyant  slogans,  they  sing  few  stirring 
songs.  On  the  surface  at  least  the  charges 
appear  to  be  true.  Ask  a  soldier — ask  him 
informally  in  barracks  or  field — what  he  is 
fighting  for,  and  he  is  apt  to  answer  that  he 
is  fighting  to  get  the  war  over  with  so  that 
he  can  go  home.  Inquire  whether  he 
expects  the  world  after  the  war  to  be  a 
better  place  to  live  in,  and  probably  he 
will  deny  that  prospects  for  his  own  hap- 
piness are  likely  to  be  materially  improved. 
He  agrees  that  it  would  indeed  have  been 
a  sorry  world  had  Hitler  been  allowed 
to  dominate  it;  the  point  is  that  he  doesn't 
think  America  is  going  to  be  any  better  off 
than,  say,  in  August,  1939. 

This  fact  fortunately  has  not  resulted 
in  low  morale  (the  soldier  discovers  that 


fighting  spirit,  including  his  own,  is 
stronger  than  he  had  expected  when  he 
entered  the  Army),  for  the  reason  that  the 
nation  suffered  aggression.  The  Japs 
attacked  us;  Germany  and  Italy  declared 
war  on  us.  We  defend  ourselves  and 
proudly  punish  those  who  dared  even 
covet  our  land.  It  is  an  added  attraction 
at  the  same  time  to  strike  down  dictator- 
ships. But  so  far  the  soldier's  thinking  is 
directed,  as  is  the  nation's,  primarily 
toward  defense  of  the  homeland.  He 
doesn't  expect  a  brave  new  world  after 
that  defense  has  been  accomplished  by 
victory,  and,  generally  speaking,  his  active 
interest  in  the  international  aspects  of  war 
is  only  slight. 

But  service  in  the  Armed  Forces  changes 
men  in  numerous  ways.  More  than  any- 
thing else  it  stimulates  thinking.  Deep  in 
his  core  the  soldier,  while  perhaps  not 
expecting  better  things  from  this  war, 
very  strongly  desires  them.  He  ardently 
believes  that  he  should  not  fight  in  vain. 
Consequently  what  on  the  surface  appears 
to  be  cynicism,  or  even  apathy,  is  not 
necessarily  that  at  all.  Failure  of  the 
other  war — or  the  peace — to  solve  any- 
thing makes  him  wary  of  pat  slogans  about 
this  one.  Moreover,  in  most  matters  the 
soldiers  of  this  war  are  better  educated 
than  those  of  the  last;  they  have  read  and 
seen  more.     The  depression  made  them 


WHAT    SOLDIERS    ARE    THINKING    ABOUT 


69 


uneasy,  whether  they  felt  its  impact 
directly  or  whether  its  disquieting  elTect 
was  communicated  to  them  through  their 
parents.  As  a  result  they  prefer  to 
examine  things  for  themselves. 

No  one  can  speak  with  toplofty  knowl- 
edge of  the  exact  thought  processes  of 
American  soldiers,  and  I  do  not  pretend  to. 
But  certain  attitudes  are  developed  from 
like  experiences.  The  war  has  had  a 
tremendous,  if  not  readily  discernible, 
impact  on  the  minds  of  soldiers,  and  they 
have  begun  to  examine  it. 

II 

THERE  is  one  thing  the  tendency  to  ap- 
praise critically  everything  put  for- 
ward as  gospel  has  done — it  has  made  the 
work  of  drum-beaters  and  professional 
morale  pumper-uppers  very  difficult.  In 
a  recent  article  ("What  It's  Like  in  the 
Army,"  June //flr/?^r'i")  I  mildly  deprecated 
the  revels  of  advertising  writers,  the  wal- 
lowings  of  glory  hacks,  and  the  heroics  of 
Hollywood  movie-makers.  The  response 
I  have  had  from  soldiers  encourages  me  to 
comment  on  some  other  works  of  the 
morale  builders.  Service  men  are  not 
particularly  upset — we  find  ourselves  sur- 
prisingly tolerant — but  it  is  a  subject 
rarely  touched  on,  and  there  is  a  chance 
that  a  slightly  greater  tendency  toward 
treatment  of  soldiers  and  sailors  as  adults 
may  result. 

The  hullabaloo  over  Stage  Door  Can- 
teens is  a  good  example.  The  canteens 
were  created  in  good  spirit  and  many 
Service  men  have  found  pleasure  in  them. 
But  the  nonsense  woven  about  them  is, 
to  use  understatement,  remarkable.  Ex- 
ample: "Whoever  said  'War  is  hell' 
never  saw  a  Stage  Door  Canteen,"  the 
Rotarian  magazine  quotes  a  Marine  as 
saying.  That  Marine,  I  am  informed  by 
members  of  the  Corps,  was  either  a  wag, 
drunk,  or  fictitious.  This  example  is 
anything  but  an  isolated  one.  It  was  my 
good  fortune  to  observe  a  group  of  metro- 
politan newspapers  beat  the  drums  for  the 
establishment  of  a  canteen.  Photographs 
of  local  dignitaries  who  contributed  money 
were  published.  Captains  of  industry 
were  shown  attired  in  the  aprons  which 
they  planned  to  wear  while  on  duty  as  bus 


boys.  Given  the  most  prominence  of  all 
were  displays  of  pretty  society  girls  who 
had  consented  to  serve  as  junior  hostesses 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  soldier  boys 
and  the  sailor  boys.  I  do  not  know  who 
was  responsible  for  the  campaign's  frip- 
pery. The  newspaper  editors  perhaps  or 
publicity  agents  hired  to  thump  the  tubs. 
Prospective  donors  may  have  required  an 
exaggerated  feeling  of  philanthropy  before 
they  could  be  induced  to  open  their 
pocketbooks.  At  any  rate  soldiers  got  the 
idea  that  they  were  expected  to  thank  their 
lucky  stars  for  a  war  which  gives  them  an 
opportunity  to  eat  free  sandwiches,  see  a 
show  without  buying  a  ticket,  and — God 
bless  America! — maybe  dance  with  a 
society  girl. 

I  was  not  able  to  attend  until  some 
nights  after  the  opening,  but  in  time  I  got 
there  in  the  company  of  a  friend  of  mine 
who  has  a  somewhat  tricky  sense  of  humor. 
He  has  a  particularly  naive  face,  and  with 
bright  eyes  he  approached  a  senior  hostess 
and  asked  that  a  couple  of  debutantes  be 
allotted  to  us.  He  was  informed  that  no 
society  girls  happened  to  be  present. 
After  a  while  though  a  pleasant  and 
attractive  young  lady  sat  down  with  us. 
She  was  a  secretary,  it  turned  out.  My 
friend  smiled  tolerantly  and  explained  that 
we  were  not  snobbish.  The  remark  ap- 
peared to  confuse  her,  and  she  had 
little  faith  in  his  sanity  when  he  struck  the 
table  gleefully  upon  her  explanation  that 
she  liked  being  a  junior  hostess  fine  even 
if  otherwise  she  could  be  out  having  fun. 
My  friend  also  told  a  large,  round,  and 
already  harried-looking  gentleman  dressed 
in  a  pink  apron  that  he  was  a  better 
soldier  for  having  seen  a  business  man  take 
up  sandwich  plates. 

Some  volunteer  helper  will  stay  away 
from  a  canteen  to-morrow,  and  I  shall  be 
sorry.  Many  girls  find  pleasure  in  danc- 
ing with  Service  men  in  the  canteens, 
USO's,  and  the  like;  and  tycoons,  suburban 
matrons,  and  people  of  the  theater  enjoy 
themselves — or  at  least  get  the  feeling  of 
helping  to  win  the  war — in  the  roles  of 
bus  boys  and  hostesses.  Certainly  much 
selfless  effort  and  round  sums  of  money  go 
into  entertainment  of  Service  men.  But  I 
warn  good  people  who  work  and  give  to 
cheer  soldiers  and  sailors  that  such  foolish- 


70 


HARPER'S    MAGAZJNE 


ness  as  that  put  forth  by  the  Rotarian  maga- 
zine, most  newspapers,  and  the  producers 
of  the  movie  "Stage  Door  Canteen"  is 
harmful  to  their  cause. 

The  plain  fact  is  that  soldiers  and  sailors 
do  not  like — they  even  resc  nt — being  given 
anything.  Not  that  they  refuse.  They 
eat  free  food  and  go  to  free  shows  and 
sometimes  sleep  in  free  beds — if  only  to 
save  money  for,  we'll  say,  strong  drink. 
They  have  their  own  girls  at  home  (danc- 
ing with  a  young  lady  out  to  entertain 
soldiers  as  a  patriotic  duty  is  not  much  of  a 
substitute),  good  meals,  and  shows  to 
which  they  could  easily  afford  the  price  of 
admission.  One  scene  in  the  movie 
"Stage  Door  Canteen"  was  particularly 
insufferable.  A  sailor  who  had  some 
years  of  wartime  service  to  his  credit  was 
pictured  as  nearly  swooning  with  gratitude 
at  having  been  given  an  orange.  Why 
should  a  battle-scarred  sailor  feel  particu- 
larly choked  up  because  someone  who  has 
plenty  of  oranges,  maybe  a  surfeit,  gives 
him  one  of  them? 

Ill 

Civilians'  lack  of  information  about 
another  phase  of  military  life  has 
caused  soldiers'  minds  to  be  somewhat 
more  exercised  than  would  otherwise  be 
the  case.  It  is  the  delicate  matter  of 
rank.  Occasionally  men  reject  advance- 
ment rather  than  change  to  another  type 
of  work,  and  a  great  many  have  chosen  to 
remain  enlisted  men  rather  than  undergo 
the  rigors  of  officers'  schools;  but  should  a 
soldier  be  heard  to  declare  that  he  declined 
promotion  in  his  own  field  it  can  be 
assumed  that  he  either  is  a  candidate  for 
the  mantle  of  Thoreau  or  else  that  he 
handles  the  facts  loosely.  On  the  other 
hand,  rank-consciousness  is  exaggerated 
by  the  soldier's  knowledge  that  the  folks 
back  home  gage  his  progress  by  the  num- 
ber of  his  stripes  or  the  shape  of  his 
shoulder  embellishments. 

The  Army  recognizes  a  wide  gap 
between  commissioned  officers  and  en- 
listed men  in  that  officers  are  given  greater 
direct  responsibility,  more  pay,  and  a 
right  to  certain  formal  marks  of  respect. 
In  actual  relations  however,  particularly 
in  the  field,  this  gap  is  nowadays  con- 
siderably   narrowed.     A    lieutenant,    for 


example,  may  hkve  gone  into  officers' 
school  as  a  corporal,  a  private  first  class,  or 
even  as  a  private.  In  so  short  a  time  he 
hadn't  the  opportunity,  even  if  his  personal 
inclinations  were  otherwise,  to  establish  an 
attitude  which  sets  him  very  high  above 
enlisted  men  who  might  have,  or  may, 
become  officers. 

But  these  factors  are  less  important  than 
certain  aspects  of  the  Army  structure 
which  are  understood  by  soldiers  but 
are  a  mystery  to  outsiders.  To  gain  rank 
it  pays,  and  rightly  so,  to  get  into  a  war 
early.  When  the  Army  began  to  expand, 
and  particularly  when  it  mushroomed 
after  Pearl  Harbor,  a  tremendous  demand 
for  new  officers  was  created.  Men  went 
readily  to  officers'  schools,  and  there  grew 
up  a  legend  that  any  soldier  of  reasonable 
talent  was  more  or  less  forced  to  become 
an  officer.  Lately  however  demand  has 
decreased,  the  schools  have  been  closing, 
and  as  a  rule  men  with  overseas  service  will 
be  chosen  for  the  grades  which  remain 
open,  which  is  logical. 

The  rise  to  various  grades  of  non- 
commissioned officers  is  regulated  by  the 
Army's  famous  Tables  of  Organization. 
An  Army  unit — regiment,  battalion,  com- 
pany, etc. — has  places  for  a  given  number 
of  noncommissioned  officers.  When  a 
training  unit  is  set  up,  a  "cadre"  of  non- 
coms,  chosen  from  old  outfits,  is  assigned 
to  assist  in  training  the  new  men.  These 
cadremen  usually  remain,  and  they  fill 
the  high-ranking  noncommissioned  officer 
posts.  Thus  soldiers,  understanding  the 
Tables  of  Organization,  and  developing  a 
strong  and  independent  pride  of  person, 
tend  to  minimize  rank  except  to  covet  it 
in  order  to  gain  higher  pay  or  easier  duties. 
It  is  true  that  a  certain  cleavage  between 
officer  and  enlisted  man  remains.  Of  two 
close  friends,  one  now  an  officer  and  the 
other  an  enlisted  man,  the  enlisted  man 
will  not  feel  entirely  at  ease  in  public  with 
the  other,  for  the  tradition  of  all  armies 
since  the  first  organized  conflict  says  that 
the  officer  is  superior.  But  most  soldiers 
to-day  realize  that  officers  and  men  are 
not  creatures  of  different  species,  and  that 
a  good  deal  of  luck  may  have  played  a 
part  in  determining  the  stature  of  any 
individual,  and  thus  do  not  put  an  undue 
value  upon  this  stature. 


WHAT    SOLDIERS    ARE    THINKING    ABOUT 


71 


Civilians,  on  the  other  hand,  are  more 
incHned  to  look  at  diflercnccs  in  rank  as 
degrees  of  black  and  white,  an  under- 
standable attitude  which  has  caused  more 
than  a  little  mental  torment  for  well- 
wishers  of  soldiers  who  do  not  appear  to 
have  been  properly  appreciated  by  the 
Army.  This  is  illustrated  by  an  adven- 
ture, which  I  consider  of  epic  proportions, 
that  a  friend  of  mine  had  when  he  tried  to 
purchase  a  garrison  hat. 

My  friend  had  entered  the  Army  as  a 
private,  a  not  uncommon  manner  of 
entry,  but  on  his  family  tree  were  a 
number  of  colonels  or  better,  and  his 
mother  felt  some  ignominy  at  her  son's 
plight.  Many  of  her  friends  were  equally 
humiliated  by  presence  of  offspring  in  the 
ranks.  My  friend  did  not  improve  mat- 
ters by  insisting  on  wearing  the  small 
"overseas"  cap  (called  a  field  cap  in  this 
war)  when  he  could  have  purchased  and 
worn  a  visored  garrison  hat  of  the  type 
worn  by  officers  for  dress  so  long  as  he  did 
not  attach  officer's  insignia  to  it.  He  had 
the  good  fortune  to  be  stationed  for  a 
while  near  New  York  City,  his  home,  and 
his  mother  made  up  her  mind  that  he 
should  wear  a  garrison  hat — to  look,  he 
assumed,  more  like  an  officer.  On  one  of 
his  leaves  he  agreed  to  accompany  her 
downtown  to  make  the  purchase.  She 
chose  a  large,  rather  e»:lusive  store  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  where  they  both  had  main- 
tained charge  accounts  for  many  years. 
They  went  at  once  to  the  military  room. 
A  clerk  heard  the  request,  and  he  glanced 
at  my  friend.  "We  do  not,"  he  said  icily, 
"cater  to  privates  here." 

The  young  man's  mother  controlled 
herself  in  a  creditable  manner.  She 
silenced  herself  after  only  a  few  words  and 
she  wheeled  her  son  and  they  hurried 
home,  where  she  wrote  letters  canceling 
their  accounts.  After  that  she  began 
telephoning  friends  who  she  knew  had 
sons  who  were  enlisted  men.  They 
caught  the  mood.  They  hung  up  re- 
ceivers and  fired  cancellations  of  accounts 
to  the  store,  telling  why.  The  campaign 
had  gained  the  proportions  of  a  stiff 
prairie  blaze  when  she  came  to  a  friend 
with  whom  she  had  not  talked  for  some 
time.  The  story  was  well  under  way 
when  she  began  to  notice  a  lack  of  response 


at  the  other  end  of  the  wire.  Finally  there 
was  an  interruption.  "I'm  awfully  sorry, 
darling,"  her  friend  said,  "I'm  really  not 
interested  now.  My  boy  was  made  a 
lieutenant  the  other  day." 

IV 

THE  matters  examined  above  are  more 
or  less  in  the  category  of  gripes,  a 
popular  department  with  Army  men. 
Soldiers  grumble  about  everything:  they 
hammer  down  and  flatten  out  their 
environment  the  better  to  tolerate  it. 
The  deeper  and  the  positive  things  remain 
generally  hidden  and  unspoken,  but  they 
are  there. 

The  most  important  thing  in  a  soldier's 
life,  outside  the  physical  essentials,  is 
comradeship.  It  is  something  that  is  in 
many  ways  new  to  him.  In  the  old  days 
Americans  pulled  together  to  break  open 
the  new  continent.  They  were  individ- 
uals, but  they  often  found  it  necessary  to 
submerge  themselves  for  the  common 
good,  or  else  they  perished  by  the  wayside. 
This  process  changed  as  an  established 
pattern  was  formed  and  each  fitted  him- 
self one  way  or  another  into  it.  A  man 
came  to  live  pretty  much  to  himself.  He 
worked  intimately  with  others  in  office  or 
factory,  but  when  the  day  was  over  he 
went  home  and  forgot  about  them.  His 
friends  might  be  very  close,  but  ordinarily 
he  had  no  real  opportunity  to  test  them 
under  pressure. 

When  men  step  out  of  their  little 
footholds  of  civilian  life  into  the  Armed 
Forces  they  are  on  unfamiliar  and  slippery 
ground  and  they  must  reach  out  to  one 
another  for  help.  There  is  constant 
pressure,  starting  at  the  induction  center 
and  intensifying  through  training  to  the 
battlefield  and  into  the  hospitals  and  the 
prison  camps.  The  spirit  of  co-operation 
is  seen  in  small  things.  There  is,  for 
example,  a  determined  fairness  with  which 
food  is  apportioned  in  family-style  service. 
("No  short-stop" — the  rule  against  grab- 
bing something  off  a  plate  after  another 
has  asked  for  it;  "no  chinching" — the  law 
forbidding  taking  food  in  such  a  manner 
that  the  next  man  will  have  to  go  to  the 
kitchen  for  more.)  If  a  poker  or  black- 
jack game  gets  under  way  it  is  the  un- 


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written  rule  that  anyone  with  a  dollar  or 
two  can  enter  it.  (A  peculiarly  frank 
soldier-cardsharp  told  me,  shaking  his 
head  sadly,  that  "You  just  can't  cheat  the 
boys  all  the  time  and  stay  popular.") 
Bullies  are  rare  for  the  reason  that  selection 
of  victims  is  impossible — some  muscular 
individual  may  suddenly  substitute  him- 
self, \vith  the  full  approval  of  bystanders. 
The  soldier  readily  grants  any  sensible 
favor  asked  by  another,  whether  he  is  a 
friend  or  not  even  an  acquaintance.  When 
a  man  is  placed  on  an  unexpected  duty  or 
visitors  show  up  without  warning  he  goes 
first  to  his  friends  in  an  effort  to  arrange  a 
swap  and,  failing  that,  he  continues  to 
others,  who  are  expected  to  help  him  out  if 
they  have  no  special  plans  of  their  own. 
Money  is  the  more  readily  lent  because  the 
stigma  attached  to  failure  to  return  it  is 
something  like  that  which  horse  thieves 
enjoyed  in  the  Old  West,  where  a  man 
deprived  of  his  mount  was  in  a  sore  pre- 
dicament. Soldiers  on  leave  show  con- 
sideration for  one  another  in  various  small 
ways,  and  it  is  understood  that  when  a 
man  is  visiting  a  friend  in  another  outfit 
he  is  welcome  to  the  mess  line.  There 
may  have  been  some  animosity  between 
the  branches  of  the  Services  in  peacetime, 
probably  to  create  an  occasional  diversion, 
but  nowadays  none  is  apparent. 

This  has  not  always  been  easy  for  men 
who  had  become,  or  had  always  been,  cut 
off  from  people  outside  a  limited,  intimate 
circle.  Faced  with  the  simple  and  some- 
times cruelly  elementary  life  of  the  Army 
and  with  unfamiliar  people,  some  fought 
hard  to  hold  themselves  aloof.  They  were 
shocked  by  the  language.  They  found 
topics  of  conversation  generally  lower — at 
any  rate  different — from  those  to  which 
they  had  been  accustomed.  They  re- 
sented, some  quite  frankly,  being  thrown 
into  what  they  considered  the  unwashed 
herd.  One  man  (probably  it  was  only  a 
coincidence  that  he  had  been  an  advertis- 
ing writer  turning  out  some  pretty  stirring 
stuff  about  the  American  doughboy) 
expressed  this  \-iew  in  a  letter  which 
inadvertently  got  published  in  his  local 
newspaper.  In  time  a  clipping  of  the 
printed  letter  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  group 
of  overseas  soldiers,  and  at  last  he  received 
a  first-hand  report  from  American  dough- 


boys, in  a  scrawled  letter  which  required  a 
number  of  shocked  strokes  of  the  censor's 
ink  brush  before  it  got  through. 

Whether  what  they  said,  which  was  a 
good  deal,  took  effect  I  do  not  know.  But 
the  broadening  effect  of  Army  life  is 
evident  on  every  hand.  One  soldier  I 
know  declares  that  the  educational  courses 
at  Groton  are  as  nothing  compared  to  the 
lessons  of  the  Army.  It  is  possible  to  see 
newcomers  change  from  day  to  day.  The 
supercilious  learn  to  respect  others  whom, 
owing  to  some  external  appearances,  they 
had  at  first  put  down  for  ignoramuses.  A 
few  do  not,  and  in  the  end  that  is  their 
misfortune. 

Moral  determination  may  have  already 
been  present  in  men  when  they  entered  the 
Army,  and  the  greater  fitness  of  body  and 
knowledge  of  arms  gained  in  training  are 
important;  but  it  is  this  comradeship,  or 
esprit  de  corps — call  it  whatever  you  want 
— that  has  more  than  anything  else  to  do 
with  making  the  civilian  over  into  a 
soldier.  It  is  the  grasping  of  hands  for  the 
long,  hard,  and  dreary  effort.  When 
invading  forces  of  the  United  States  land 
on  foreign  shores,  or  a  great  battle  is 
joined,  a  quick  tenseness  sweeps  through 
the  whole  Army,  and  there  is  a  strong 
desire  to  rush  to  the  side  of  those  in  danger. 

Thus  men  who  have  returned  from. 
overseas  want  to  go  back  to  the  fighting 
fronts  as  much  to  be  with  their  fellows  as 
to  strike  again  at  the  enemy.  Even  if 
wounded  or  ordered  back  for  further 
training,  they  are  tormented  by  the  fact 
that  old  comrades  are  suffering  while 
they  live  in  comparative  comfort  and 
security.  'T  want  above  anything  else  to 
be  with  the  boys  when  they  march  into 
Manila,"  one  veteran  of  the  Pacific  wrote 
home.  He  wanted  the  Japanese  driven 
out,  but  to  make  it  right  he  needed  the 
satisfaction  of  being  with  the  others  at  the 
victor>\ 

The  feeling  of  closeness,  of  unity,  is 
communicated  to  parents,  sweethearts, 
and  wives  through  letters,  and  the  ties  will 
grow  closer  as  more  millions  take  up  pens 
and  pencils  and  grope  for  words  of  encour- 
agement for  men  overseas.  On  a  short- 
wave radio  I  heard  broadcast  this  letter, 
combining  excellent  advice  with  deep  sen- 
timent, from  a  mother  to  her  son: 


WHAT    SOLDIERS    ARE    THINKING    ABOUT 


73 


"No  word  lately.  See  if  you  can  get 
word  to  us  if  only  to  say  'Hello  and 
good-by.'  Always  be  on  the  alert,  my 
son,  and  may  God  bless  you  and  protect 
you  always." 

This  war  is  the  American  people's 
greatest  common  experience. 


V 

BUT  the  binding  of  the  nation  closer 
I  together  by  common  agony  is  not 
enough.  The  experience  will  have  to  be 
translated  into  a  feeling  for  the  nation's 
future.  That  is  why  complaints  that  the 
thought  level  of  soldiers  is  too  low 
are  worth  attention.  Drew  Middleton 
summed  up  the  prevailing  opinion  in  a 
dispatch  from  North  Africa  to  the  New 
Tork  Times  Magazine.  "Soldiers,"  he  said, 
*'do  not  yet  realize  the  great  part  they  can 
play  in  history.  Their  allies  expect  them 
to  play  the  leading  role  in  the  postwar 
world,  although  at  present  their  own 
apathy  and,  at  times,  downright  ignorance 
of  the  rest  of  the  world  are  not  en- 
couraging." After  remarking  that  most 
thoughts  are  directed  toward  the  return 
home,  he  notes  that  "Only  a  few  read 
anything  except  the  comic  strips,  sports 
page,  and  the  gossip  columns." 

Mr.  Middleton's  inquiry  was  a  serious 
one,  and  no  one  is  likely  to  argue  that 
American  soldiers  are  as  well  informed  as 
they  ought  to  be,  or  that  they  show  any- 
thing like  a  unanimous  interest  in  world 
affairs.  (Middleton  declares  that  British 
and  French  soldiers  are  ahead  of  us  on 
this  score.)  It  is  a  fact,  for  example,  that 
a  great  many — probably  a  majority — read 
little  besides  the  comic  strips,  pulps,  the 
sports  page,  and  gossip  columns.  While 
this  is  anything  but  a  desirable  situation, 
it  is  hardly  startling.  In  the  first  place, 
opportunity  for  concentration  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  find,  even  if  good  reading  material 
is  available,  which  it  sometimes  is  not. 
Many  soldiers  of  a  studious  type  who  had 
previously  gained  most  of  their  knowledge 
from  the  printed  page  have  welcomed  the 
opportunity  of  laying  books  aside  and 
learning  about  their  fellow-men  at  first 
hand.  Anyhow,  men  who  never  were  in 
the  habit  of  reading  serious  material  can 
hardly  be  expected  to  become  Phi  Beta 


Kappa  candidates  by  the  mere  donning  of 
a  uniform. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  fact  that  the 
demand  for  serious  books  by  the  Armed 
Forces  cannot  be  filled.  At  any  rate 
it  has  not  been.  A  single  organization  at 
a  large  port  of  embarkation  has  put  some 
thirty  thousand  books,  most  of  them  of 
an  educational  nature,  into  the  hands  of 
departing  soldiers  and  sailors.  The  ladies 
who  operate  this  club  declare  that  requests 
far  exceed  their  capacity  to  fill.  In  the 
same  port  the  chaplains  go  to  bookstores 
for  purchase  of  supplies  for  ships'  libraries. 
They  buy  what  fhey  know  from  experience 
the  soldiers  will  read,  and  they  stock  up 
with  books  on  economics,  geography, 
world  affairs,  and  quantities  of  the  staple 
classics  in  low-priced  reprints. 

Men  of  this  war,  say  these  people  who 
are  in  a  position  to  know,  are  reading  a 
dozen  times  more  extensively  than  did 
soldiers  of  the  last  war,  and  the  quality  of 
the  material  is  vastly  superior.  And  it 
is,  they  say,  growing.  Soldiers  who  had 
not  acquired  the  book-reading  habit  are 
thrown  in  with  those  who  did  have  it. 
Their  minds  are  stimulated  by  events,  and 
after  discussions  they  go  to  what  books  are 
available  and  read  them.  A  book  tossed 
out  into  the  moving  Army  is  read  an 
estimated  forty  times  before  it  finally  is  lost 
or  destroyed. 

Nevertheless  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
concern  with  political  and  economic  prob- 
lems of  the  world  at  large  fills  only  a  rela- 
tively small  corner  of  the  soldier's  mind. 
Someone  has  suggested  that  thoughts  of 
American  soldiers  fall  chiefly  under  the  fol- 
lowing headings:  1)  Day-to-day  activities, 
2)  sex,  and  3)  dreams  of  returning  to  the 
normal  way  of  life.  I  see  no  reason  to 
quarrel  with  this  division.  Daily  routine 
occupies  the  attention  of  people  in  all  oc- 
cupations, and  in  the  matter  of  sex  the  sol- 
dier's thought  behavior  appears  to  satisfy 
the  psychologists,  varying  in  no  important 
degree  from  that  of  soldiers  of  past  wars. 

But  in  the  third  category — the  occupa- 
tion with  thoughts  of  going  home — there 
is  more  than  appears  on  the  surface.  The 
past  life  is  of  course  romanced  to  a  con- 
siderable degree,  never  having  been  quite 
so  pleasant  and  carefree  as  when  seen  from 
the  distance  of  a  sheetless  bunk  or  a  slit 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


trench  or  foxhole.  But  there  is  an 
inescapable  tendency  during  these  minute 
inspections  of  bygone  days  to  analyze 
them,  sometimes  critically.  Many  a  sol- 
dier has  concluded  that  he  wasted  a  good 
deal  of  his  time,  in  drink  perhaps,  in  loaf- 
ing, or  simply  by  letting  events  take  their 
slothful  course.  Young  men  are  exhorted 
by  educators,  usually  without  result,  to 
figure  out  carefully  what  sort  of  careers 
they  wish  to  pursue.  In  the  Army  they 
are  far  enough  removed  from  their  civilian 
selves  to  give  attention  to  the  matter.  Ask 
the  soldier  what  he  wants  to  do  if  he  is  able 
to  return  to  civilian  life  and  he  will  at 
first  give  you  a  gawdy  pattern  which 
includes  an  inordinate  amount  of  lying  in 
the  sun  or  the  shade  (depending  on  where 
he  is  stationed),  some  fine  drinking, 
women,  choice  food,  etc.,  etc.  Get  a  little 
deeper  and  you  will  find  serious  ideas  on 
how  he  wants  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life. 
This  is  mostly  personal,  to  be  sure,  but  it 
develops  a  habit  of  thinking  objectively. 

Something  of  the  sort  was  observable 
after  the  last  war.  It  was  common  for 
parents,  friends,  old  employers,  and  the 
like  to  remark:  "So  and  so  has  changed  so 
much.  I  really  would  hardly  have  known 
him."  The  youth  was  quiet  and  seemed 
preoccupied,  which  often  led  these  ob- 
servers to  conclude  that  he  was  thinking  of 
the  past,  whereas  probably  he  was 
calculating  his  old  environment  against 
what  he  had  come  to  think  of  it  during  his 
absence.  In  most  cases  the  soldier  will 
have  gained  in  self-reliance  and  self- 
confidence.  The  reasons  are  obvious 
enough.  He  may  have  been  given  re- 
sponsibility as  a  commissioned  or  non- 
commissioned officer,  and  he  may  have 
had  a  hundred  tight  squeezes  where  his 
safety  depended  on  nerve  and  skill. 
Soldiers  gain  a  good  deal  by  the  mere  fact 
that  they  find  themselves  able  to  master 
the  intricate  weapons  and  machines  of 
this  war. 

It  seems  impossible  that  the  greater 
serious-mindedness  thus  developed  will  be 
without  efiect  on  the  soldier's  attitude 
toward  economic  and  political  problems  of 
the  nation  and  the  world.  In  addition 
there  is  the  breakdown  of  provincialism 
through  association  with  men  from  other 
sections  of  the  country  and  the  peoples  of 


other  lands,  and  no  one  can  deny  that 
some  of  America's  isolation  has  come  from 
simple  lack  of  knowledge  of  how  the  world 
is  laid  out.  One  Midwestern  parent  wrote 
to  a  son  in  the  service: 

"We  listen  to  all  the  commentators. 
We  have  a  globe  and  a  good  atlas  and  try 
to  keep  track  of  what  and  where." 

The  following  of  the  commentators  with 
globe  and  atlas  may  lead  a  part  of  the 
population  into  the  crazy  houses,  but  alto- 
gether civilians  as  well  as  soldiers  are  learn- 
ing that  the  United  States  is  only  one  part 
of  the  universe. 

The  main  point  is  that  a  yeast  is  work- 
ing. Soldiers  are  brought  up  abruptly 
against  matters  with  which  most  of  them 
would  not  otherwise  have  considered  it 
their  business  to  grapple.  It  is  as  well, 
probably  better,  that  no  simple  slogan  for 
this  war  was  put  forward  and  accepted, 
for  idealism  when  coupled  with  naivete  is 
likely  to  be  as  bad,  or  worse,  than  no 
idealism  at  all.  If  the  present  generation, 
unlike  the  soldiers  of  the  last  war,  should 
believe  that  military  victory  would  make 
the  world  safe  for  democracy  (with  all 
that  the  slogan  implies),  they  would  be 
ready  at  the  finish  to  go  home  and  consider 
the  job  done.  They  would  settle  down  as 
best  they  could,  accept  without  question 
any  peace  treaty  cooked  up,  and  inno- 
cently hope  for  the  best. 

No  doubt  many  will  do  that  anyhow. 
They  will  slip  back  into  their  old  environ- 
ment and  forget  they  ever  were  away. 
The  possibility  that  the  majority  will  do  so 
cannot  be  precluded.  This  is  a  day  of 
wishful  thinking,  and  I  may  have  looked 
too  long  on  the  brighter  side,  along  with 
many  others  who  write  about  the  Army. 
There  are  a  great  many  people  in  the 
United  States  who  have  a  greater  knowl- 
edge of  war  prosperity  than  of  the  sacri- 
fices of  war.  Afterward,  if  hard  times 
come  we  may  hear,  as  we  heard  some 
years  back,  the  phrase  that  "What  this 
country  needs  is  a  good  little  war."  A 
"return  to  normalcy"  may  be  the  thing. 
The  intellectuals,  it  is  possible,  will  conjure 
themselves  into  another  Lost  Generation. 

It  is  true  that  the  experiences  of  the 
soldiers  of  the  last  war  had  no  very  notice- 
able efi*ect  on  events.  But  they  had  no 
memories  of  the  fatuous  twenties  or  the  mis- 


WHAT    SOLDIERS    ARE    THINKING    ABOUT  75 

erable  thirties  which  resulted  from  them,  arc    laid     away.     Average    service    can 

Moreover,  twelve  or  fifteen  million  men  hardly  be  less  than  three  years,  a  long  time 

will  have  carried  arms  in  this  war.     That  out  of  a  young  man's  life, 

is  roughly  four  times  the  number  who  put  America  is,  after  all,  a  young  nation, 

on  uniforms  the  last  time.      Ifthe  war  were  Soldiers  as  a  whole  are  maturing  in  this 

to  end  now,  the  average  length  of  service  conflict.     And,  since  they  compose  what 

would  be  about  twice  as  long — and  even  will  be  the  vigorous  male  population  of 

the  most  optimistic  agree  that  it  will  be  the  next  two  or  three  decades,  the  nation 

another  couple  of  years  before  the  guns  is  maturing  too. 


Of  Mice  and  Military 

1  HEARD  my  favorite  military  commentator,  Colonel  Eliot  Gram  Bald- 
win Pratt  Howe,  broadcast  his  regular  weekly  war  analysis  last 
night,  and  I  took  a  few  notes.  The  children  were  rather  noisy,  so  I 
might  have  missed  a  word  here  and  there,  but  the  Colonel  sounded 
something  like  this: 

The  military  situation  at  present  has  its  gloomy  as  well  as  its  prom- 
ising outlook.  In  general,  it  can  be  said  that  the  picture  will  improve 
steadily,  unless  it  takes  a  turn  for  the  worse,  in  which  case  it  will  not  be 
as  hopeful  as  it  might  have  been  if  things  had  developed  more  favorably. 

In  Russia  events  are  bearing  out  our  prediction  of  last  week,  when  we 
said  that  if  the  attacking  forces  proved  stronger  than  the  defense  lines, 
Kiev  must  fall,  whereas  if  the  defensive  operations  gained  superiority 
in  the  struggle,  Kiev  would  not  fall.  At  this  juncture  it  can  be  said  al- 
most beyond  the  normal  reasonable  possibility  of  inaccuracy  that  a 
momentous  struggle  is  being  waged  in  the  Kiev  area. 

Lord  Mountbatten's  appointment  turns  our  attention  to  the  Asiatic 
theater.  There  developments  have  entered  a  period  of  quiet  which 
will  undoubtedly  last  until  the  battle  flares  up  anew.  In  this  connec- 
tion I  would  like  to  emphasize  the  extreme  importance  of  the  situation 
in  India,  keeping  in  mind,  of  course,  that  it  is  not  as  important  as  other 
events  which  may  transcend  it  in  significance. 

The  Indian  problem  is  vast  and  complex,  although  it  is  at  the  same 
time  essentially  simple  in  nature.  It  is  becoming  increasingly  clear 
that  the  Indians  are  anxious  for  their  independence.  There  are  those 
who  believe  it  should  be  granted,  and  this  group  finds  itself  opposed  to 
that  point  of  view  which  holds  that  Indian  independence  should  not  be 
granted. 

Turning  to  the  Pacific  theater  of  war,  we  are  faced  with  a  situation 
not  unlike  that  obtaining  in  the  Atlantic  theater,  and  yet  with  sufficient 
points  of  difference  to  prevent  any  confusion  between  the  two.  Mod- 
ern warfare  is  distinguished  by  the  fact  that  as  the  lines  of  communica- 
tion of  one  side  grow  longer,  those  of  the  other  side  grow  shorter.  Short 
lines  of  communication  are  a  great  advantage  and  may  frequently 
spell  the  difference  between  disaster  and  utter  defeat. 

I  stress  this  aspect  because  the  Pacific  theater  contains  many  differ- 
ent lines  of  communication,  some  short  and  some  long,  but  all  very 
important.  In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to  observe  that  opera- 
tions in  the  Pacific  area  are  more  frequently  naval  in  character  because 
of  the  preponderance  of  water  over  land  in  this  area.  -^^^  P.  J.  McLarney 


THE  MASTER   OF  THE  MURDER   CASTLE 

Ji.  Classic  of  Chicago  Crime 


JOHN    BARTLOW    MARTIN 


VIEWED  from  the  outside,  the  murder 
castle  was  simply  a  big  ungainly 
building,  one  of  the  architectural 
monstrosities  common  in  the  nineties. 
But  its  interior,  honeycombed  with  trap 
doors  and  secret  passageways  and  walled- 
up  rooms,  was  the  fulfillment  of  every 
small  boy's  dream  of  a  haunted  house. 

If  ever  a  house  was  haunted,  that  one 
on  Chicago's  South  Side  should  have  been. 
To  this  day,  fifty  years  later,  nobody 
knows  precisely  how  many  persons  were 
murdered  in  it.  Estimates  range  from 
twenty  to  a  couple  of  hundred.  Most,  if 
not  all,  were  women.  It  is  believed  that 
they  were  chloroformed,  gassed,  strangled, 
or  perhaps  beaten  to  death.  Their  bod- 
ies were  destroyed  in  cellar  pits  contain- 
ing quicklime  and  acids.  Some  of  their 
skeletons  were  sold  by  their  eflScient  mur- 
derer, who  was  determined  to  realize 
every  penny  of  profit  from  his  crimes. 

He  deserves  to  rank  with  the  great 
criminals  of  history.  Crime  writers  re- 
serve the  word  "monster"  for  top-notch 
murderers.  A  monster  ranks  above  such 
lesser  criminals  as  fiends,  beasts,  and 
phantoms.  He  must  meet  certain  rigid 
requirements.  His  victims,  killed  over  a 
period  of  years  and  not  for  money  alone, 
must  be  numerous  and  preferably  female, 
and  he  must  do  unusual  things  with  their 
bodies;  he  must  inhabit  a  gloomy,  for- 


bidding dwelling,  and  he  should  be  of  a 
scientific  bent.  The  master  of  the  mur- 
der castle  possessed  all  these  qualifica- 
tions and  more.  Magnificent  swindler, 
petty  cheat,  mass  murderer,  he  was  a  man 
of  nimble,  tortuous  mind.  He  pyramided 
fraud  upon  fraud.  Young,  good-looking, 
glib,  he  mesmerized  business  men  and  cap- 
tivated and  seduced  pretty  young  women, 
at  least  two  of  whom  he  married  biga- 
mously.  Physician,  student  of  hypnotism, 
dabbler  in  the  occult,  gentleman  of  fash- 
ion, devious  liar,  skillful  manipulator  of 
amazingly  complex  enterprises,  he  died 
on  the  gallows  when  he  was  thirty-five, 
his  crimes  exposed  accidentally  by  the 
vengeful  suspicions  of  that  most  despised 
figure  in  crime,  the  police  informer. 

On  September  4,  1894,  a  caller,  think- 
ing it  strange  that  the  door  to  the  little 
oflftce  at  1316  Callowhill  Street  in  Phila- 
delphia should  be  locked,  enlisted  the  aid  of 
Policeman  George  Lewis  of  the  Eighth 
District;  he  forced  the  door  and  found  the 
body  of  a  man  who  apparently  had  been 
the  victim  of  an  explosion.  Burns  dis- 
figured the  face  and  left  arm.  Near  by 
lay  a  pipe,  several  matches,  and  a  broken 
bottle  which  apparently  had  contained 
some  inflammable  fluid  similar  to  benzine. 
A  coroner's  physician  thought  the  man 
had  been  dead  three  days. 


THE    MASTER    OF    TTTE    MURDER    CASTEE 


77 


Though  decomposition  and  fire  made 
positive  identification  difficult,  the  dead 
man  apparently  was  B.  F.  Perry,  the  ten- 
ant of  the  oflice.  In  his  pockets  were 
letters,  presumably  from  his  wife,  though 
the  bottom  portions,  including  the  sig- 
natures, had  been  torn  away;  they  in- 
dicated that  Perry  had  come  to  Phila- 
delphia recently  from  St.  Louis  and  that 
his  wife  was  still  there  but  expected  to  join 
him  shortly.  Neighbors  knew  him  only 
as  that  new  inventor  fellow;  they  thought 
he  had  been  conducting  experiments  of 
some  sort,  but  nobody  had  heard  an  ex- 
plosion in  his  office  during  the  past  few 
days.  A  coroner's  jury  decided  that  he 
had  died  of  burns.  His  body  lay  unclaimed 
in  the  morgue  for  ten  days,  then  was 
buried  in  potter's  field.    And  that  was  that. 

A  few  days  later  the  Fidelity  Mutual 
Life  Association  of  Philadelphia  received 
a  letter  from  St.  Louis  claiming  that 
B.  F.  Perry  was  Benjamin  F.  Pitzel,  whose 
life  was  insured  by  the  company.  To 
Philadelphia  came  a  pair  of  professional 
men  representing  the  widow:  Dr.  H.  H. 
Holmes,  her  friend,  and  Jephtha  Howe, 
her  attorney.  They  brought  with  them 
the  dead  man's  daughter,  Alice,  about 
fourteen,  and  explained  that  Mrs.  Pitzel 
had  been  too  ill  to  come  in  person  to 
establish  identification.  Holmes  said  that 
Pitzel's  distinguishing  marks  included  a 
mole  on  the  back  of  the  neck,  a  broken 
nose,  peculiarly  spaced  teeth,  and  a  twisted 
fingernail  which  had  been  crushed  by 
a  child's  rocking  chair:  The  body  was 
exhumed.  Holmes  identified  it  calmly, 
Alice  fearfully.  It  was  removed  to  an- 
other cemetery.  The  $10,000  insurance 
money  was  paid  to  Holmes,  acting  in  be- 
half of  the  widow  and  Pitzel's  five  children. 
Presently  Fidelity  received  a  letter  from 
Mrs.  Pitzel  expressing  her  gratitude  that 
the  claim  had  been  paid  so  promptly;  it 
was  said  that  the  company  used  the  letter 
for  promotion  purposes. 

And  there  the  matter  might  have  ended 
had  it  not  been  for  one  of  those  amazing 
indiscretions  which  even  the  most  ac- 
complished of  criminals  commit.  Brood- 
ing in  a  St.  Louis  jail  was  a  notorious  train 
robber,  Marion  Hedgepath,  alias  Heds- 
peth.  Nearly  two  months  after  the  find- 
ing   of   the    body    in    Callowhill    Street, 


Hedgepath  sent  a  note  to  Police  Chief 
Larry  Harrigan  offering  to  disclose  details 
of  a  plot  to  defraud  a  Philadelphia  life 
insurance  company.  He  hinted  at  mur- 
der. When  questioned,  Hedgepath  said 
that,  some  months  before,  a  fellow-pris- 
oner named  Howard  had  offered  him 
$500  if  he  would  suggest  an  attorney  of  re- 
pute who  would  assist  in  a  foolproof  scheme 
to  make  $10,000.  Howard  planned  to 
insure  the  life  of  B.  F.  Pitzel,  to  fake  a 
fatal  accident,  to  send  Pitzel  into  hiding, 
and  to  substitute  a  body  which  he  would 
obtain  at  a  morgue  and  which  he  would 
identify  as  Pitzel's.  Howard  said  he  had 
perpetrated  similar  frauds  at  other  times. 
Hedgepath  recommended  as  an  aide  Jeph- 
tha Howe,  the  younger  brother  of  one  of 
Hedgepath's  own  attorneys. 

Presently  Howard  was  released  from  the 
jail,  where  he  had  been  held  briefly  as  a 
swindler.  The  plot  progressed  beauti- 
fully until  Howard  refused  to  permit  Mrs. 
Pitzel  to  go  to  Philadelphia  to  identify  the 
body.  Attorney  Howe  suspected,  too  late, 
that  Howard  had  double-crossed  Pitzel 
and  had  actually  murdered  him  instead  of 
substituting  a  body.  After  the  insurance 
was  paid,  Hedgepath  said,  Howard  left 
Mrs.  Pitzel  to  settle  with  Howe;  they  quar- 
reled over  his  fee  and  S2,500  was  put  in 
escrow.  Hedgepath  never  got  his  $500 
share;  this,  coupled  with  a  suspicion  that 
his  own  defenders,  including  Jephtha 
Howe's  brother,  were  deserting  him  in  the 
case  pending  against  him,  probably  led 
Hedgepath  to  denounce  the  plotters. 

At  any  rate.  Chief  Harrigan  commu- 
nicated with  the  Fidelity  company,  which 
called  in  the  police  and  the  Pinkerton 
private  detectives.  Before  the  vengeful 
Hedgepath  was  transferred  to  the  peni- 
tentiary to  begin  serving  a  twenty-five- 
year  term  the  investigators  were  hot  on  the 
complicated  trail  of  Howard,  alias  H.  H. 
Holmes.  They  caught  up  with  him  in 
Boston  November  17th.  By  that  time 
warrants  had  been  issued  charging  him 
with  conspiracy  to  defraud,  murder,  and 
horse  thievery.  He  promptly  helped  the 
officers  locate  the  widow  Pitzel  and  two  of 
her  five  children,  then  started  telling  a 
long  series  of  complex  lies  which  soon 
thoroughly  confused  the  detectives.  On 
the  train  back  to  Philadelphia  in  custody, 


78 


HARPER'S     MAGAZINE 


he  confessed  the  insurance  fraud,  denied 
the  murder,  expressed  willingness  to  go  to 
Philadelphia  but  refused  to  go  to  Texas 
where  he  was  wanted  only  for  horse  theft, 
said  that  Pitzel  was  in  South  America  and 
that  the  three  missing  Pitzd  children  were 
in  (a)  South  America,  (b)  Detroit,  (c) 
England.  He  also  offered  his  befuddled 
guard  $500  if  he  would  permit  him  to  hyp- 
notize him  en  route.  The  guard  refused. 
Attorney  Howe  was  taken  into  custody 
in  St.  Louis  and  went  voluntarily  to 
Philadelphia.  He  was  not  prosecuted. 
Nor  was  Mrs.  Pitzel,  who,  though  nearly 
prostrated  by  fear  that  her  husband  was 
dead,  was  questioned  vigorously.  The 
body  of  the  dead  inventor — Pitzel's,  or 
that  of  a  ringer? — was  exhumed  a  second 
time  and  autopsy  revealed  he  had  died  of 
poisoning  by  chloroform  administered  be- 
fore the  explosion  and  fire.  Search  was 
begun  for  various  other  persons  who  had 
been  involved  with  Holmes.  Apparently 
unruffled  by  the  furor,  he  continued  to 
talk  glibly  and  nimbly.  Detectives  spent 
months  untangling  his  lies  and  investigat- 
ing certain  mysterious  activities  of  his 
which  had  intrigued  them  while  they 
pursued  him  all  over  the  country.  His 
career  proved  to  have  been  remarkable. 

II 

^1  true  name,  it  appears,  was  Herman 
W.  Mudgett.  In  his  home  town  of 
Gilmanton,  New  Hampshire,  he  was  con- 
sidered a  bright  lad.  Before  he  was 
twenty-one  he  married  the  daughter  of  a 
well-to-do  New  Hampshire  family  and  she 
helped  to  educate  him.  He  studied  in 
Vermont  and  at  the  medical  school  of  the 
University  of  Michigan  at  Ann  Arbor. 
Here  began  his  lifelong  preoccupation  with 
cadavers. 

He  was  a  brilliant  but  erratic  student. 
Perhaps  this  was  due  to  his  extra-curricu- 
lar activities.  On  the  night  a  body  dis- 
appeared while  being  taken  to  the  college 
dissecting  room  a  resident  of  Ann  Arbor 
"died"  after  a  brief  illness.  Holmes  col- 
lected insurance.  Thus  he  established  a 
pattern  for  himself.  Not  long  after,  he  left 
school.  His  wife  and  child  returned  to 
New  Hampshire;  they  did  not  see  him 
again   until   more   than   ten   years   later, 


when  he  reappeared,  a  fugitive.  Shortly 
after  abandoning  his  wife  he  arranged  for 
her  to  hear,  in  a  highly  roundabout  man- 
ner, that  his  memory  had  been  impaired 
in  a  train  wreck.  This  was  characteristic 
of  the  man:  he  could  not  simply  desert  his 
family;  he  must  erect  a  complicated  struc- 
ture of  improbable  lies  to  explain  matters. 

After  dabbling  briefly  in  petty  fraud 
and  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  swindle  an 
insurance  company  of  S20,000  with  an- 
other planted  body,  the  young  criminal 
turned  up  in  Chicago  about  1885  as  H.  H. 
Holmes.  He  married  bigamously  the 
daughter  of  a  well-to-do  family  of  Wil- 
mette,  a  wealthy  suburb  north  of  Chicago. 
Here  he  set  another  pattern  for  himself: 
the  pyramiding  of  fraud  upon  credit. 
The  details  varied  but  the  main  outlines  of 
the  scheme  remained  the  same  wherever 
Holmes  worked  it  subsequently.  He 
would  borrow,  with  worthless  notes  and 
smooth  talk,  enough  money  to  buy  a  lot. 
To  repay  the  original  loan,  he  would 
borrow  on  the  lot.  He  would  build  a 
house  in  highly  frenetic  fashion,  discharg- 
ing workmen  wrathfully,  threatening  suit 
against  subcontractors,  cajoling  those  he 
could  not  frighten,  stalling,  always  stalling 
the  payroll.  As  soon  as  the  roof  was  on 
he  would  order  huge  quantities  of  furniture 
and  other  merchandise — on  credit  of 
course.  He  would  sell  the  furniture  to 
pay  off  the  clamoring  workmen  and  the 
loan  on  the  lot.  By  the  time  the  furniture 
company  got  round  to  repossessing  its  prop- 
erty the  furniture  was  gone  and  so  was 
Holmes;  or  else  he  had  devised  some  new 
swindle  which  raised  enough  cash  to  pay 
off  the  furniture  company  and  was  now 
embarked  on  a  fresh  scheme  to  get  money 
to  appease  his  latest  victim.     And  so  on. 

Withal  he  found  time  to  father  three 
children  and  establish  himself  in  the  Wil- 
mette  house  as  a  solid  citizen.  His  wife 
of  course  knew  nothing  of  his  many  ac- 
tivities, which  were  rapidly  becoming 
more  numerous  and  more  mysterious. 
How  he  explained  to  her  his  long  absences 
is  not  recorded,  but  the  task,  intimidating 
to  lesser  men,  probably  was  relatively 
simple  for  a  man  of  his  agile  imagination. 

Before  he  had  been  long  in  Chicago  he 
failed  in  probably  the  only  honest  business 
he  ever  attempted  to  conduct.     He  was 


THE    MASIER    OF    THE    MURDER    CASTLE 


79 


president  of  thr  AH. CI.  Copier  Company, 
a  concern  producing  an  excellent  device 
for  copying  dcciunents.  (Holmes  appears 
in  the  role  of  "copier"  every  now  and 
then.)  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  pay  his 
typewriter — as  stenographers  then  were 
called.  (He  seduced,  mulcted,  and  mur- 
dered subsequent  typewriters  instead  of 
paying  them.)  When  the  business  failed 
Holmes  gave  up  his  office,  leaving  behind 
an  assortment  of  creditors  and  taking  with 
him  fifty  gallons  of  glycerine  which  did  not 
belong  to  him.  Later  it  was  hinted  that 
he  intended  to  prepare  nitroglycerine  with 
the  loot  and  perhaps  did  so. 

Holmes  now  transferred  his  activities  to 
the  Englewood  district  of  Chicago,  center- 
ing on  63d  Street;  here  he  was  to  achieve 
lasting  fame.  He  began  humbly,  working 
as  a  clerk  in  a  drugstore  at  63d  and 
Wallace  Streets.  Before  long  he  had 
bought  out  or  driven  out  the  proprietress, 
and  in  1892  he  built  on  the  opposite  corner 
the  enormous,  improbable  structure  later 
to  be  known  as  his  murder  castle.  It  was 
more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  feet  long 
and  fifty  feet  wide,  huge  and  ugly,  with 
three  storeys  and  a  basement.  The  first 
floor  was  cut  up  into  stores,  including  a 
drugstore  on  the  corner  which  Holmes 
operated  until  crime  became  a  full-time 
job  for  him.  The  third  floor  consisted  of 
apartments.  On  the  second  floor  and  in 
the  cellar  were  the  horror  chambers,  as 
we  shall  see. 

Holmes  ostensibly  built  the  place  as  a 
hotel  to  accommodate  visitors  to  the  great 
Fair  of  1893.  It  was  months  a-building; 
sometimes  the  work  progressed  with  fran- 
tic haste;  sometimes  it  languished.  Its 
progress  was  an  index  to  the  success  of  the 
swindler's  money-raising  schemes. 

And  he  was  exceedingly  active  through- 
out Englewood,  which  was,  and  is  to-day, 
a  thriving,  self-contained  community  on 
Chicago's  South  Side.  Here  Holmes 
marketed  a  sure-fire  cure  for  alcoholism, 
crusading  with  great  zeal  against  the  evil 
of  drink.  He  opened  a  restaurant  and 
sold  it  before  the  outfitting  company 
could  repossess  the  fixtures.  When,  after 
banking  hours,  a  citizen  came  to  the  drug- 
store to  get  large  bills  for  $178  in  small 
change.  Holmes  gave  him  a  worthless  per- 
sonal check  and  stalled  him  off  successfully 


for  two  years.  He  sold  his  drugstore  by 
misrepresenting  the  volume  of  business;  to 
substantiate  his  claims  he  hired  various 
persons  to  stream  into  the  store  and  make 
expensive  purchases.  He  bought  a  large 
safe,  moved  it  into  a  small  room  of  the 
castle,  narrowed  the  size  of  the  room's 
door,  refused  to  pay  for  the  safe,  and  in- 
vited the  owner  to  repossess  it  but  warned 
him  not  to  mar  the  house. 

Having  "invented"  a  machine  which 
made  illuminating  gas  out  of  water,  he 
demonstrated  it  successfully  to  an  expert 
who  could  not  discover  in  the  Rube  Gold- 
berg maze  of  pipes,  pulleys,  wires,  and 
other  gadgets  the  one  pipe  which  tapped 
the  gas  company's  mains;  aided  by  the  ex- 
pert's endorsement.  Holmes  sold  his  "in- 
vention," which  looked  like  a  washing 
machine  on  stilts,  to  a  Canadian  for 
$2,000.  When  the  invention  was  removed 
from  the  basement  a  hole  remained; 
presently  Holmes  announced  that  he 
had  discovered  in  it  a  miraculous  min- 
eral spring;  he  piped  the  healing  po- 
tion upstairs  to  his  drugstore  and  retailed 
it  successfully  at  five  cents  per  glass  until 
the  water  company  threatened  to  pros- 
ecute him  for  tampering  with  its  mains. 
(It  was  not  long  before  the  hole  in  the 
cellar  floor  was  enlarged  to  accommodate  a 
quicklime  pit.) 

Perhaps  his  most  spectacular  swindle 
during  this  period  involved  the  furnish- 
ings of  the  castle.  He  bought  truckloads 
of  furniture,  crockery,  mattresses,  bed- 
springs,  hardware,  and  gas  fixtures  (a 
sinister  item,  it  turned  out).  All  this  was 
delivered  to  the  castle  on  63d  Street.  The 
Tobey  Furniture  Company,  unpaid  a  week 
later,  became  anxious  and  dispatched  an 
agent  to  watch  the  house,  then  demanded 
payment.  Holmes's  usual  tactics  of  ca- 
jolery failed,  and  the  company  sent  vans 
and  brawny  moving  men  to  repossess  its 
property.  They  found  the  house  empty. 
Yet  the  company's  own  agent  swore  that 
no  furniture  had  been  taken  out  and,  in- 
disputably, it  had  been  taken  in.  The 
castle  had  swallovv^ed  the  furniture  as, 
later,  it  would  swallow  human  beings. 

A  janitor  at  the  castle  gave  the  game 
away  for  a  $25  bribe.  Holmes  had  moved 
all  the  furniture  into  one  room,  taken  out 
the  door  frame,  bricked  up  the  door,  and 


80 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


papered  the  wall.  (The  porter  offered 
further  disclosures  for  another  $25  but 
was  ignored;  it  was  a  narrow  escape  for 
Holmes.)  In  a  space  between  the  top 
floor  and  the  roof  the  angry  searchers 
found  the  missing  crockeiy;  one  of  them 
put  his  foot  through  the  ceiling  and 
Holmes  sued  his  company  for  $75.  The 
suit  was  thrown  out  of  court.  It  never 
has  been  established  whether  Holmes, 
when  he  built  blind  rooms  and  secret 
passageways  into  his  castle,  contemplated 
murder  or  merely  simple  swindles  such 
as  this  concealment  of  merchandise.  He 
was  not  prosecuted  by  these  creditors. 
But  his  unsuccessful  attempt  to  cheat  them 
contributed  ultimately  to  his  downfall. 

During  all  this  time  he  still  was  main- 
taining a  home  with  his  wife  in  Wilmette. 
(Indeed,  his  mother-in-law  was  at  one 
time  listed  as  owner  of  the  castle;  its 
ownership  changed  constantly  and  in- 
cluded at  least  one  mythical  personage 
and  a  company  incorporated  by  five  men, 
of  whom  two  were  phantoms.)  His  Wil- 
mette wife  however  probably  never  lived 
at  the  castle,  and  when  neighbors  spoke  of 
his  jealous  wife  who  lived  there  with  him 
they  must  have  meant  Mrs.  Julia  Conner, 
who  is  believed  to  have  been  the  first 
woman  Holmes  murdered.  Whoever  this 
jealous  one  was,  she  sometimes  slipped 
downstairs  when  she  heard  a  female  voice 
overlong  in  the  drugstore;  to  thwart  her. 
Holmes  removed  the  third  step  on  the 
stairs  and  installed  an  electric  buzzer  that 
warned  him  of  her  approach.  The  suc- 
cess of  this  device  may  have  inspired  him 
to  develop  the  singular  system  of  alarms 
which  later  betrayed  the  attempted  flight 
from  the  castle  of  any  of  his  prisoners. 
Mrs.  Conner,  her  husband,  and  their 
eight-year-old  child  came  to  Chicago 
about  1890  and  the  couple  found  employ- 
ment in  the  drugstore  which  Holmes  was 
engaged  in  buying  or  stealing  from  its 
proprietor.  Mrs.  Conner,  a  good-looking 
woman,  became  Holmes's  mistress;  when 
he  built  his  castle  she  and  her  daughter 
moved  into  it  with  him,  and  her  husband 
departed. 

During  this  period  Holmes  went  briefly 
to  Texas  where  he  allegedly  stole  a  horse 
and  indisputably  met  a  young  woman 
named  Minnie  Williams  who  later  was  to 


play  an  important  part  in  his  career. 
Also  during  this  period  he  met  in  Chicago 
Benjamin  F.  Pitzel,  an  ineffectual  man 
with  larceny  in  his  heart,  for  whose  murder 
Holmes  one  day  would  hang.  It  is  known 
that  they  lived  together  for  a  time,  that  in 

1892  Holmes  bailed  Pitzel  out  of  a  Terre 
Haute  jail  where  he  was  held  on  a  bad- 
check  charge,  that  some  of  their  belong- 
ings were  intermingled.  Whether  the  two 
men  actually  worked  together  as  partners 
in  fraud  prior  to  the  insurance  swindle 
which  ended  in  Pitzel's  death  is  unknown, 
but  probable. 

Ill 

HOWEVER  Holmes  now  engaged  less 
frequently  in  petty  frauds;  he  was 
branching  out  into  mass  murder  for  profit. 
Gone  were  the  days  when  he  must  peddle 
worthless  mineral  water  and  liquor  cures. 
Now  he  had  reached  the  height  of  his 
powers,  mentally  and  physically.  He  was 
in  his  early  thirties,  handsome,  his  sallow 
complexion  enhanced  by  dark  brooding 
eyes  and  a  curled  mustache.  If  he  had 
been  skinny  as  a  boy  he  was  supple  as  a 
man.  His  frequent  amorous  conquests 
had  given  him  confidence,  as  had  the 
success  of  his  glib  tongue  among  business 
men.  Widely  read,  student  of  hypnotism 
and  the  occult,  he  had  evolved  certain 
esoteric  theories  concerning  the  origin  and 
nature  of  human  life.  He  prepared  to 
test  them,  to  conduct  experiments  on  the 
human  body.  His  old  preoccupation 
with  corpses  returned.  He  was  ready  for 
important  crime,  and  for  the  big  money. 
Yet,  though  his  career  as  a  mass  mur- 
derer was  energetic,  it  was  brief.  His 
murder  castle  was  built  in  1892;  two  years 
later  Holmes  was  in  jail.  In  that  space  of 
time  he  is  believed  to  have  killed  more 
than  20  women.  Newspapers  of  the  day 
hinted  that  the  correct  total  would  be 
nearer  200,  pointing  out  that  great  num- 
bers of  persons  who  visited  the  Fair  in 

1893  disappeared.  It  is  neither  possible 
nor  necessary  to  trace  the  fate  of  each  of 
Holmes's  victims.  The  story  of  Minnie 
Williams  will  suffice. 

She  and  her  sister  Anna  were  born  in 
Mississippi;  their  parents  died  poor  when 
the  girls  were  very  young.  Anna  re- 
mained   in    Mississippi    with    an    aunt. 


THE    MASTER    OE     i  ilE    MURDER    CASIEE 


81 


Minnie  went  to  Dallas,  Texas,  to  visit  an 
uncle,  a  Dr.  Williams,  who  adopted  her. 
In  1886  he  sent  her  to  Boston  to  attend  the 
Conservatory  of  Elocution.  About  the 
time  she  was  graduated  her  uncle  died, 
leaving  to  her  property  in  Fort  Worth 
valued  at  about  $20,000.  After  a  brief 
visit  with  another  uncle,  the  editor  of  the 
Methodist  Christian  Advocate,  Minnie  took 
her  sister  Anna  to  Dallas,  where  Anna 
entered  school.  Minnie,  the  elder  sister, 
embarked  on  a  teaching  career.  She 
taught  elocution  in  Denver  and  at  Mid- 
lothian, Texas.  Presendy  she  turned  up 
in  Mississippi  and  displayed  a  photograph 
of  a  certain  young  man  named  Harry 
Gordon  in  whom  she  was  interested  be- 
cause he  was  "handsome,  wealthy,  and 
highly  intelligent."  He  was  of  course  Dr. 
Holmes.  In  March  of  1893  (she  was  in 
her  early  twenties)  she  went  to  Chicago 
and  soon  wrote  to  her  aunt  that  she  had 
married  her  friend  and  that  she  was  very 
happy. 

It  is  believed  that  Holmes  committed 
his  first  murder  for  her.  When  she  ar- 
rived at  the  castle  he  was  living  with  Mrs. 
Conner.  Minnie,  an  extremely  attractive, 
fresh-faced  young  girl,  was  jealous. 
Holmes  killed  Mrs.  Conner  and  her 
eight-year-old  daughter,  it  is  thought; 
later,  investigators  found  numerous  hu- 
man bones  in  the  castle  and  among  them 
were  bones  believed  to  be  from  the  body 
of  a  child.  At  any  rate,  Mrs.  Conner  and 
her  child  disappeared  and  Minnie  Wil- 
liams took  her  place  as  mistress  of  the 
castle. 

And  a  strange  place  it  was  by  that  time. 
In  all,  it  contained  nearly  a  hundred 
rooms.  There  were  "staircases  that  led 
nowhere  in  particular,"  blind  passageways, 
hinged  walls,  false  partitions,  rooms  with 
no  doors  and  rooms  with  many  doors. 
All  these  centered  on  the  second  floor 
of  the  gloomy,  forbidding  structure. 
Holmes's  own  apartments  were  at  the 
front  of  this  floor.  A  trap  door  was  cut 
in  his  bathroom  and  from  it  a  short  hidden 
stairway  led  to  a  windowless  cubicle  be- 
tween-floors  in  the  heart  of  the  house; 
from  this  a  chute  dropped  straight  to  the 
cellar. 

Behind  Holmes's  apartments  were  va- 
rious rooms  labeled  in  contemporary  news- 


papcr  sketches  as  "five-door  room,"  "se- 
cret room,"  "mysterious  closed  room" 
(behind  this  last  was  a  "dummy  elevator 
for  lowering  bodies"  to  the  basement), 
"the  black  closet,"  "room  of  the  three 
corpses,"  "sealed  room  all  bricked  in," 
"blind  room,"  "another  secret  chamber," 
"the  hanging  secret  chamber,"  and  so  on 
— nearly  forty  rooms  in  all.  Near  the 
rear  of  the  house  was  an  "asphyxiation 
chamber — no  light — with  gas  connec- 
tions." Here  the  large  purchases  of  gas 
fixtures  becomes  meaningful;  it  apparently 
was  Holmes's  practice  to  lock  victims  in 
this  sealed,  asbestos-lined  room  and  to 
turn  on  the  gas.  Immediately  behind  the 
asphyxiation  chamber  was  another  chute 
down  which  the  bodies  could  be  dis- 
patched to  the  basement.  Some  of  the 
rooms  on  this  second  storey  were  lined 
with  iron  plates,  some  had  false  floors  that 
concealed  tiny  airless  chambers,  nearly  all 
had  gas  connections.  The  doors  to  all  the 
rooms  were  wired  to  an  elaborate  alarm 
system  which  rang  a  buzzer  in  Holmes's 
apartments. 

The  cellar  was  perhaps  the  most  re- 
markable section  of  the  building.  It  was 
fitted  with  operating  tables,  a  crematory, 
pits  containing  quicklime  and  acids,  sur- 
gical instruments,  and  various  pieces  of 
apparatus  which,  resembling  mediaeval 
torture  racks,  never  were  satisfactorily  ex- 
plained. (Some  thought  Holmes  used 
these  appliances  to  wring  from  his  victims 
the  whereabouts  of  their  wealth;  others 
said  he  used  them  in  experiments  which 
he  hoped  would  prove  his  pet  theory  that 
the  human  body  could  be  stretched  in- 
definitely, a  treatment  that,  ultimately, 
would  produce  a  race  of  giants.)  Holmes 
sometimes  destroyed  the  bodies  of  his 
victims  completely;  sometimes,  aided  by  a 
needy  skeleton  articulator  who  answered 
his  advertisement  in  the  paper,  he  stripped 
the  flesh  from  their  bones  and  sold  the 
skeletons  to  medical  institutions. 

To  this  house  of  horrors  came  young 
Minnie  Williams.  Her  role  is  not  en- 
tirely clear.  She  was  almost  certainly  his 
victim.  But  some  have  hinted  that  she 
was  also  his  accomplice;  he  used  her  Fort 
Worth  real  estate  in  some  of  his  schemes, 
though  probably  without  her  knowledge. 
That  she  was  his  mistress  there  can  be 


82 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


little  doubt.  Yet  she  played  a  strange 
role  for  a  mistress  on  at  least  one  occasion: 
she  served  as  his  witness  when  he  married 
his  third  (and  last)  wife. 

A  few  months  after  Minnie  arrived  at 
the  casde  she  invited  htr  younger  sister 
Anna  to  join  her.  Anna  left  Texas  at  the 
end  of  June,  1893.  On  July  4th  she  wrote 
happily  to  her  aunt  that  "sister,  brother 
Harry,  and  myself"  would  leave  the  next 
day  for  Europe,  where  Anna  might  remain 
to  study  art.  She  added,  "Brother  Harry 
says  you  need  never  trouble  any  more 
about  me,  financially  or  otherwise;  he 
and  sister  will  see  to  me."  This  proved 
prophetic:  Anna  Williams  never  was  seen 
or  heard  from  again. 

Holmes  himself  later  maintained  that 
Minnie  killed  her  younger  sister  Anna. 
The  two  girls  had  quarreled  over  Holmes's 
affections  a  week  after  Anna  arrived,  he 
claimed,  and  Minnie  had  beaten  Anna  to 
death  with  a  stool.  Holmes  added  that 
he  had  obligingly  put  the  body  in  a 
trunk,  had  weighted  it  with  lead,  and  had 
dumped  it  into  Lake  Michigan  three 
miles  offshore.  Although  this  seems  un- 
likely, it  never  was  proved  or  disproved; 
both  girls  vanished  utterly.  (Holmes 
said  also,  after  his  arrest  for  Pitzel's  mur- 
der, that  Minnie  had  gone  to  England 
with  Pitzel's  three  missing  children;  this 
was  one  of  his  bland,  amazing  stories 
which  threw  investigators  into  complete 
confusion.) 

That  Minnie  outlived  Anna  is  certain. 
That  Holmes  got  his  hands  on  her  money, 
then  killed  her,  seems  almost  equally 
clear.  He  appeared  in  Fort  Worth  as 
O.  C.  Pratt,  displayed  title  to  Minnie's 
property,  borrowed  on  it,  and  prepared  to 
build  a  house  in  behalf  of  his  partner,  a 
certain  Lyman,  who  actually  was  Ben  Pitzel. 
To  get  a  clear  field  in  Chicago  and  a  scape- 
goat in  Fort  Worth,  Holmes  lured  his 
castle  caretaker,  Pat  Quinlan,  to  Texas 
and  then  disappeared,  leaving  Quinlan  to 
face  Holmes's  irate  creditors.  In  Chicago 
Anna  vanished  forever,  and  Minnie  was 
not  long  for  this  earth. 

During  this  spring  and  summer  of  1893, 
while  Minnie  was  Holmes's  mistress,  at 
least  two  other  young  women  are  known 
positively  to  have  vanished  after  coming 
to  live  at  the  castle,  supposedly  also  as  his 


mistresses,  and  the  police  believed  that 
others  fared  similarly.  All  his  girls  were 
pretty  and  many  were  his  stenographers. 
His  favorites  he  had  photographed  "in  the 
pose  and  dress  affected  by  actresses."  He 
once  displayed  these  photographs  to  an 
acquaintance  in  his  apartments,  perhaps 
while  the  girls'  bodies  were  decomposing 
in  the  cellar  below.  A  contemporary 
paper  noted  that  he  "liked  to  get  a  nice, 
green,  young  girl  fresh  from  a  business 
college."  He  hired  more  than  a  hundred 
and  fifty  women,  it  was  estimated,  and  he 
had  all  of  them  appointed  notaries  public 
so  that  they  could  notarize  his  fraudulent 
documents  (he  told  the  unsuspecting  girls 
that  their  appointment  was  a  badge  of 
merit).  Frequently  he  included  the 
"typewriters"  as  dummy  directors  in  his 
many  corporations. 

To  all  his  mistress-victims  Holmes  rep- 
resented himself  as  wealthy,  whereas  in 
truth  it  usually  was  they  who  had  the 
money,  and  that  was  why  he  seduced  and 
murdered  them.  Almost  without  excep- 
tion, they  appear  to  have  had  two  things 
in  common:  beauty  and  money.  They 
lost  both. 

IV 

TOWARD  the  end  of  1893  matters  came 
to  a  head  for  the  master  and  before 
the  year  was  out  he  was  to  be  driven  from 
his  castle,  pursued  hotly  not  by  the  police 
but  by  angry  creditors  and  a  fire  insurance 
company  he  had  attempted  unsuccess- 
fully to  defraud.  Old  crimes  were  rising 
to  plague  him.  In  need  of  money,  he  set 
fire  to  his  castle  early  in  November  of 
1893  and  tried  to  collect  on  a  $60,000  in- 
surance policy.  The  proof  of  loss  looked 
fraudulent,  so  did  the  building's  owner- 
ship. Inspector  F.  G.  Cowie,  learning 
something  of  Holmes's  reputation,  shad- 
owed him.  He  discovered  that  Holmes 
had  abandoned  his  family  in  Wilmette 
and  his  castle,  and  was  living  furtively  in  a 
small  hotel  on  the  South  Side  with  Minnie 
Williams.  They  moved  frequently,  and 
sometimes  Ben  Pitzel  lived  with  them. 
The  detective  described  Minnie  as  "of 
medium  height,  with  a  well-developed 
figure,  big  brown  eyes,  light  hair,  and 
what  I  call  a  baby  face.  She  didn't  seem 
to  know  a  great  deal."     Using  a  fictitious 


THE    MASTER    OF    THE    MURDER    CASTLE 


83 


lame,  Holmes  brazenly  appeared  at  the 
nsurance  oflice  to  collect;  while  clerks 
:cpt  him  occupied,  Inspector  Cowie  called 
»n  Minnie  and  told  her  the  plot  was  ex- 
)osed;  she  broke  down  and  surrendered 
he  policy.      Cowie  dropped  the  matter. 

But  Holmes's  old  creditors  began  to 
aake  serious  trouble.  He  owed  them  be- 
ween  $25,000  and  $50,000,  much  of  it 
or  the  castle's  furnishings.  Up  to  then 
le  had  managed  to  keep  his  creditors 
egregated  and  at  bay  with  smooth  talk. 
s[ow,  on  November  22,  1893,  they  met  in 

body.  Holmes  appeared  before  them 
nd  represented  himself  as  an  honest  man 
/ho  had  fallen  on  hard  times.  They 
/ere  not  impressed.  Their  attorneys  pre- 
>ared  to  swear  out  warrants  for  his  arrest 
he  next  day.     Holmes  fled  from  Chicago. 

His  next  public  appearance  was  in 
)enver  where,  on  January  17,  1894,  he 
larried  his  third  wife,  Georgie  Anna 
:^oke,  with  Minnie  Williams  as  a  witness. 
It  will  be  recalled  that  Minnie  once  had 
aught  school  in  Denver.)  Georgie  Anna 
/as  a  tall,  slender  beauty  of  about  twenty- 
ive  with  flaxen  hair  and  blue  eyes  so 
arge,  one  newspaper  commented,  as  to 
)e  almost  disfiguring.  Here  is  another  of 
he  not  quite  solved  mysteries  of  Holmes's 
angled  aff'airs.  It  is  probable  that  she 
/as  the  only  one  of  his  women  that  he 
eally  loved.  For  an  astonishing  length 
if  time  she  remained  loyal  to  him.  Yet 
a  the  end  she  testified  against  him  at  his 
rial  for  murder.  She  was  the  daughter 
if  a  respectable  family  in  the  small  town 
•f  Franklin,  Indiana.  One  newspaper 
lescribed  her  as  "adventurous."  She  met 
iolmes  when  she  went  to  Chicago  during 
he  Fair  to  work  in  an  office  with  which 
le  was  connected.  Holmes  must  have 
een  her  often  during  that  busy  year  of 
893,  when  Minnie  was  his  mistress,  and 
'arious  women,  including  Emily  Van 
rassel  and  Emeline  Cigrand,  were  his 
ictims.  Yet  Georgie  Anna  he  neither 
educed,  murdered,  nor  so  much  as  threat- 
ened. He  must  have  courted  her  in  a 
nore  or  less  conventional  way;  her  mother 
lad  the  impression  that  he  was  wealthy 
md  a  gentleman. 

Minnie  Williams  dropped  out  of  sight 
jarly  that  spring  of  1894.  Georgie  Anna 
lad  the  field  to  herself.     But  the  great 


days  were  done.  The  master  was  on  the 
run.  It  is  not  known  with  certainty 
whether  he  ever  again  performed  his 
murderous  rites  in  his  castle.  By  June 
he  was  in  jail  in  St.  Louis  charged  with  a 
common  swindle  and  Georgie  Anna  was 
hiring  an  attorney  to  defend  him.  Before 
he  was  released  he  had  confided  to 
Marion  Hedgepath  his  plot  to  defraud  the 
Philadelphia  insurance  company  by  falsely 
identifying  a  planted  body  as  that  of 
B.  F.  Pitzel.  Things  went  according  to 
plan  (for  everybody  but  Pitzel)  until 
Hedgepath  denounced  the  plotters. 
From  then  on  Holmes  was  a  fugitive. 


Now^  he  embarked  on  perhaps  the 
most  remarkable  flight  in  criminal 
history.  For,  instead  of  going  into  hiding 
alone,  he  took  with  him  not  only  his  own 
bigamously  wedded  wife  but  also  the 
wife  and  children  of  his  victim.  And  be- 
fore he  was  caught  he  visited,  supposedly, 
the  only  woman  he  ever  married  legally, 
his  long-forgotten  first  wife. 

The  truly  fantastic  part  of  this  odyssey 
— and  it  is  characteristic  of  the  man's 
agility — is  that  neither  Georgie  Anna 
nor  Mrs.  Pitzel  knew  that  the  other  was 
anywhere  in  the  vicinity.  Holmes  per- 
formed such  miracles  as  keeping  Mrs. 
Pitzel  and  Georgie  Anna  ignorant  of  each 
other's  presence  on  the  same  train;  when 
they  arrived  in  certain  cities  he  established 
Mrs.  Pitzel  in  one  rooming  house,  her 
children  in  another,  and  Georgie  Anna  in 
a  third.  And  all  the  while  he  was  invent- 
ing lies  and  carrying  on  a  complicated 
correspondence  involving  half  a  dozen 
forwarding  addresses,  all  designed  to  allay 
Mrs.  PitzePs  suspicions  that  her  husband 
was  not  in  hiding  but  was  dead.  More- 
over, at  the  same  time  Holmes  managed 
to  give  "S2,000  and  a  number  of  presents" 
to  Georgie  Anna;  this  may  have  come  out 
of  Mrs.  Pitzel's  insurance  money  or  it 
may  have  been  part  of  the  proceeds  of  the 
sale  of  some  property  in  Fort  Worth  which 
he  probably  stole  from  Minnie  Williams, 
deeded  to  Pitzel,  and  stole  again  from 
Pitzel's  widow.  (The  man's  afi'airs  were 
hopelessly  involved;  only  he  could  have 
straightened    them    out   in    their    proper 


84 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


order,  and  perhaps,  in  the  end,  even  he 
would  have  been  confused.)  Mrs.  Pitzel 
later  testified  that  she  had  received  only 
$500  of  the  insurance  money. 

Georgie  Anna  and  Mrs.  Pitzel  and  the 
children  did  not  all  constantly  accompany 
Holmes  on  his  ceaseless  travels.  After 
committing  the  murder  he  had  returned 
to  Indianapolis  with  Georgie  Anna  (she 
had  been  with  him  in  Philadelphia).  In 
the  next  few  weeks  he  made  two  trips  to 
St.  Louis  and  one  to  Philadelphia;  since 
these  and  other  trips  involved  the  diver- 
gent interests  of  Georgie  Anna  and  Mrs. 
Pitzel,  Holmes  must  of  necessity  have  in- 
vented elaborate  lies  to  explain  his  ab- 
sences to  them.  Early  in  October  he  left 
Georgie  Anna  in  Indianapolis  and  told 
her  he  was  going  to  Cincinnati.  She 
joined  him  in  Detroit.  He  met  Mrs. 
Pitzel  there  also;  he  had  told  her  she  would 
see  her  husband  there,  but  now  he  stalled 
her  and  sent  her  to  her  parents  at  Galva, 
Illinois.  Then  they  all  went  to  Toronto. 
But  by  now  three  of  Mrs.  Pitzel's  children 
were  missing,  perhaps  lost  in  the  shuffle. 
So  was  her  husband;  his  last  letter,  written 
four  days  before  he  died,  had  inquired, 
"Have  you  seen  or  heard  from  Alice, 
Nellie,  or  Howard  since  this  man  got 
possession  of  them?  I  have  not.  .  .  ." 
Nearly  beside  herself,  Mrs.  Pitzel  wanted 
to  know  where  they  were.  Holmes  said 
they  were  being  kept  by  a  widow  in  In- 
dianapolis; he  suggested  blandly  that  an- 
other of  the  children,  Jeanette,  should 
join  them.  But  he  could  not  remember 
the  widow's  name.  Nevertheless,  so  per- 
suasive was  he  that  he  convinced  Mrs. 
Pitzel  that  her  children  were  in  good  hands 
and  that  her  husband  was  alive  in  Mont- 
real. From  Toronto  she  went  to  other 
towns  in  Canada,  then  to  Ogdensburg, 
New  York,  and  Burlington,  Vermont. 

Here  she  found  Holmes  digging  a  hole 
in  the  cellar.  It  was  a  habit  he  had. 
When  discovered,  he  left,  and  Mrs.  Pitzel 
did  not  see  him  again  until  they  both 
were  in  police  custody.  He  went  to  New 
Hampshire,  where  he  visited  his  aged 
parents  and,  reportedly,  his  first  wife,  the 
girl  who  had  helped  put  him  through  medi- 
cal school.  On  this  visit  he  settled  some 
old  accounts,  bought  a  suit  for  his  son, 
presented  his  wife  with  gifts,  and  cheated 


his  brother  out  of  $300,  part  of  which  he 
reputedly  needed  to  redeem  a  trunk  that 
contained  a  body.  He  then  left  for  Boston, 
where  he  was  arrested.  He  decoyed  Mrs. 
Pitzel  and  her  two  remaining  children 
into  the  police  net  and  she  was  taken  to 
Philadelphia  with  him. 

Here  Holmes  told  a  baffling  collection 
of  lies  concerning  the  whereabouts  of 
Pitzel  and  the  three  Pitzel  children.  Pit- 
zel, it  was  quickly  established,  was  dead. 
(Therein  lies  the  irony  of  the  whole  case: 
Holmes,  long-time  successful  swindler,  was 
ultimately  caught  in  an  investigation 
launched  by  an  insurance  company  which 
believed  itself  defrauded  but  which  actu- 
ally had  not  been  defrauded  at  all.)  In 
searching  for  the  missing  children,  De- 
tective Frank  P.  Geyer  and  other  officers 
uncovered  Holmes's  entire,  lurid  criminal 
background.  They  found  the  bodies  of 
the  two  little  girls,  Nellie  and  Alice,  side 
by  side  in  a  shallow  grave  in  the  cellar  of  a 
house  Holmes  had  rented  at  Toronto,  and 
they  found  the  boy  Howard's  charred 
bones  in  a  stove  in  a  house  in  Irvington,  a 
suburb  of  Indianapolis.  (Apparently  the 
children  had  encumbered  Holmes's  flight.) 
So  well  had  he  concealed  his  activities  that 
it  was  not  until  nearly  a  year  after  Pitzel 
was  murdered  that  the  officers  learned  the 
truth  about  the  children  and  the  murder 
castle. 

On  October  28,  1895,  the  first  day  of  his 
trial  for  Pitzel's  murder.  Holmes  dismissed 
his  attorneys.  (Subsequently  he  recalled 
them,  but  to  the  end  it  was  really  he  who 
tried  the  case.)  He  displayed  a  "re- 
markable familiarity  with  the  law,"  the 
newspapers  observed;  during  recesses  he 
sat  in  the  dock  and  read  Stephen's  Digest 
of  the  Laws  of  Evidence. 

The  trial  was  a  national  sensation. 
Perhaps  the  high  point  came  when  Holmes 
cross-examined  Georgie  Anna  Yoke.  As 
he  did  so  "she  never  raised  her  eyes,  and 
gave  her  replies  in  a  whisper.  The  crier 
repeated  them  aloud."  Holmes  wept. 
(When  he  had  requested  a  pre-testimony 
interview  with  her,  "my  wife,"  the  district 
attorney  had  snapped,  "Which  wife?") 

The  murderer  presented  no  witnesses 
in  his  own  defense.  In  closing  arguments 
his  attorneys  claimed  that  Pitzel  had  com- 
mitted suicide.     The  jurors  didn't  believe 


THE    MASTER    OF    THE    MURDER    CASTLE 


85 


it;  Though  they  reportedly  reached  a 
verdict  immediately,  they  waited  "for  a 
seemly  period"  before  reporting  Holmes 
guilty.  A  journalist  noted  the  spectators' 
opinion  that  the  evidence  against  Holmes 
really  was  not  strong  enough  to  convict 
but  that  the  murderer  had  received  what 
moralists  of  the  day  termed  his  just  de- 
serts. He  was  hanged  at  Moyamensing 
Prison. 

The  case  is  not  wholly  satisfactory.  To 
begin  with,  since  Holmes  was  tried  in 
Philadelphia,  no  really  thoroughgoing  in- 
vestigation ever  was  made  of  the  crimes  for 
which  he  is  remembered:  the  slaughter  in 
his  murder  castle.  How  many  people  did 
he  kill?  Holmes  himself  made  various 
statements  and  "confessions,"  in  which  he 
admitted  a  varying  number  of  murders. 
Why  did  he  kill?  For  money  alone? 
But  he  was  an  accomplished  swindler;  he 
had  easy  access  to  money.  Out  of  passion 
then?  To  silence  successive  mistresses 
who  witnessed  his  crimes?  Or  in  a  per- 
verted spirit  of  scientific  inquiry?  (Once 
he  himself  said  he  killed  partly  for  the  joy 
ofkilling.) 

More  troublesome  still  is  the  considera- 
tion of  why,  precisely,  he  murdered  Pitzel. 
(One  theory  is  that  Pitzel  was  killed  ac- 
cidentally while  he  and  Holmes  were 
rehearsing  the  explosion.)  Holmes  had 
known  Pitzel  a  long  time  and,  presumably, 
could  trust  him.  Did  he  kill  Pitzel  be- 
cause he  feared  betrayal?  But  Pitzel  was 
as  deeply  involved  as  Holmes.     Did  they 


quarrel?  Perhaps;  four  days  before  his 
death  Pitzel  wrote  of  "this  man"  Holmes 
who  had  "got  possession"  of  the  Pitzel 
children.  Or  did  he  kill  Pitzel  because  it 
was  the  only  way  in  which  he  could  re- 
cover the  Fort  Worth  property  which  he 
had  stolen  from  Minnie  Williams,  then 
deeded  to  Pitzel?  The  motive  is  not 
established. 

But  perhaps  the  most  inexplicable  cir- 
cumstance of  all  is  his  taking  Marion 
Hedgepath  into  his  confidence  and  thus 
bringing  about  his  own  downfall. 
Holmes  was  an  old  hand  at  corpse  manip- 
ulation and  insurance  fraud;  he  already 
had  enlisted  the  aid  of  Pitzel,  an  associate 
of  long  standing.  Why  did  he  feel  that  he 
needed  also  an  outsider,  an  attorney?  And 
why,  to  find  one,  did  he  seek  help  from  a 
common  crook,  whom  he  must  have  de- 
spised? And  anyway,  why  detail  the 
whole  plot  to  Hedgepath?  Does  the  an- 
sw^er  lie  in  the  traditional  egotism  of  mur- 
derers that  betrays  them  into  braggadocio? 
But  that  is  the  mark  of  an  amateur,  not 
the  mark  of  a  veteran  murderer  and 
certainly,  above  all,  not  the  mark  of  a 
professional  swindler,  one  of  the  wiliest, 
most  close-mouthed  of  all  criminals. 

No,  there  simply  is  no  explanation. 
But  for  that  one  fatal  indiscretion.  Holmes 
might  be  alive  yet.  After  all,  he  would 
have  been  only  in  his  seventies  when 
Chicago  had  another  World's  Fair.  And 
at  that  time,  though  it  has  since  been 
wrecked,  his  murder  castle  still  was 
standing. 


THE    STRANGE    CRUISE    OF    THE 

YAWL    ZAIDA 

Part  11 


LAWRANCE    THOMPSON 

Lieutenant,  U.S.N.R. 


Just  after  Thanksgiving,  7942,  the  Coast  Guard  Reserve  yawl  Zaida,  a  former  pleasure  yacht, 
went  out  on  Coastal  Picket  patrol  watching  for  submarines  fifty  miles  offshore.  She  carried  a  crew 
of  nine  men.  At  the  end  of  her  five-day  patrol  a  storm  hit  her  hard;  she  capsized,  righted  herself, 
and  was  left  drifting  helplessly  before  the  terrific  gale,  with  her  mizzenmast  smashed,  her  sails  torn, 
and  three  men  injured.  Her  distress  signals  were  picked  up  by  radio,  and  Headquarters  Com- 
mander Eastern  Sea  Frontier  began  directing  a  search  for  her  by  ships  and  planes.  About  twenty- 
four  hours  later  a  British  destroyer  sighted  Zaida  wallowing  in  mountainous  seas  and  took  her  in 
tow;  but  in  the  middle  of  the  night  the  towline  parted  and  the  yawl  disappeared  in  the  dark.  At  this 
point  Lieutenant  Thompson  resumes  the  narrative  this  month. — The  Editors 


THE  morning  after  the  tow  had  parted 
and  we  had  lost  sight  of  the  Limey 
destroyer  we  gave  up  thinking  about 
being  rescued  and  decided  that  our  fate 
was  in  our  own  hands.  During  the  night 
the  steady  pounding  of  the  seas  had  pun- 
ished us  so  much  that  we  had  felt  pretty 
helpless,  but  when  daylight  came  we  turned 
to  the  job  of  fixing  up  as  best  we  could. 

y^aida  was  pretty  lively.  She  still 
pitched  and  rolled  so  hard  that  we  couldn't 
do  much  because  we  had  to  keep  one  hand 
wrapped  round  something  for  support. 
Most  of  the  day  we  just  puttered  about 
with  little  things.  We  checked  over 
shrouds  and  rigging  to  see  how  much 
damage  had  escaped  our  notice.  The 
spreaders  on  the  mainmast  had  been 
weakened,  possibly  by  being  hit  hard 
when  the  life  raft  carried  away.     George 


said  there  would  be  no  use  trying  to  sail 
on  a  port  tack  until  we  had  strengthened 
the  port  shrouds,  otherwise  the  mainmast 
might  carry  away  in  a  blow. 

The  real  trouble  was  canvas.  The 
storm  trys'l  had  flapped  in  the  wind  until 
it  was  nothing  but  rags.  With  the  mizzen 
gone  too,  we  had  only  a  forestays'l  and  jib. 
Joe  Ghoate,  still  too  weak  to  come  up  on 
deck  for  more  than  a  few  minutes  at  a 
time,  thought  we  could  convert  the  jib 
into  a  storm  trys'l  and  rig  it  on  the  main- 
mast. When  George  crawled  out  on  the 
bowsprit  and  unfastened  the  jib  he  found 
it  had  been  chafed  or  torn,  possibly  from 
contact  with  the  hawser  while  we  were 
under  tow.  We  wrapped  it  in  a  clumsy 
ball  and  stuffed  it  down  the  companion- 
way,  to  work  on  it  in  the  cabin. 

It  was  too  dark  in  the  cabin  to  work 


THE    STRANGE    CRUISE    OF    THE    YAWL    ^.4/D/l 


87 


without  light,  but  the  batteries  were  so 
weak  that  we  didn't  want  to  use  the  power 
for  Ughting.  On  the  cabin  bulkhead, 
just  over  the  Httlc  fireplace,  a  kerosene 
lamp  swung  in  gimbals  so  that  it  would 
keep  a  horizontal  position  at  all  times. 
We  had  grown  to  hate  that  lamp,  because 
it  kind  of  hypnotized  us  all  when  the  ^aida 
began  to  roll.  You  could  always  tell 
how  much  she  was  rolling  just  by  watching 
that  lamp  swaying  back  and  forth,  back 
and  forth  like  a  drunk  standing  still. 
Smitty  had  wanted  to  bust  the  thing  and 
get  rid  of  it.  But  now  it  came  in  handy, 
and  when  we  ran  out  of  kerosene  Smitty 
mixed  some  gasoline  with  lubricating  oil, 
and  whipped  up  something  that  worked 
pretty  well  as  a  substitute. 

Windsor  proved  to  be  the  best  man  we 
had  for  patching  sail.  At  some  time  or 
other  he  had  worked  as  a  sailmaker,  al- 
though he  hadn't  said  anything  about  it. 
As  soon  as  he  got  squared  away  with  his 
sail  twine,  beeswax,  patching  canvas, 
needles,  and  sailmaker's  palm  he  was 
happy.  The  worst  part  of  this  jib-conver- 
sion job  was  that  our  marconi-rig  main- 
mast had  a  sail  track  for  those  metal  slides 
sewn  to  the  lufT  of  the  mains'l  or  trys'l. 
Of  course  the  jib  didn't  have  any  slides, 
so  we  had  to  cut  them  from  what  was  left 
of  the  trys'l  luff.  Windsor  had  the  extra 
job  of  sewing  all  those  slides  at  regular  in- 
tervals along  the  edge  of  the  jib  so  that 
they  could  be  fitted  to  the  sail  track  on  the 
main.     It  was  slow  work. 

With  Jim  Watson  strapped  up  in  splints 
and  lashed  in  his  bunk  with  broken  ribs, 
and  Joe  Choate  with  a  cruddy  face,  and 
Smitty  not  too  handsome  with  his  black 
eye  and  swollen  nose,  there  were  only  six 
men  left  to  stand  watch.  The  Chief  had 
begun  to  take  his  turn  as  soon  as  we  were 
crippled.  We  tried  all  kinds  of  watches. 
Nobody  had  strength  to  stand  four-hour 
watches  after  what  we'd  been  through. 
First  we  tried  standing  two  hours  on  and 
four  off.  That  was  the  way  it  went  most 
of  the  time.  It  was  kind  of  tough  on 
sleep,  and  when  things  moderated  a  little 
we  tried  having  only  one  man  on  deck 
during  a  watch,  with  another  man  stand- 
ing by  below  so  he  could  be  called  at  short 
notice  if  needed. 

We  kept  wondering  just  where  we  were. 


The  standard  deck  log,  wlilcli  usually  lay 
on  the  chart  shelf  at  the  foot  of  the  com- 
panionway,  had  been  washed  down  into 
the  bilge  when  we  capsized.  Somebody 
dragged  it  out  and  dried  it  off,  but  the 
pages  stuck  together  and  it  wasn't  any 
good.  From  then  on  the  skipper  did  all 
his  figuring  and  reckoning  in  a  little  note- 
book which  he  kept  in  his  pocket.  Joe 
Choate  started  to  keep  a  log  of  his  own. 
Because  he  was  too  weak  to  do  anything, 
and  because  his  wrist  watch  was  the  only 
timepiece  still  running,  he  became  the 
official  duty  officer  who  would  call  men 
for  their  trick,  send  them  up  to  relieve 
those  topside,  then  ask  them  for  course 
and  speed  when  they  came  off  watch. 

We  had  run  out  of  the  worst  of  the  first 
storm  on  December  6th.  Jobbie  and 
Smitty  had  got  up  enough  courage  to 
hoist  the  forestays'l  that  afternoon  and  had 
been  able  to  make  a  reach  on  the  starboard 
tack,  on  a  south-southwesterly  course. 
That  gave  us  a  little  more  courage,  be- 
cause the  canvas  helped  steady  the  yawl 
and  things  were  a  bit  more  comfortable 
below.  We  kept  sailing  most  of  that 
night,  even  though  the  wind  began  to 
freshen  after  midnight.  Funny  how  that 
mid-to-four  watch  always  seems  to  be  the 
weather  watch;  during  those  hours  the  sky 
gets  round  to  deciding  what  it  will  dish 
out  for  the  next  day.  That  night,  as  the 
hours  passed,  we  could  tell  that  we  were 
in  for  another  blow — or  more  of  the  same. 
All  through  the  morning  of  the  seventh 
the  wind  built  up  seas  until  we  had  to  haul 
down  the  forestays'l  and  run  under  bare 
poles  again.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  we 
lost  all  we  had  made  the  day  before,  be- 
cause the  wind  blew  us  south  and  east  until 
after  dark.  During  that  night  the  weather 
moderated  again;  we  hoisted  the  fore- 
stays'l and  set  our  course  once  more  to- 
ward land. 

II 

WE  HAD  tried  to  use  the  marine  radio 
telephone  on  ^aida  as  soon  as  we 
had  bailed  enough  water  out  to  know  she 
was  going  to  stay  afloat.  But  the  aerial 
had  been  rigged  between  the  mizzen  and 
the  mainmast,  and  when  the  mizzen  car- 
ried away,  the  aerial  broke.  By  the  time 
we  had  fixed  some  sort  of  jury  rig  for  the 


88 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


aerial  we  found  that  the  batteries  were  so 
weak  we  could  just  barely  hear  the  shore 
stations  on  our  frequency.  George  and 
Smitty  were  the  best  mechanics  aboard, 
and  their  work  on  the  generator  had  taken 
quite  a  little  time.  The/  had  lifted  it  out 
of  the  engine-room  hold  underneath  the 
cockpit  and  carried  it  below  to  work  on 
it.  They  swore  that  when  they  had  the 
generator  working  again  they  were  going 
to  take  the  head  off  the  auxiliary  engine 
and  do  a  job  on  that.  The  skipper  said 
he'd  settle  for  the  generator  just  then  be- 
cause he  was  anxious  to  get  the  radio 
phone  working.  Before  they  were  done 
with  the  overhaul  and  had  tried  to  use  the 
watered  gas,  someone  else  had  checked 
the  radio  phone  and  had  found  water  in  it. 

Smitty  and  George  finally  began  to  get 
some  power  back  into  the  batteries.  At 
first  the  generator  choked  and  backfired; 
then  it  began  running  by  fits  and  starts. 
As  it  got  warmed  up  it  would  race  along 
on  good  gas  for  a  minute  or  so,  then  cough 
and  slow  down.  Smitty  would  dive  for 
the  adjuster,  monkey  with  it  until  the 
motor  picked  up  again,  then  cock  his  head 
on  one  side  and  worry  over  it  like  a  doctor 
looking  at  a  very  sick  patient.  Slowly  the 
batteries  got  stronger.  After  a  while  we 
could  turn  the  radio  on  long  enough  to 
hear  our  shore  station  calling  other  Picket 
Boats.     That  cheered  us  up. 

About  daylight  on  December  9th  George 
and  Smitty  announced  that  they  had 
enough  power  in  the  batteries  to  send  a 
message,  but  they  couldn't  promise  the 
juice  would  last  very  long.  So  the  skipper 
picked  up  the  telephone  and  started  talk- 
ing. He  had  done  it  so  many  times  be- 
fore, when  the  phone  was  dead,  that  no- 
body paid  much  attention  to  him.  We 
almost  fell  over  when  we  heard  the  Block 
Island  station  answering  him.  It  caught 
him  by  surprise  too.  He  had  said  that  we 
had  an  urgent  message,  but  when  he  was 
told  to  go  ahead  with  his  message  he 
couldn't  seem  to  think  what  to  say!  Fi- 
nally he  came  through  with  five  words: 
"Condition  favorable,  three  men  injured." 
The  Block  Island  operator  repeated  the 
message,  and  the  skipper  acknowledged: 
"Message  correct."  I'll  never  forget 
Smitty's  face.  He  was  so  disgusted  he 
couldn't  even  swear. 


I  don't  know  what  he  expected  the  skip- 
per to  say.  We  couldn't  very  well  give 
our  position  because  we  didn't  really 
know.  Of  course  both  the  skipper  and 
Choate  had  kept  their  own  dead  reckon- 
ing, based  on  our  having  been  blown 
south  and  east,  having  sailed  southwest  for 
a  day,  then  having  been  blown  south  and 
east  again.  Smitty  claimed  that  came  out 
to  some  kind  of  position  and  said  the  skip- 
per should  have  been  ready  to  give  it. 

The  skipper  kept  his  mouth  shut.  Dur- 
ing the  rest  of  the  morning  he  turned  on 
the  radio  each  hour  at  the  scheduled  time. 
About  noon  we  heard  our  own  shore  sta- 
tion calling  CGR  3070.  The  skipper  tried 
to  reply,  and  was  given  a  message  to  the 
effect  that  we  should  charge  our  batteries 
without  using  the  radio  again  until  2000 
that  night,  when  we  should  be  expected 
to  report  our  position.  Other  stations 
would  be  listening  for  us.  The  skipper 
tried  to  acknowledge  but  couldn't  tell 
whether  or  not  his  "Roger"  got  through. 
We  were  all  pretty  excited  over  that  mes- 
sage because  it  was  the  first  time  we  had 
been  in  real  contact  with  a  living  soul  for 
what  seemed  like  a  month  of  Sundays. 
Smitty  and  George  went  back  to  the  gener- 
ator and  started  it  up  again.  The  rest  of 
us  began  straining  enough  gas  to  have  a 
supply  in  store.  All  afternoon  we  just 
waited. 

Not  that  we  forgot  to  sail.  The  storms 
seemed  to  be  coming  in  hour  cycles,  but 
we  were  getting  bolder  and  took  a  chance 
on  using  the  forestays'l  off  and  on,  so  we 
were  beating  back  toward  shore.  We 
figured  we  must  be  somewhere  on  a  lati- 
tude with  Atlantic  City,  but  maybe  four 
hundred  miles  east.  We  were  probably 
making  two  or  three  knots  southwest — 
which  meant  that  we  might  hope  for  a 
landfall  on  Palm  Beach,  Florida,  some- 
time early  in  January !  We  tried  to  for- 
get that,  and  just  kept  talking  about  what 
might  come  of  our  little  radio  program 
that  evening. 

As  the  hour  came  close  we  all  got  more 
and  more  keyed  up.  Smitty  tested  the 
batteries,  and  the  skipper  checked  the 
radio  phone  to  be  sure  everything  was  in 
order.  The  rest  of  us  did  our  best  to 
crowd  around  the  companionway  so  we 
could  hear  whatever  came  over  the  air. 


THE  STRANGE  CRUISE  OF  THE  YAWL  ^.1/Z)^ 


89 


Finally  the  skipper  turned  on  the  radio, 
and  we  heard  our  shore  station  calling 
GGR  3070.  Then  the  skipper  began  to 
talk.  He  gave  our  dead-reckoning  posi- 
tion, course,  and  speed,  then  said  condi- 
tions were  fairly  good.  When  he  switched 
over  to  receive,  all  he  could  hear  was  a 
voice  droning  away  on  our  frequency. 
Whatever  the  voice  was  saying  it  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  us.  We  tried  again  and 
again  but  never  got  any  answer.  All  the 
time  our  transmitter  kept  growing  weaker 
and  weaker.  Smitty  tried  charging  the 
batteries  again,  but  no  luck.  Our  little 
radio  program  had  ended — a  failure. 

At  about  0630  on  December  9th  the  controller 
at  Headquarters  in  New  Tork  received  a  tele- 
phone call  froin  a  Coast  Guard  radio  station  on 
Long  Island,  reporting  that  a  fairly  strong 
message  had  been  received  on  standard  Coastal 
Picket  frequency,  stating  that  CGR  3070  was 
calling  her  own  station;  that  she  had  an  ^^ urgent 
message.'''^  Unfortunately,  the  message  itself 
was  garbled  by  interference  and  could  not  be 
logged,  A  few  minutes  later  a  dispatch  from 
the  Coast  Guard  radio  station  on  Block  Island 
reported  that  it  had  received  the  entire  message 
from  CGR  3070;  that  it  was:  ^^  Condition  favor- 
able.     Three  men  injured.^'' 

The  controller  called  in  the  plotting  officers  to 
ask  their  advice.  What  did  they  make  of  this 
message?  Some  were  skeptical.  It  sounded 
like  a  hoax.  Why  should  two  small  stations  in- 
tercept such  a  message  from  a  vessel  well  offshore 
when  more  powerful  stations  monitoring  the  same 
frequency  had  not  heard  any  message?  If  the 
yawl  were  in  the  area  where  the  search  had  been 
conducted — some  hundred  miles  east  of  George^ s 
Bank — then  her  radio  message  should  have  been 
more  clearly  heard  by  one  of  the  larger  stations  on 
Cape  Cod  or  at  Boston. 

The  officers  who  took  pride  in  their  blue-water 
sailing  days  were  quick  to  advance  their  own 
opinions.  Everyone  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that  the  vessel  had  been  running  before  the  wind 
all  the  time.  But  unless  the  storm  had  been  in- 
credibly severe,  there  was  every  reason  to  believe 
that  the  yawl  had  started  beating  back  toward  her 
base  under  mizz^n  and  headsH.  {Nobody  had 
reported  that  Zaida  had  lost  her  jigger;  it  was 
thought  merely  that  her  sails  were  in  bad  shape.) 
The  chances  were  that  she  might  have  got  off  a 
weak  message  and  that  it  had  been  just  strong 
enough   to  reach  the  nearest  stations — one  on 


Block  Island,  one  on  Long  Island.  Considering 
her  last  known  position,  as  reported  by  II.  M.  S. 
Caldwell,  and  other  variable  factors  after  that 
report  was  received,  she  might  have  been  beating 
back  toward  home  for  the  past  three  days,  might 
even  now  be  near  Nantucket  Lightship. 

How  else  could  one  explain  the  mystery  of  the 
radio  message?  Other  search  areas  had  been 
combed  by  ships  and  aircraft,  day  and  night; 
there  could  be  no  harm  in  trying  to  locate  the  lost 
yawl  nearer  her  base.  The  controller  organized 
a  new  search.  Airfields  were  requested  to  alert 
planes  returning  through  the  Nantucket  area 
from  their  dawn  patrols.  The  Coast  Guard  was 
requested  to  inform  its  Coastal  Pickets  in  the 
area,  so  that  they  might  try  to  contact  their  sister 
ship  and  give  her  assistance.  A  sturdy  sea- 
going tug  at  New  London  was  ordered  out  to 
conduct  an  extensive  search  in  co-ordination  with 
Army  and  Navy  aircraft,  which  would  also 
cover  the  same  sector.  The  Naval  Air  Station 
at  Lakehurst  was  advised  to  have  an  airship 
stand  by  with  first-aid  kits  and  packets  of  food 
and  water,  which  might  be  lowered  on  a  line  or 
dropped  by  parachute. 

There  was  still  another  method  by  which  the 
yawl  might  be  located.  If  she  could  use  her 
radio  she  could  be  located  by  radio-direction- 
finders. If  three  separate  stations  coidd  report  a 
bearing,  these  bearings  could  be  plotted  on  a  chart 
— and  where  the  three  lines  intersected,  the  yawl's 
position  would  be  indicated.  The  District 
Coast  Guard  Officer  took  charge  of  the  plan. 
The  yawl  would  be  told  to  charge  her  batteries  in 
preparation  for  a  continued  transmission  at  2000 
that  night;  all  stations  in  the  area  would  keep 
silence  and  monitor  the  frequency,  while  radio- 
direction-finders  took  bearings  on  her. 

At  2000  all  stations  which  might  normally  use 
the  Coastal  Picket  frequency  were  silent,  from 
Massachusetts  to  Virginia.  Nobody  had  thought 
of  interference  from  stations  as  far  away  as  Mo- 
bile, Alabama.  But  the  radio  operators  who 
tried  to  pick  up  even  the  faintest  word  from  the 
CGR  3070  were  thwarted  by  the  steady  mono- 
tone of  voices  going  conscientiously  about  their 
business  in  Mobile. 

That  was  not  the  end.  The  same  procedure 
was  tried  again  on  the  night  of  December  70th. 
Stations  as  far  south  as  Norfolk  were  directed  to 
broadcast  to  the  CGR  3070  the  following  mes- 
sage: ^^All  stations  East  Coast  will  keep  silent 
and  listen  for  you  to  make  a  report  at  2200  to 
2215  to-night.'^  All  stations  did  keep  quiet. 
All  listened.      There  was  nothing  but  silence. 


90 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


III 

THE  day  after  the  radio^phone  incident 
the  sea  moderated  so  much  that  we 
decided  the  time  had  co.ne  to  try  out  the 
jib  as  a  storm  trys'l  on  the  mainmast. 
The  worst  trouble  was  that  when  the  origi- 
nal trys'l  had  given  way,  the  shackle  on  the 
main  halyard  had  torn  out  and  been 
hauled  aloft  to  the  top  of  the  mast.  We 
tried  to  get  it  down  so  we  could  use  it  for 
hauling  up  the  new  trys'l,  but  the  weather 
was  so  rough  that  no  one  could  go  aloft  in 
a  bo'sun's  chair,  and  even  George  was  too 
weak  to  climb  the  shrouds. 

The  upshot  was  that  we  had  to  make  a 
jury  rig  of  the  converted  storm  trys'l. 
Old  Windsor's  job  of  sewing  on  the  slides 
for  the  sail  track  really  looked  like  a  profes- 
sional piece  of  work — and  as  we  came  up 
into  the  wind  and  hauled  up  the  trys'l,  the 
patches  were  so  neat  that  they  seemed  al- 
most ornamental. 

Just  as  we  finished,  and  were  ready  to 
settle  down  on  a  southwesterly  course, 
someone  shouted,  "Squall  on  the  star- 
board beam."  At  first  all  we  could  see 
was  a  smoky  bank  of  cloud  that  rose  several 
hundred  feet  from  the  ocean.  Under  it 
the  water  had  a  dark  and  ominous  color, 
flecked  with  whitecaps.  When  we  first 
saw  it,  it  couldn't  have  been  more  than  four 
miles  away,  and  rolling  down  on  us  fast 
from  the  northwest.  As  we  all  stood 
there  staring  we  could  hear  something 
that  sounded  like  the  roar  of  breakers  on 
the  shore.  Joe  Choate  was  the  first  one  to 
say  anything: 

"That's  a  damn  sight  more  than  squall. 
Down  sail  and  make  everything  secure  be- 
fore she  hits."  The  man  at  the  wheel 
brought  the  ship's  head  up  into  the  wind 
and  we  dropped  our  new  trys'l  in  a  hurry. 
Hands  and  arms  round  the  boom,  tying 
the  furled  sail  fast;  plenty  of  stops.  Down 
came  the  forestays'l  with  a  clatter  and 
swish;  more  furling,  more  stops.  Sheets 
taken  up,  all  extra  lines  stowed  through 
the  fo'c'sle  hatch,  all  hatches  battened 
down,  all  snugged  down  aloft  and  below. 
Before  we  had  finished  we  could  hear  the 
wind  louder,  could  feel  the  rain  blown 
ahead  like  a  heavy  mist.  Then  the 
shrouds  began  to  sing. 

The  two  men  on  watch  were  struggling 


into  boots  and  adding  oilskins  over  their 
heavy-weather  gear  as  they  kept  wary 
eyes  to  windward.  They  both  broke  out 
the  familiar  life  lines,  snapped  them  round 
their  bodies,  and  bent  the  free  ends  round 
the  stanchion  in  the  cockpit.  The  rest 
of  us  climbed  down  into  the  companion- 
way.  The  last  look  I  got,  the  sky  to 
le'ward  was  a  dirty  yellow,  the  storm  area 
was  coppery  along  the  edges  and  black 
underneath.  To  the  north  the  black  was 
toned  down  by  a  solid  gray  of  falling  rain. 
I  pulled  the  hatch  in  place  and  groped  my 
way  down  to  the  cabin,  ^aida  pitched 
and  rolled  in  a  way  that  can't  be  de- 
scribed. 

All  that  night  the  gale  and  seas  kicked 
us  around.  From  the  way  ^aida  pitched 
and  rolled  everyone  knew  that  this  was 
worse  than  what  we  had  already  gone 
through.  We  worried  about  the  men  on 
watch.  We  worried  for  fear  the  main- 
mast would  snap  off  and  go  overboard. 
But  there  was  nothing  we  could  do. 

It  was  decided  that  two  men  would 
stand  an  hour  watch  together  that  night, 
and  even  that  seemed  too  long.  The 
wind  steadily  built  up  to  a  gale  that 
seemed  powerful  enough  to  break  ^aida 
into  kindling  wood.  But  she  took  it  all 
and  ran  bravely  before  the  wind.  We 
could  tell  from  the  sound  of  water  along 
the  hull  that  she  was  tearing  along  at  the 
same  speed  she  would  have  made  with 
balloon  sails  on  forestay  and  jibstay  in 
good  racing  weather.  If  only  she  had 
been  headed  in  the  right  direction  we 
might  have  felt  better;  but  we  were  adding 
one  more  leg  to  our  zigzag  cruise — and 
this  leg  was  carrying  us  farther  and  farther 
out  to  sea,  south  and  east. 

All  that  night  and  all  the  next  morning 
the  storm  continued.  By  noon  we  began 
to  tell  one  another  the  gale  had  lessened  a 
bit,  but  the  seas  kept  running  in  great 
forty-foot  rollers.  At  one  minute  ^aida 
would  be  down  in  a  trough;  then  she 
would  be  picked  up  into  the  air  by  her  taff- 
rail  until  she  seemed  to  be  hanging  off*  a 
clothesline;  for  a  second  she  would  steady 
on  the  crest  before  the  roller  slid  from 
under  and  left  her  briefly  with  her  bow- 
sprit pointing  up  into  the  scud. 

About  1600  that  afternoon,  the  lookouts 
started  shouting,  "Ship  on  the  port  bow!'! 


THE    STRANGE    CRUISE    OF    THE    YAWL    <:.4/Z)/l 


91 


It  was  a  new  destroyer,  one  of  our  own, 
bearing  down  on  us  under  plenty  of  steam. 
Every  time  she  dipped,  her  bow  buried  it- 
self in  the  sea  and  took  tons  of  water  over 
the  for'ard  deck.  Then  the  bow  rose  slow- 
ly and  shook  the  water  off  in  great  masses 
of  white  foam.  At  about  the  same  time 
we  saw  a  long  line  of  freighters  and  tankers 
off  the  port  bow — thirty  or  forty  of  them 
plowing  along  less  than  three  miles  away. 
It  was  a  convoy;  the  destroyer  was  a  part 
of  her  escort  group. 

Good  enough!  Join  the  Navy  and  see 
the  world !  If  we  were  taken  aboard  the 
outbound  destroyer,  we  might  see  quite  a 
piece  of  the  world  before  we  got  back  to 
port !  We  all  started  shouting  and  laugh- 
ing above  the  noise  of  the  storm. 

IV 

WE  WERE  sure  we  would  be  rescued. 
Nobody  thought  anything  about 
how  we  would  be  taken  off  ^aida.  Even 
when  the  destroyer  left  the  long  procession 
of  merchant  vessels  and  kept  bucking 
those  forty-foot  seas  as  she  started  swinging 
around  us,  she  looked  so  large  and  power- 
ful that  we  felt  she  could  do  anything. 
We  might  have  remembered  how  the 
Limey  destroyer  had  nearly  scared  us  to 
death  when  she  bore  down  on  us  with  nets 
over  the  side.  But  that  seemed  ages  ago, 
and  now  we  were  ready  to  take  all  kinds 
of  chances  to  end  the  long  punishment. 

The  big  searchlight- -on  the  destroyer 
bridge  began  blinking  at  us,  and  the  skip- 
per called  for  the  Aldis  lamp  so  he  could 
answer.  We  had  rigged  the  lamp  to  a 
thirty-two-volt  battery  that  Smitty  had 
salvaged  from  our  wrecked  lighting  sys- 
tem. The  skipper  started  to  signal;  but 
the  chop  and  rollers  kept  rising  so  high 
between  ^aida  and  the  destroyer  that  we 
couldn't  even  see  her  bridge  at  times. 
We  kept  asking  the  skipper  what  the  de- 
stroyer had  said,  and  finally  he  told  us 
she  wanted  to  know  if  we  needed  assist- 
ance. We  let  out  whoops  and  bellows. 
The  skipper  waited  until  we  were  lifted 
high  on  the  top  of  a  wave  and  blinked  his 
"Affirmative."  Then  the  searchlight  on 
the  destroyer  broke  into  such  a  rapid 
blinking  that  the  skipper  couldn't  read  it, 
and   asked   for  the  message  again.     We 


kept  asking  him  what  they  said  until  he 
told  us  to  shut  up.  Finally  he  said  the 
destroyer  had  asked  if  we  wanted  to  be 
taken  off.  In  one  voice  we  all  turned 
toward  the  destroyer  and  bellowed  a 
chorus  of  "Yes,  yes,  yes."  Of  course  it 
was  silly  trying  to  shout  in  that  gale,  but 
we  were  all  too  excited  to  think  of  that. 
The  skipper  blinked  his  answer  again. 
For  a  few  minutes  we  watched,  until  the 
destroyer  had  closed  us  enough  so  we 
could  see  the  faces  of  the  officers  and  men 
on  the  wing  of  the  bridge;  then  she 
changed  course  and  fell  off  to  le'ward. 

About  that  time  our  man  at  the  wheel 
started  shouting  that  we  were  being  blown 
right  into  the  course  of  the  freighters  in 
the  convoy.  The  column  nearest  us  was 
so  widely  spaced  between  ships  that  we 
hadn't  noticed  how  we  had  been  gaining 
on  the  freighters.  Now  we  were  in  for  it. 
The  worst  part  of  it  was  that  we  couldn't 
make  enough  leeway  to  keep  clear.  The 
skipper  said  not  to  worry  about  that;  the 
freighters  could  see  us  and  wouldn't  run 
us  down.     We  weren't  so  sure. 

As  we  crossed  astern  of  the  first  mer- 
chant vessel  in  the  column  she  towered  up 
above  us  like  a  floating  city.  Having  seen 
nothing  but  clouds,  snow,  rain,  and  the 
crazy  ocean  for  days,  we  had  lost  our 
sense  of  size.  When  Z^ida  had  been 
everything  that  stood  between  us  and 
Davy  Jones'  Locker,  she  had  seemed 
pretty  important.  Now  she  was  dwarfed 
to  the  size  of  a  museum  model  as  these 
huge  ships  hammered  their  way  through 
seas  and  plowed  up  geysers  of  foam  and 
spray  that  fell  from  bow  to  midships. 
When  we  came  close  enough  to  see  men 
on  the  le'ward  rails  of  the  freighters  they 
stared  and  waved — so  we  stared  and 
waved  back.  It  must  have  seemed  fan- 
tastic to  the  men  on  the  freighters  to  see 
us,  without  power  or  sail,  being  driven  by 
the  wind  faster  than  they  were  moving, 
diagonally  through  the  whole  convoy 
formation. 

By  the  time  we  had  moved  a  half-mile 
or  so  beyond  the  first  column  we  came 
charging  into  the  second.  This  time  we 
weren't  so  lucky,  because  our  course 
seemed  to  be  blowing  us  smack  up  against 
a  tanker  that  kept  her  decks  more  under 
water  than  out.     But  the  tanker  veered 


92 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


off  to  starboard  until  our  courses  were 
parallel  for  a  time,  then  fell  astern,  and 
finally  cut  back  to  port  and  continued  on 
course.  We  all  started  laughing  when  we 
realized  we  were  making  better  time  than 
the  convoy.  Someone  suggested  we  take 
the  convoy  in  tow  and  get  the  supplies  to 
the  other  side  that  much  faster. 

The  reason  for  the  difference  in  speed 
was  clear.  The  convoy  was  taking  the 
storm  pretty  much  on  the  port  beam,  and 
that  made  heavy  going  that  must  have 
reduced  speed.  Then  too,  those  great 
hulks  sat  low  in  the  water  and  took  the 
seas  in  solid  body  blows,  ^aida,  for  all 
her  pitching  and  tossing,  rode  the  seas 
just  like  a  sea  gull.  Along  would  come  a 
monster  wave  that  seemed  to  rise  higher 
than  the  mast,  while  we  were  down  in  the 
trough.  Looking  aft,  we  could  see  noth- 
ing but  that  great  wall  of  sea  bearing  down 
on  us  and  threatening  to  bury  us  under 
hundreds  of  tons  of  cold  and  boiling 
water.  The  next  minute  we  would  be 
climbing  stern-first  up  the  side  of  that 
mountain,  as  though  we  had  suddenly 
started  going  backward  at  a  great  rate  of 
speed.  Then  the  forward  motion  of  the 
wave  would  pick  us  up  and  drive  us  ahead 
of  it,  surfboard  fashion.  Sometimes  we 
would  be  swept  forward  so  fast  that  it 
scared  you  to  watch.  After  a  few  seconds 
the  wave  would  sweep  in  under  us  until  we 
were  perched  high  on  the  crest.  As  the 
huge  roller  swept  beyond  the  bowsprit 
we  would  drop  back  down  into  the  next 
trough  to  wait  for  another  big  fellow. 

All  this  time  the  destroyer  kept  follo\ving 
us,  dodging  around  the  freighters  and 
tankers,  having  a  hard  time  keeping  up. 
Somewhere  in  that  game  of  hide-and- 
seek  she  signaled  to  the  skipper  that  she 
couldn't  possibly  take  us  aboard.  The 
skipper  told  Joe  what  she  had  said,  and  all 
of  a  sudden  we  felt  as  though  the  bottom 
had  dropped  out  from  under  us.  Ap- 
parently the  skipper  felt  the  same  way, 
because  he  turned  to  Joe  Choate  and  said 
he  had  a  mind  to  ask  them  to  shoot  him  a 
line  so  he  could  be  hauled  aboard  the  de- 
stroyer and  tell  them  just  how  badly  off  we 
were.  It  sounded  like  a  mad  thing  to  say, 
but  he  meant  it.  Joe  looked  at  him  for  a 
second  without  making  any  answer,  then 
said  he  thought  the  skipper's  place  was 


aboard  ^aida  with  the  rest  of  us.  That 
made  the  skipper  furious,  and  he  began  to 
protest  that  he  didn't  mean  he  was  going 
to  abandon  us;  he  wanted  to  take  any 
chance  if  only  he  could  make  certain  we 
could  be  rescued.  Joe  said  something 
about  its  being  impossible  to  live  in  seas 
like  that  even  on  the  end  of  a  life-line.  So 
the  skipper  stopped  talking  about  it. 

He  climbed  back  on  the  cabin  overhead 
with  the  Aldis  lamp  and  started  blinking. 
We  didn't  know  what  he  was  saying  and 
he  didn't  tell  us.  But  after  he  had  finished 
he  told  somebody  to  get  pencil  and  paper 
from  the  companionway  chart  drawer. 
He  had  asked  for  our  position.  When  the 
destroyer  had  answered,  and  someone  had 
written  the  figures  down,  we  were  all 
curious  to  know  what  it  amounted  to. 
Several  of  us  went  below  to  see  it  plotted 
on  the  chart:  roughly,  three  hundred  miles 
east  of  Norfolk,  Virginia!  And  making 
about  ten  knots  southeast,  hour  after  hour. 
The  skipper  admitted  that  this  was  fully 
one  hundred  miles  different  from  his  own 
dead  reckoning;  but  he  didn't  say  whether 
he  had  thought  we  were  nearer  shore  or 
farther  out  to  sea.  At  that  stage  it  didn't 
make  much  difference. 

There  was  another  message  blinking 
across  the  rough  waters  to  us — a  long  one 
that  we  couldn't  follow  entirely  because 
the  seas  shut  out  parts  of  it.  The  skipper 
said  nothing  after  it  had  stopped  but  he 
blinked  a  short  answer.  We  kept  an  eye 
on  the  destroyer  and  saw  her  move  out  in 
a  wide  arc  until  she  was  steaming  dead 
ahead  on  our  course.  She  seemed  to  re- 
duce speed  for  a  while,  but  she  was  so 
often  hidden  from  us  that  we  couldn't  tell 
what  she  was  up  to.  Nothing  happened 
for  about  twenty  minutes.  All  of  a  sud- 
den someone  in  the  ^aida  cockpit  shouted 
that  he  had  seen  two  drums  on  the  crest 
of  a  wave  slightly  forward  of  our  starboard 
beam.  We  watched,  and  the  two  drums 
rose  into  sight  and  slid  down  into  another 
trough  about  a  hundred  feet  away. 

The  drums  were  painted  black  and  were 
lashed  together.  Although  they  were  far 
enough  away  to  be  slightly  to  le'ward,  we 
\vere  already  so  nearly  abeam  of  them 
that  we  couldn't  change  our  course  with- 
out being  capsized.  Jobbie  was  so  anx- 
ious to  get  a  line  on  the  drums  that  he  of- 


THE    STRANGE    CRUISE    OF    THE    YAWL    ZAIDA 


93 


fercd  to  bend  a  sheet  round  his  waist 
and  swim  for  them.  He  had  the  build  of 
a  swimmer,  and  was  so  strong  that  he 
might  have  been  able  to  make  it.  He  was 
sure  he  could.  But  the  skipper  and  Joe 
insisted  that  it  would  be  impossible  be- 
cause the  yawl  was  making  such  rapid 
headway  that  the  drums  were  already 
falling  astern.  Smitty  complained  that 
if  only  he  had  known  the  destroyer  was 
going  to  drop  the  drums  overboard  we 
could  have  changed  course  gradually  and 
could  have  picked  them  up. 

The  worst  of  it  was  that  the  early  winter 
twilight  was  already  darkening  the  water. 
What  we  didn't  know  at  the  time  was  that 
the  destroyer  had  paid  out  the  drums  full 
of  food  and  water  on  a  long  line;  that  she 
apparently  couldn't  tell  whether  or  not 
her  method  of  sending  us  supplies  was 
going  to  work.  I  don't  know  why  she 
didn't  change  her  course  until  the  line 
crossed  our  bow.  It  looked  as  though  she 
swung  back  to  le'ward  of  us  and  recovered 
the  drums  after  the  experiment  failed. 
She  half  circled  us  again,  trying  to  think 
up  something  else  to  do,  then  blinked  a 
short  message  and  headed  back  toward 
the  convoy,  already  out  of  sight  in  the 
haze. 

On  December  14th,  the  day  after  Tj^ads.  had 
her  rendezvous  with  the  North  African  convoy, 
but  many  hours  before  the  escort  commander  was 
able  to  report  the  incident  {since  he  was  required 
to  keep  radio  silence  until  a  specified  leg  of  his 
journey  had  been  covered),  a  discouraging  piece 
of  information  reached  the  control  room  at  East- 
ern Sea  Frontier  Headquarters.  A  neutral  ves- 
sel about  three  hundred  miles  north  of  Bermuda 
reported  that  she  had  sighted  what  appeared  to  be 
a  derelict  two-masted  schooner.  At  first  those 
who  read  the  dispatch  feared  that  CGR  3070 
had  been  found,  but  it  turned  out  that  the  derelict 
was  a  Coastal  Picket  which  had  been  driven 
ashore  at  Truro,  Massachusetts,  on  December 
2d,  by  the  same  unexpected  storm  which  had 
disabled  Zaida,  and  then,  after  the  crew  had 
been  taken  off,  had  been  swept  out  to  sea. 

The  plotting  officers  in  the  control  room  real' 
ized  that  if  the  derelict  had  been  blown  three 
hundred  miles  southeast,  then  Zaida  might  now 
be  somewhere  in  the  same  general  area.  Fol- 
lowing this  line  of  reasoning,  the  Commander 
Eastern    Sea    Frontier    requested    the    United 


States  Naval  Operating  Base  at  Bermuda  to 
conduct  air  searches  in  the  area  of  the  derelict 
schooner^  in  the  hope  of  sighting  CGR  3070. 

Into  the  midst  of  this  guesswork  and  cir- 
cumstantial reasoning  came  the  necessarily  de- 
layed report  from  the  escort  commander:  '^CGR 
3070,  Latitude  37-40,  Longitude  69-50  at 
1800,  December  13th.  Seaworthy  but  in  need 
of  assistance  not  rendered  due  weather,  darkness, 
and  necessity  other  employment  of  escorts. '^'^ 

On  December  15th  a  search  was  organized  to 
cover  a  vast  circle  around  the  reported  position. 
Nine  PBT^s,  three  B-17^s,  and  a  fast  destroyer 
were  assigned  to  the  search.  The  planes  cov- 
ered their  assignments  until  they  were  low  on 
fuel,  returned  to  their  various  bases,  and  made 
their  reports:  '^ Conducted  search  to-day  with 
negative  results. '^^  Late  that  afternoon  the  de- 
stroyer made  her  report  while  still  proceeding  with 
the  search:  '^Results  negative.'^'* 

On  December  16th  the  same  number  of  planes 
swept  a  new  area  with  no  better  luck.  Later  re- 
ports indicated  that  some  of  them  had  missed 
CGR  3070  by  not  more  than  25  miles. 


IT  WOULD  be  hard  to  make  you  under- 
stand how  we  felt  aboard  Z^ida  that 
night  after  we  saw  the  destroyer  show  her 
fantail  to  us  and  start  plowing  back  into 
the  dusk  after  her  convoy.  If  only  the 
weather  had  been  different  we  shouldn't 
have  minded.  But  in  that  terrible  gale  it 
seemed  as  if  something  snapped  in  us. 

Yet  the  more  we  thought  about  it  and 
talked  to  one  another  about  it  the  more  we 
decided  things  could  be  much  worse.  We 
knew  that  some  lifeboats  in  the  Atlantic 
had  drifted  for  weeks  through  all  kinds  of 
cold  and  hunger  before  the  survivors  were 
picked  up.  By  comparison  we  were  well 
off.  Our  food  was  running  low,  but  there 
was  still  enough  if  we  were  careful.  Our 
water  was  brackish,  and  the  tanks  weren't 
very  large,  but  we  knew  we  could  collect 
rainwater.  And  best  of  all,  there  was 
Zaida.  She  had  lost  her  mizzen  and  a  lot 
of  canvas;  she  had  pieces  of  tin  cans  nailed 
over  her  vents;  she  couldn't  count  on  her 
auxiliary  engine;  but,  by  God,  she  still 
kept  sailing  even  without  any  canvas. 
The  storms  couldn't  keep  up  forever.  As 
soon  as  we  hit  the  Gulf  Stream  we  could 
rig  sail  and  work  back  toward  shore. 


94 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


About  December  1 5th  we  ran  out  of  the 
storm,  and  the  skies  began  to  clear.  We 
hoisted  our  makeshift  trys'l  and  fore- 
stays'l — and  almost  immediately  ran  out 
of  a  breeze.  After  all  the  banging  and 
slatting  we  had  taken  irom  that  series  of 
storms  it  seemed  unbelievable  to  find  our- 
selves suddenly  becalmed  in  the  middle  of 
the  Gulf  Stream.  But  the  best  part  of  it 
was  that  all  of  us  began  to  catch  up  on 
sleep  again. 

After  a  while  a  good  breeze  sprang  up, 
and  we  set  our  course  due  west.  From 
then  on  we  lost  track  of  time  pretty  much. 
The  only  thing  that  really  mattered  was 
food  and  water.  Even  underneath  our 
beards,  which  had  begun  to  get  quite 
handsome  by  that  time,  there  was  plenty 
of  indication  that  faces  were  getting  thin. 
Smitty,  who  must  have  weighed  close  to 
two  hundred  pounds  at  the  beginning  of 
the  cruise,  began  to  get  himself  stripped 
down  to  a  normal  size.  Ward  Weimer 
found  when  he  took  the  wheel  that  he 
couldn't  handle  it  because  his  wrists  got 
too  painful  when  he  put  his  body  behind 
them.  Some  of  the  others  found  that 
whenever  they  heaved  on  a  line  their 
bowels  would  move  without  the  slightest 
warning.  Smitty  seemed  to  be  the  only 
one  to  develop  any  kind  of  skin  troubles  of 
serious  nature:  boils  on  his  arms  and  legs. 
The  rest  of  us  all  had  some  kind  of  rash  at 
times,  but  nothing  that  really  bothered  us. 

Considering  the  number  of  days  we  had 
to  put  up  with  one  another,  we  got  along 
fine.  There  were  times  when  we  would 
get  into  little  arguments  over  the  best 
way  to  do  things,  but  the  only  altercation 
that  continued  day  after  day  was  the  feud 
between  Smitty  and  the  skipper.  They 
just  rubbed  each  other  the  wrong  way. 
For  instance,  there  was  the  little  incident 
of  the  revolvers.  One  day  when  the  at- 
mosphere had  got  nasty,  and  the  skipper 
had  bawled  Smitty  out  for  something,  the 
skipper  went  down  to  the  cabin  and  started 
to  clean  his  .38.  After  all  the  salt  water 
in  the  cabin,  the  revolver  certainly  needed 
cleaning.  But  while  he  was  right  in  the 
middle  of  it,  Smitty  came  off  watch;  and 
when  he  saw  what  the  skipper  was  doing 
he  began  digging  into  his  duffel  bag. 
Earlier  in  the  fall,  when  we  had  been  told 
we  couldn't  have  any  more  ammunition  al- 


lowance for  target  practice,  Smitty  had 
offered  to  bring  aboard  a  .45  automatic 
of  his  own  and  enough  ammunition  for 
limited  target  practice.  That  had  been 
approved,  and  we  had  all  taken  turns 
blasting  away  at  tin  cans  on  the  water. 
So  now  Smitty  hauled  out  his  .45  auto- 
matic, sat  down  on  his  bunk  opposite  the 
skipper,  and  went  to  work  cleaning  and 
oiling  it.     Nothing  was  said  by  anyone. 

A  day  or  two  later  the  skipper  and 
Smitty  had  another  argument.  Shortly 
after  they  got  over  the  worst  of  it,  Smitty 
went  to  Joe  Choate,  who  still  spent  most 
of  his  time  in  his  bunk  because  of  his 
weakened  condition,  and  handed  him 
something  done  up  flat  in  a  cloth.  All  he 
said  was,  "Hide  this.  I  don't  want  to 
know  where  it  is,  and  I  don't  want  to  be 
able  to  find  it."  Joe  knew  what  it  was, 
from  the  weight.     He  hid  it. 

VI 

^N  December  17th — four  days  after 
our  encounter  with  the  convoy — we 
sighted  a  Flying  Fortress.  It  was  pretty 
exciting  to  see  that  enormous  bird  out 
there.  We  had  figured  that  we  must  still 
be  more  than  three  hundred  miles  from 
shore,  and  we  didn't  expect  to  see  a  plane 
that  far  out. 

She  dropped  a  package  of  supplies  for 
us  by  parachute,  but  it  hit  the  water  so 
hard  that  the  package  burst  open  and  all 
the  supplies  sank  before  we  could  reach 
them.  We  turned  to  look  at  the  Fortress, 
but  she  had  already  started  back  toward 
land  and  in  a  couple  of  minutes  she  was 
out  of  sight. 

Although  we  were  disappointed  to  lose 
that  fat  package  the  Flying  Fortress  had 
dropped  we  were  too  busy  with  the  cares 
of  lookout  and  seamanship  to  waste  much 
time  over  it.  The  incident  just  seemed  to 
fit  into  the  breaks  of  the  game — most  of 
them  against  us — and  we  settled  down  to 
the  job  of  sailing  westward  until  we  could 
make  a  landfall.  A  spanking  breeze 
continued  throughout  the  night  of  De- 
cember 17th  and  grew  even  stronger 
during  the  18th  and  19th.  Earlier,  we 
might  have  considered  that  northwesterly 
blow  to  be  too  much  for  our  stick  and  our 
sail.     But  on  this  leg  of  the  cruise  we  knew 


THE    STRANGE    CRUISE    OF    THE    YAWL    ^AIDA 


95 


exactly  how  much  we  could  do  with  the 
mainmast,  how  much  punislimcnt  the 
shrouds  could  take.  So  wc  began  leaving 
the  trys'l  and  forestays'l  up,  day  and  night. 

Food  and  water  worried  us  more  than 
anything  else.  During  the  next  few  days 
there  were  several  rain  squalls  that  gave 
us  a  little  water,  but  the  ritual  of  the  daily 
meal  got  to  be  more  and  more  unpleasant. 
As  each  man  would  get  his  cupful  his  eyes 
would  travel  around  from  cup  to  cup, 
just  to  see  if  anyone  got  more  than  he  did. 
Nobody  said  anything  about  it;  nobody 
needed  to. 

On  December  22d  the  weather  got 
plenty  nasty  again.  The  wind  swung 
round  into  the  east,  and  we  began  beating 
and  reaching  by  turns  on  a  course  that 
was  roughly  northwest.  On  the  watch 
from  eleven  to  midnight  the  wind  seemed 
to  be  swinging  round  to  the  north.  At 
times  it  would  blow  up  to  a  snow  squall, 
then  moderate  until  the  visibility  im- 
proved. When  Smitty  came  up  into  the 
cockpit  that  night  he  said,  "Well,  I'm 
going  to  pick  up  a  shore  light  to-night; 
you  watch." 

That  was  getting  to  be  a  pretty  old  gag, 
but  this  time  it  was  true.  He  said  after- 
ward that  he  saw  it  three  or  four  different 
times  before  he  dared  to  say  anything 
about  it,  he  had  been  fooled  so  many 
times.  But  after  a  while  he  started  yelling 
for  the  others  to  come  up  and  take  a  look. 
The  skipper  got  just  as  excited  about  it  as 
we  did,  until  it  occurred  to  him  that  it 
might  be  marking  a  shoal  or  a  sunken 
wreck.  We  thought  the  best  thing  to  do 
would  be  to  pull  up  alongside  it  and  see 
if  we  could  make  fast  until  morning.  The 
wind  had  moderated  quite  a  bit,  but  there 
were  still  the  rollers  to  make  us  worry 
about  being  smacked  against  the  buoy  and 
having  a  hole  stove  through  along  the 
waterline.  The  best  we  could  do  was  let 
^aida  ride  hove  to  and  hope  that  we  could 
keep  paying  off  within  sight  of  the  buoy 
until  daylight.  Then  we  could  decide  on 
whether  or  not  the  color  of  the  water  and 
the  set  of  the  waves  indicated  shoals. 

Just  then  Smitty  shouted,  "Look!"  and 
pointed  beyond  the  buoy.  In  the  dark- 
ness, not  more  than  a  hundred  yards 
away,  we  could  see  the  dark  outline  of  a 
small  Patrol  Boat,  completely  blacked  out. 


Her  course  was  bringing  her  past  the  buoy 
and  astern  of  us.  We  thought  for  a  while 
she  was  going  to  pass  us  by,  for  she  kept  on 
her  course  until  she  was  almost  out  of 
sight.  Fler  crew  had  seen  our  flashlight 
but  had  thought  we  were  a  submarine; 
they  deliberately  moved  on  past  so  they 
could  get  set  for  an  attack,  with  all  guns 
manned  and  depth  charges  set  for  shallow 
depth  explosions.  It's  lucky  we  weren't 
blown  out  of  the  water  for  our  pains. 

When  the  Patrol  Boat  turned  back  we 
were  upwind  from  her  and  she  could  hear 
us  shouting  before  she  could  see  us. 
Smitty  kept  waving  the  feeble  flashlight, 
trying  to  light  up  our  deck  and  sails.  He 
bellowed  that  we  had  been  out  for  three 
weeks,  that  we  were  low  on  food  and 
water,  and  could  they  give  us  a  tow  to 
shore.  I  think  the  skipper  of  the  Patrol 
Boat  was  still  suspicious.  He  shouted 
back  that  he  was  low  on  gas  and  couldn't 
tow  us,  that  we  were  in  a  danger  area 
(whatever  that  meant),  and  that  we 
shouldn't  go  north  of  the  buoy;  just  stay 
hove  to  and  wait  until  daylight,  when  they 
would  lead   us  in. 

While  we  were  still  shouting  back  and 
forth,  the  wind  freshened  and  snow  began 
to  fall.  It  was  quite  a  little  squall,  and  in 
no  time  we  had  lost  sight  of  the  Pa- 
trol Boat.  Under  the  circumstances  we 
couldn't  even  be  sure  of  keeping  any  posi- 
tion in  relation  to  the  buoy.  So  we  jibed 
round  and  ran  down-wind  to  get  out  of 
trouble.  The  farther  we  went  the  worse 
the  wind  blew.  After  a  while  we  took 
down  sail  and  ran  before  the  storm  again. 

At  0052  on  the  morning  of  December  23d 
the  controller  at  Headquarters  received  a  message 
from  Norfolk.  A  Coast  Guard  boat  on  patrol 
near  Buoy  6  in  34-50  North,  75-40  West,  had 
sighted  CGR  3070  and  had  found  that  every- 
thing was  all  right  aboard  except  that  she  was 
just  about  out  cf  water  and  supplies.  There 
were  rough  seas  runnings  heavy  surf  on  shore. 
The  Patrol  Boat  had  lost  sight  of  CGR  3070  in 
a  snow  squall,  but  was  still  searching. 

This  time  Zaida  must  not  get  away.  The 
final  search  was  ordered.  Reports  began  coming 
in  long  before  dawn.  Everything  was  ready. 
There  would  be  two  OS2U-3's  and  one  PBT 
out  of  the  Naval  Air  Station  at  Norfolk,  two  air- 
ships out  of  Elizabeth  City,  North  Carolina, 


96 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


two  Civilian  Air  Patrol  planes  and  one  JRF 
from  other  fields  in  the  vicinity.  Their  first 
reports  indicated  that  conditions  were  not  so 
good.  Visibility  poor,  with,  promise  oj  better 
conditions  by  afternoon. 

Noon  passed  without  any  word  of  success 
from  any  of  the  surface  craft  or  patrol  planes; 
7300,  7400,  still  nothing.     At  7438,  the  long- 
awaited  message  came:  an  airship  had  found 
the  yawl  at  34-34  North,  75-75  West. 

VII 


EVEN  though  we  had  lost  the  buoy  we 
knew  that  the  long  ordeal  was  over, 
t  was  obvious  that  we  must  be  fairly 
near  land,  and  we  expected  that  the  Patrol 
Boat  would  find  us  soon  after  daylight. 
If  not,  so  much  the  better:  we'd  sail  right 
into  the  nearest  harbor  without  any  help 
from  anyone.  All  of  a  sudden  we  felt 
glad  that  the  Limey  destroyer  hadn't  been 
able  to  tow  us  in  to  port,  that  the  convoy 
escort  commander  had  had  to  leave  us  to 
our  own  fate,  that  the  big  Flying  Fortress 
hadn't  been  a  Navy  duck  that  could  land 
and  take  us  oE  Z^ida.  The  idea  of  leaving 
her  all  to  herself  out  in  the  middle  of  no- 
where wouldn't  have  bothered  us  too 
much  when  we  were  scared  stiff  by  the 
storm.  But  now  that  she  had  brought  us 
safely  in  we  all  had  a  new  love  for  her  and 
felt  that  she  had  been  the  real  heroine  of 
our  strange  adventure. 

That  last  morning  the  sky  was  overcast, 
and  rain  squalls  came  by  fits  and  starts. 
But  we  had  the  sails  set  and  were  slogging 
along  on  what  we  hoped  would  be  the  last 
leg  of  our  cruise.  By  noon  the  wind  eased 
and  the  sun  began  to  burn  through  the 
lifting  clouds.  As  the  visibility  improved 
we  took  turns  searching  the  horizon  for  the 
first  sight  of  land.  But  the  Navy  and  the 
Coast  Guard  didn't  give  us  the  satisfaction 
of  making  a  landfall.  About  1400  that 
afternoon  one  of  the  lookouts  shouted, 
"Blimp,"  and  pointed  off  the  starboard 
beam. 

We  saw  her  long  before  we  could  hear 
the  steady  roar  of  her  motors;  but  from  the 
way  she  kept  her  course  it  seemed  she  had 
sighted  us  first.  Before  she  had  even 
started  to  circle  us  we  were  shouting  and 
laughing.  The  tension  was  broken,  and 
for  the  first  time  there  were  tears  in  our 


eyes  and  an  almost  hysterical  tone  of  ex- 
citement in  our  voices.  Before  the  blimp 
swung  directly  over  us  we  were  all  on  deck 
except  poor  Watson,  who  was  still  nursing 
his  ribs  in  his  bunk.  Pretty  soon  she 
dropped  a  package  of  food,  along  with  a 
note  saying:  "Your  position  reported. 
Sit  tight.     Help  on  way— K-13." 

Then  the  planes  began  to  appear — 
first  one,  then  another,  and  another. 
They  came  in  at  different  altitudes,  cir- 
cled Z^ida,  dipped  their  wings  and  gunned 
their  motors.  They  made  a  fine  recep- 
tion committee.  We  stood  and  gawked 
at  them  like  bumpkins  at  a  country  fair. 
One  of  them  nosed  down  and  dropped 
another  bundle  of  food  that  hit  the  water 
with  a  splash.  We  fished  it  in,  tore  it 
open,  and  made  a  deck  picnic  out  of  it. 
Nobody  wanted  to  go  below  for  fear  of 
missing  the  fun.  Within  an  hour  we  had 
counted  nine  planes  and  two  blimps. 

Then  the  Patrol  Boats  came.  The  first 
to  show  up  was  a  Coast  Guard  83-footer 
that  blinked  a  message  saying  she  had  in- 
structions to  take  us  aboard  and  put  a 
skeleton  crew  on  ^aida.  While  she  was 
creeping  up  alongside,  her  crew  began 
shouting  at  us  and  holding  their  clasped 
hands  over  their  shoulders.  The  boys  on 
Zciida  who  had  been  itching  for  a  smoke 
asked  for  cigarettes — and  half-filled  packs 
sailed  across  to  the  deck.  There  was  a 
scramble  to  save  them.  The  crew  that 
came  aboard  to  relieve  us  began  looking 
Zaida  over  as  if  she  were  a  museum  piece, 
but  we  left  her  to  their  curiosity.  The 
Patrol  Boat  was  warped  alongside,  and  we 
climbed  over  to  the  deck. 

The  end  at  last,  and  no  mistake  about  it  this 
time!  Commander  Eastern  Sea  Frontier  thought 
it  wasnU  quite  the  end.  Arrange  for  a  special 
transport  plane,  he  said,  to  bring  the  skipper  and 
crew  to  New  Tork  on  December  24th.  Then 
make  all  necessary  plans  to  be  certain  that  each 
one  of  the  crew  would  reach  home  in  time  to 
spend  Christmas  Day  with  his  family. 

A  few  hours  later  Zaida's  crew  were  safely 
ashore  at  the  Coast  Guard  Station  at  Ocracoke — 
twenty-seven  days  after  the  start  of  their  strange 
cruise.  All  nine  were  with  their  families  for 
Christmas.  Within  a  few  weeks  Zaida  was 
repaired  and  back  on  station,  the  most  famous 
veteran  of  the  Coastal  Picket  Patrol. 


For  information  concerning  the  contributors  to  this  issue, 
see  Personal  and  Otherwise  among  the  following  pages. 


Helping  the  tire  maker:  Pictured  here  is  a  laboratory  model  of  the  new  Westinghouse- 
developed  "mass  spectrometer,"  an  adaptation  of  which  analyzes  gases  with  incredible 
swiftness  and  accuracy.  Right  now,  one  of  the  most  important  of  its  many  uses  is 
speeding  up  tremendously  a  step  in  the  making  of  synthetic  rubber. 


Westinghouse  research  accepts  every  wartime  challenge  .  • 

Under  the  spur  of  war,  Westinghouse  research  is  delving  into  numberless 
mysteries,  not  only  in  the  vast  field  of  electricity  and  electronics,  but  also  in 
chemistry,  physics,  metallurgy,  plastics.  And  as  a  result,  out  of  the  great 
Westinghouse  laboratories  has  come  a  steady  stream  of  new^  war  products, 
and  new  and  better  ways  of  making  old  ones. 


Westinghouse  research  develops  new 
talent  for  America  .  .  . 

To  Westinghouse,  each  year,  come  several  hundred  bud- 
ding scientists  and  engineers — to  work,  to  learn,  to  blaze 
new  trails  in  electrical  research.  And  each  year,  through 
more  than  100  Westinghouse  scholarships,  young  men 
enter  America's  engineering  colleges  to  develop  the 
native  skill  and  talent  that  have  made  America  great 
and  will  make  it  greater. 


Westinghouse  research  promises  new 
wonders  for  peace  . .  • 


You  have  heard  much  talk  of  the  marvels 
science  will  offer  you  after  the  War.  Well,  there 
will  be  marvels — plenty  of  them — and  West- 
inghouse research  is  working  to  contribute  its 
full  share.  But  we  will  never  lose  sight  of  what 
we  consider  our  first  duty:  seeing  that,  beyond 
all  question,  each  Westinghouse  product,  old 
or  new,  is  the  very  finest  of  its  kind.  Westing- 
house Electric  &  Manufacturing  Co.,  Pittsburgh, 
Penna.  Plants  in  25  cities,  offices  everjrwhere. 


PERSONAL  AND  OtIlCrWiSO 


AIVY    COLOR    AS    LONG    AS    IT'S    RED 

WE  HAD  quite  a  time  getting  the  shade  of 
red  which  (we  hope)  makes  Harper's  rise 
right  up  off  the  newsstand  and  ask  you  to  buy 
it  this  month.  None  of  the  ink  catalogues  had 
what  we  wanted,  but  we  finally  got  it  from  a 
car-card  in  the  suburban  New  York  trains,  a 
copy  which  we  acquired  through  the  courtesy 
of  Transportation  Displays,  Inc.,  of  New  York 
City.  With  the  card  as  a  guide,  the  rest  was 
easy. 


1¥E    EAT    CROW 

THIS  is  the  sort  of  blunder  that  gripes  us  be- 
yond words.  In  the  November  issue  we 
ran  a  piece  called ' '  Crash  in  the  Jungle . ' '  The 
author  was  Major  Frank  P.  Bender,  and  we 
had  him  in  the  Marine  Corps  instead  of 
identifying  him  as  an  officer  of  the  Army  Air 
Force. 


OUR    LADY    OF    THE    SI\OWS 
PERTURBED 

READERS  of  William  Henry  Chamber- 
^  lin^s  "Canada  Swings  to  the  Left"  may 
recall  that  there  was  much  political  discontent 
in  Canada  during  the  First  World  War  and 
that,  in  1919,  the  Conservatives  were  defeated 
in  the  Ontario  elections.  In  that  year  the 
Labour  Party  and  the  Farmers'  Party  com- 
bined and  won  56  seats — enough  to  form  an 
administration.  The  Farmers'  Party  won 
elections  also  in  Alberta  and  Manitoba. 
There  was  a  general  strike  in  Winnipeg  and 
the  city  was  in  turmoil  for  five  weeks — a  con- 
trast to  Seattle  where  the  general  strike  of 
that  year  folded  up  on  the  third  day. 


This  radical  swing  was  short-lived  and  the 
old  parties  successfully  made  a  come  back. 
But  things  were  never  the  same.  Canadian 
wheat  was  in  trouble  and  it  has  been  in 
trouble  ever  since.  (In  the  twenty  years  be- 
tween 1901  and  1921  the  farm  acreage  in  Sas- 
katchewan and  Alberta  increased  from  6>^  to 
73  million  acres.  Wheat  export  from  Van- 
couver boomed  because  of  the  opening  of  the 
Panama  Canal.)  Now  the  whole  world  is  in 
an  agricultural  jam  and  an  industrial  jam  as 
well.  Production  is  a  cinch.  The  question 
is:  Who's  got  the  money  to  buy?  It  may  be 
that  some  sort  of  speculative  boom  after  this 
war  will  chill  the  prospects  of  the  Canadian 
C.C.F.,  but  right  now  it  looks  as  if  their 
chances  were  pretty  good. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  is  an  old  contributor.  He 
spent  eighteen  years  abroad  as  a  foreign  cor- 
respondent in  Russia,  Japan,  and  France. 
Among  his  many  books  are  a  number  about 
Russia;  the  most  recent  of  these  is  The  Rus- 
sian Enigma.  A  chapter  of  this  book  called 
"The  Sources  of  Russia's  Strength"  first  ap- 
peared in  Harper's.  His  most  recent  article 
was  "The  Middle  Road:  Postwar,"  published 
in  the  May  issue. 


REVOLT    OF    AX     OKPHAIV     CHILD 

THORSTEiN  Veblen  would  probably  call  the 
use  of  butter  an  example  of  conspicuous 
waste.  Certainly  social  custom  has  not  tol- 
erated margarine  in  refined  households. 
The  folklore  proves  it  with  the  old  wisecrack: 
"Oleo,  my  Margarine,  I  take  you  for  butter 
or  worse."  But  things  are  different  now  and 
if,  as  Wesley  McCune  seems  to  think,  the 


ORE  HOURS  FOR  FIGHTING 

In  pre -Pearl  Harbor  days,  i8o  hours  of  service  in  the  air 
was  the  most  expected  of  a  fighter  aircraft  engine  be- 
tween major  overhauls.  •   It's  different  now  —  the 
official    time    between   overhauls   has  been  more 
than  doubled.  •  However,  the  Allison  engine  has 
shown  it  can  go  even  beyond  that.  If  need  be,  it 
can  take  500  hours  of  combat  duty  before 
it  has  to  pause  for  thorough  going-over — 
enough  hours  to  travel  162,500 
miles,  or  6H  times  around 
the  globe!  •  In  wartime, 
it  is  such  availability  for 
battle  that  counts  — and 
we  are  frankly  proud  of 
the    Allison's    proved 
capacity  for  keeping 
its  battle- fitness. 


POWERED  BY 
ALLISON 

P-^8 — Lightning 
P-5  9 — Airacobra 
P-40 — IVarhawk 
A-^6  and  P-^i  —  Mustang 


Every  Sunday  Afternoon  —  GENERAL 
MOTORS  SYMPHONY  OF  THE  AIR 
—  NBC  Network 


LIQUID-COOLED    AIRCRAFT    ENGINES 


K^ 


DrvisroN    OF 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Haunted  by  Oleomargarine 

Charles  W.  Holman,  Secretary  of  the  National  Cooperative 
Milk  Producers  Federation 


I 


cottonseed  and  soybean  folks  really  get  going 
we  shall  see  all  the  heavy  guns  of  advertising 
and  publicity  rolled  into  action  to  glorify  mar- 
garine. The  wretched  substitute  will  sud- 
denly become  not  only  more  nutritious  and 
more  full  of  vitamins;  it  will  be  the  favorite 
of  all  prudent  young  newlyweds.  Margarine 
will  be  the  spread  of  patriots,  it  will  be  the 
triumph  of  a  scientific  age,  whereas  butter  is 
just  a  relic  of  pastoral  times. 

''The  Oleomargarine  Rebellion"  gives  the 
background  of  the   conflict   now   beginning. 


Mr.  McCune  is  an  assistant  editor  in  the 
Washington  bureau  oi  Newsweek,  but  he  comes 
from  the  dairy  country.  He  was  born  in 
Nebraska  and  raised  in  Colorado  and  listened 
to  the  cries  of  dairymen  while  he  was  still  in 
the  cradle.  He's  been  interested  in  the  mar- 
garine question,  he  says,  ever  since  he  heard 
one  farm  neighbor  grouse  at  another  for  tak- 
ing his  butter  to  market  and  buying  oleo  for 
his  own  table.  Readers  may  remember  that 
Mr.  McCune  wrote  a  piece  for  us  in  May, 
1942,  called  "Why  Milk  Costs  So  Much,"  an 


(Co7itinued  on  second  page  following) 


It  All  Adds  Up  To  Subtracting  Zeros 


Today's  apprentice  gunner  enters  a  deadly 
trade — defending  American  bombers  against 
vicious  attacks  of  Jap  Zeros  and  other 
heavily  armed  enemy  fighters. 

To  follow  his  trade  and  survive,  the  gun- 
ner first  has  to  learn  how  to  ^'polish  'em  off 
around  the  clock."  His  training  must  he 
thorough  and  painstaking,  and  it  must  come 
within  a  hair's  breadth  of  being  the  real 
thing.  That's  why  Fairchild  developed  the 
GUNNER. 

This  advanced  trainer  has  the  essential 
characteristics  of  the  bombers  from  which 
our  student  marksmen  will  soon  shoot  it 
out  with  Axis  pursuits.  From  a  power  turret, 


similar  to  one  on  a  Flying  Fortress,  each 
fledgling  is  taught  to  pick  off  tiny  targets 
while  moving  at  better  than  200  miles  per 
hour.  It's  fast,  tricky  work  and  it  takes  a 
keen  eye,  steady  nerves,  precision  equip- 
ment. It's  the  kind  of  training  that  pays 
off  when  the  chips  are  down. 

Fairchild's  GUNNER,  from  which  appren- 
tice marksmen  step  into  bombers  and  thence 
into  action,  is  one  of  the  largest,  speediest 
training  planes  used  by  the  Army  Air  Forces. 
Powered  by  two  l2-cylinder,  inverted,  in- 
line, air-cooled  Ranger  engines,  the  GUNNER 
is  a  typical  example  of  Fairchild's  "touch 
of  tomorrow  in  the  planes  of  today." 


AIRCHILD 


BUY     U.     S.     WAR     BONDS     AND     STAMPS 


ENGINE     AND     AIRPLANE      CORPORATION 


30    ROCKEFELLER    PLAZA.    NEW   YORK 

Kanger  Aircraft  Engines  Division,  Farmingdale,  L.  I.  •  Fairchild  Aircraft  Division,  Hagerstown,  Md Burlington,  N.  C.   •  Duramold  Division,  New  York,  N.  Y. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


article  that  caused  certain  parties  much  pain 
and  anguish.  Some  time  ago  he  grappled 
successfully  with  a  subject — The  Farm  Bloc — 
that  had  thrown  numerous  good  men  before 
him.  The  book,  published  ^  some  months 
back,  stands  alone.  It  is  the  only  book  that 
traces  the  development  of  the  farm  bloc,  that 
shows  who  belongs  to  the  bloc  and  how  it 
operates. 

DAVIS    VS.    BIDDLE 

ccx  A  THAT  About  Modern  Art  and  Democ- 
YY  racy?"  is  Stuart  Davis's  rejoinder  to 
two  arguments  by  George  Biddle  which  we 
pubHshed  in  June  and  October.  In  his  first 
article  Mr.  Biddle  claimed  that  modernism  in 
art  has  reached  a  dead  end;  that  its  practi- 
tioners have  crawled  into  an  ivory  tower  and 
plugged  the  entrance  tight.  In  the  second 
article  he  argued  that  art  must  reach  out  to 
the  masses,  that  Germany  and  Russia  have 
learned  how  to  harness  the  arts  and  that  the 
same  should  be  brought  about  in  this  country 
— only  democratically.  ("Sure  it  would  be 
fine  to  have  a  Ministry  of  Fine  Arts  in  this 
country,"  said  John  Sloan.  "Then  we'd 
know  where  the  enemy  is.")  Mr.  Davis  will 
have  none  of  either  of  Mr.  Biddle's  conten- 
tions and  here  undertakes  to  explode  them. 

Mr.  Davis  is  one  of  the  best-known  Ameri- 
can modernist  painters.  (He  refuses  to  be 
labeled  an  "abstractionist.")  He  is  repre- 
sented in  the  collections  of  the  Museum  of 
Modern  Art,  the  Whitney  Museum  of  Ameri- 
can Art,  the  PhilHps  Memorial  Gallery  in 
Washington,  and  in  various  other  museums  in 
this  country.  His  murals  are  in  Radio  City 
Music  Hall,  Municipal  Station  WNYC  in 
New  York  City,  and  at  Indiana  State  Univer- 
sity. He  has  been  an  instructor  at  the  Art 
Students  League  of  New  York  and  the  New 
School  for  Social  Research. 

His  most  recent  one-man  show  was  ex- 
hibited at  the  Downtown  Gallery  in  New 
York  in  February,  1943.  The  opening  was 
much  relished  by  the  customers,  for  the  gallery 
had  provided  a  first-class  Negro  jazz  band  for 
the  occasion. 


to  fit  the  information  into  a  plan.  Mr.  Grat- 
tan  simply  undertook  to  find  out  about  the 
world. 

If  this  sounds  a  little  high-toned  we  can 
bring  it  down  to  earth  very  promptly.  Mr. 
Grattan  began  working  with  economic  ma- 
terials dealing  with  the  United  States  nearly 
twenty  years  ago.  Some  years  later  he  went 
to  Australia  and  became  interested  in  the 
economy  of  that  commonwealth.  After  his 
return  to  the  United  States  his  interest  con- 
tinued and  his  study  gradually  expanded  into 
an  examination  of  the  economics  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire.  In  the  end  his  investigations 
carried  him  around  the  world — back  to  Aus- 
tralia for  a  two  years'  stay  and  then  to  New 
Zealand,  South  Africa,  Great  Britain,  and 
Canada.  Since  he  wasn't  engaged  in  selling 
anything  either  of  a  commercial  or  political 
character,  he  was  able  to  pursue  his  labors 
with  a  single  mind.  It  is  fair  to  say  that 
there  are  few  Americans  who  can  match 
either  Mr.  Grattan's  first-hand  knowledge  or 
his  competence. 

In  "Postwar  Migration:  A  Mirage"  he  un- 
dertakes to  deflate  the  golden  illusion  that 
Europe's  harassments  can  be  eased  by  large- 
scale  migration  after  the  war. 


A    TOOT] 


FOR     A     TOOTH 


NO    ELDORADOS     AVAILARLE 

THERE  is  this  difi'erence  between  C.  Hart- 
ley Grattan  and  the  gentlemen  who  are 
busy  slinging  world  plans  together.  The  latter 
collect  information  about  the  world  in  order 


IT  isn't  often  that  you  hear  about  a  dentist 
who  employed  his  spare  time  on  a  project 
that  subsequently  upset  the  world.  Maurice 
Zolototv,  who  tells  about  him,  got  a  part  of 
his  schooling  at  the  New  Utrecht  High  School 
in  Brooklyn.  While  there  he  was  an  editor 
of  the  school  weekly.  The  sports  editor  was  a 
boy  named  Bob  William.  Some  ten  years 
after  graduation  Zolotow  happened  to  meet 
William  in  a  New  York  restaurant  and  com- 
plained of  a  toothache.  He  asked  William  if 
he  could  recommend  a  good  dentist  and  Wil- 
liam replied  that  his  father  qualified.  So 
Zolotow  took  his  toothache  to  "The  Dentist 
Who  Changed  World  Histor>^" 

There  was  a  very  particular  reason  why 
William  interested  Zolotow.  "I  spent  the 
best  years  of  my  youth,"  he  says,  "as  an  agita- 
tor and  organizer  in  the  left-wing  movement, 
principally  the  Young  People's  Socialist 
League  and  the  Young  Communist  League. 
Practically  all  my  reading  time  was  spent  in 
studying  the  Marxian,  pre-Marxian,  and 
post-Marxian  classics:  the  works  of  Marx, 
Engels,    Bakunin,    Plekhanov,    Lenin,    Buk- 


{Continued  on  second  page  following) 


BUY  WAR  BONDS  AND  STAMPS 


// 


Why  does  our  wine  turn  sour,  M.  Pasteur  ? 


it 


It  was  1865  when  Louis  Pasteur  showed  the 
wine  makers  of  his  native  France  how  to  keep 
their  product  from  souring  by  heating  it  to 
about  145°  F. 

The  world  was  slow  to  see  the  value  of  "pas- 
teurization." Some  thirty  years  later,  when 
the  first  American  dairy  began  to  sell  pasteur- 
ized "milky  the  move  met  bitter  opposition. 

"Fraud  and  nonsense,"  cried  competitors. 
But  doctors  noticed  that  the  death  rate  dropped 
where  pasteurized  milk  was  used. 

By  1915,  a  progressive  cheese  company  suc- 
ceeded in  producing  pasteurized,  packaged 
cheese.  It  was  another  big  advance.  It  assured 
uniform  quality  and  purity  even  in  distant 
markets.  It  meant  no  rind,  no  waste — and  a 
greater  variety  of  cheeses  for  family  nutrition. 

That  milk  company  was  Sheffield  Farms  and 
that  cheese  company  was  Kraft.  Both  are  im- 
portant parts  of  National  Dairy — and  their 
pioneering  spirit  still  lives  on  in  the  modern 


National  Dairy  Laboratories.  From  the  Lab- 
oratories have  come  many  improvements  in 
dairy  products.  As  you  read  this,  they  are  busy 
developing  new  foods — new  products — to  help 
speed  the  war  and  enrich  the  peace. 

Dedicated  to  the  wider  use  and  better  under^ 
standing  of  dairy  products  as  human  food  .  .  . 
as  a  base  for  the  development  of  new  products 
and  materials  .  ,  ,  as  a  source  of  health  and 
enduring  progress  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
towns  and  cities  of  America, 


NATIONAL   DAIRY 

PRODUCTS   CORPORATION 

AND    AFFILIATED    COMPANIES 


LISTEN: 


JANUARY  1, 1944 


Where  they  find  the  time  nohody  knows. 
But  the  fact  is  that  1 1 6  staff  members  of  the 
Stations  on  the  CBS  network  are  giving  radio 
instruction  in  34  colleges  and  universities, 
and  in  60  schools:  both  civilian  and  Army 
and  Navy  technical  classes.  Mostly  these 
people  work  at  capacity  in  their  regular  jobs. 
For  their  teaching  mostly  they  take  in  not  a 
penny... some  teach  script-writing,  direct- 
ing, producing;  some  teach  the  equally  mys- 
terious behavior  of  the  tubes,  wires  and 
electrons.  A  pretty  formidable  and  useful 
volunteer  "faculty"  of  people  who  work  for 
the  good  of  their  profession,  as  well  as  for 

their  daily  bread. 

* 

Altogether  too  many  people  have  been 
asking  who  writes  the  titles  of  the  capricious 
pieces  AlecTempleton  plays  each  Wednesday 
evening  over  some  70  CBS  stations  — titles 
like  Debussy  in  DubuquCy  Grieg's  in  the 
Groove^  Bach  Goes  to  Town^  Ode  to  the 
Bottom  of  a  Bumble  Bee^  Mo-zart  Matricu- 
lates ^  Have  a  Few  with  Dinicu,  Corelli  in  the 
Old  Corraly  and  Gnats  to  You. 

So  a  posse  of  CBS  title-searchers  went  out 
and  found  out  who  writes  the  titles.  Temple- 
ton  does. 

• 

Most  everybody  thinks  of  the  radio  audi- 
ence as  3  1  million  American  famihes  in  3,072 
counties.  Right,  but  not  the  grand  total. 

Let  us  not  overlook  the  hve,  three-dimen- 
sional audience  sitting  in  the  75  CBS  theatres 
and  studios  in  a  single  year  —  the  men  and 
women  and  boys  and  girls  who  Hke  to  watch 
programs  being  broadcast. 

In  a  year  more  than  2,0 1 2,000  souls  have 
that  interesting  experience,  in  CBS  Network 
playhouses  and  studios. 

What's  more,  affihated  stations  of  the 
Columbia  Network,  in  their  500  or  more 
studios  and  theatres,  are  hosts  to  a  further 
total  of  over  1,368,000  live  and  mobile 
human  beings  who  want  to  see  the  wheels 
go  round  in  radio. 

3,380,000  is  a  lot  of  live  guests  to  know 
you've  welcomed  in  person  in  a  year. 


And  the  best  part  of  it  is  that  1,172,743 
of  them  were  boys  and  girls  and  men  and 
women  from  the  armed  forces  of  our  coun- 
try. They're  marvelous  guests.  We  hope  the 
entire  armed  forces  will  follow  them. 


Two  more  firsts— in  one  week: 

1.  November  14,  Sunday,  at  9:07:20  a.m. 
EWT,  listeners  to  CBS  ISJews  of  the  World 
heard  the  first  American  correspondent's 
voice  broadcasting  from  Naples.  It  was 
Farnsworth  Fowle,  of  CBS. 

2.  Sunday  afternoon,  November  21,  at 
4:30:00  EWT  precisely.  Admiral  Chester 
W  Nimitz  released  in  Honolulu  the  first 
news  of  the  American  landings  on  Makin 
and  Tarawa  islands.  Twenty  seconds  later, 
Webley  Edwards,  CBS  correspondent  in 
Honolulu,  read  the  communique  to  all  con- 
tinental America  over  CBS  — beating  all 
other  news  services  by  a  cool  ten  minutes. 

You've  got  to  expect  alertness  hke  that  in 
the  normal  operation  of  the  Number  One 
News  Service  on  the  air,  even  if  the  points  of 
origin  of  the  broadcasts  are  about  8,100 
miles  apart  on  the  ground. 


The  tallest  radio  transmitter  tower  in 
America  is  that  of  WNAX,  CBS  affiliate  in 
Yankton,  S.D.  From  the  top  of  it,  927  feet 
up,  you  can  see  way  to  hell  and  gone,  and 
broadcast  even  further. 


This  is 


CBS 


tlie  COLUIillBIA 
BROADCASTING  SYSTEIM 


THE  New  Books  ^(/Im  (Jimhcrkm 


THE  publishers  these  days  are  happy  men. 
Not  so  long  ago  they  were  worrying 
about  the  intellectual  constrictions  of 
wartime.  Books  wouldn't  be  written,  or,  if 
they  were,  there  wouldn't  be  paper  to  print 
them  on.  But  1942  saw  one  big  publishing 
company  jump  its  business  ten  per  cent  over 
that  of  1941.  And  this  same  company  did  a 
seventy-five  per  cent  better  business  in  1943 
than  it  did  in  1942. 

The  quantitative  boom  in  the  book  business 
may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  it  takes  no  points 
to  buy  a  copy  of  One  World.  Or  maybe  it 
derives  from  the  gasoline  shortage,  which 
keeps  people  at  home.  As  for  the  qualitative 
aspects  of  the  1943  season,  this  reviewer  had 
no  cause  for  complaint.  A  good  many  of  the 
war  books,  particularly  those  which  were 
built  out  of  front-line  reporting,  lacked  per- 
spective; their  chief  value  to  posterity  will 
be  as  quarries  for  researchers  bent  on  telling 
the  larger  story.  But  a  book  like  Colonel 
Robert  Scott's  God  Is  My  Co-Pilot  (Scribner) 
will  undoubtedly  live  as  one  of  the  great  ac- 
counts of  personal  adventure.  The  man  who 
could  fly  over  Mt.  Everest  merely  in  order  to 
tune  up  his  plane  and  to  put  in  a  little  routine 
flying  time  belongs  to  the  breed  of  men  which 
included  that  other  Scott  who  died  on  his 
way  back  from  the  South  Pole. 

Training  Is  the  Pay -off 

In  the  exigencies  of  spot  reviewing  and 
quick  reading,  one  is  apt  to  mistake  hills  for 
mountains  and  vice  versa.  In  the  case  of 
Captain  Ralph  Ingersoll's  The  Battle  Is  the 
Pay-off  (Harcourt,  Brace)  the  title  betrayed  me 
into  tepidity  of  praise.  For  Ingersoll's  battle 
scene  was  the  least  convincing  part  of  his  book. 
Battle  scenes  generally  have  all  the  raw 
violence  and  lack  of  ascertainable  pattern 
that  one  usually  associates  with  the  old  bar- 
room chromo  of  Custer's  Last  Fight.  But  the 
real  pay-off'  on  Ingersoll's  book  was  that  he 
was  writing  primarily  about  the  way  an  army 
comes  into  being.  It  should  have  been  called 
The  Training  Is  the  Pay-off,  or  An  Army  Is  No 
Better  Than  Its  Housekeeping.  If  the  title  hadn't 
led  me  astray  I  probably  would  have  called 


Ingersoll's  book  one  of  the  fundamental  docu- 
ments for  understanding  war. 

As  for  the  North  African  books,  I  have  had 
nothing  but  dirty  looks  for  deigning  to  praise 
Kenneth  Crawford's  Report  on  North  Africa 
(Farrar  and  Rinehart).  But  doesn't  secular 
common  sense  mean  anything  to  the  world 
any  more?  Crawford's  point  was  that  the 
political  shenanigans  involving  "Darlanism" 
were  necessary  to  enable  a  force  that  didn't 
much  exceed  one  hundred  thousand  men  to 
seize  thousands  of  miles  of  coastline.  If 
readers  won't  take  it  from  Crawford,  will  they 
take  it  from  Guy  Ramsey's  One  Continent 
Redeemed  (Doubleday,  Doran,  $2.50)?  For 
Ramsey,  who  deplores  Darlanism  and  hopes 
we  will  have  no  more  of  it,  is  forced  honestly 
to  report  Eisenhower's  words:  "I'm  sick  to 
death  of  this  god-damned  political  question. 
I  played  ball  with  Darlan  because  it  would 
take  me  ten  divisions  to  hold  my  lines  of  com- 
munication open  if  I  didn't— and  I  couldn't 
get  ten  divisions  here  in  a  year  while  I'm 
fighting  this  war." 

G.  A.  Borgese,  in  Common  Cause  (Duell, 
Sloan  and  Pearce,  $3.50),  is  one  of  the  easily 
igniting  authors  who  consider  our  North 
African  victory  a  resounding  defeat.  He 
heaps  high  scorn  on  our  methods  of  "nego- 
tiated war"  in  his  pyrotechnic  pages.  But 
Borgese,  who  was  born  in  Sicily,  owes  the 
freedom  of  his  homeland  to  the  very  methods 
which  he  decries.  If,  when  the  war  is  over, 
Churchill  and  Roosevelt  try  to  force  an  un- 
wanted government  on  the  people  of  Italy — 
or  Sicily — then  Borgese  will  have  righteous 
cause  for  complaint.  But  it  would  be  un- 
democratic of  us  now,  at  this  moment,  to 
prejudge  the  case  as  between  Tito  and 
Mihailovitch,  or  de  Gaulle  and  Giraud.  Our 
business  is  to  use  whoever  looks  promising  to 
the  end  of  defeating  Hitler.  Then  the  race 
should  be  open  to  the  parliamentary  parties — 
or,  if  necessary,  to  anti-Fascist  revolutionaries. 

If  the  new  world  is  to  be  for  the  common 
man,  it  might  be  well  to  note  that  the  most 
lovable  of  common  men,  Ernie  Pyle,  didn't 
boggle  over  the  political  decisions  of  our 
generals  in  his  Here  Is  Your  War  (Holt,  $3). 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


The  common  man  does  not  elect  to  die  in  droves 
merely  to  win  by  perfectionist  means. 

Brown  Under  Fire 

Here  Is  Tour  War  is  the  most  human  book  to  have 
come  out  of  the  fighting.  "  tDf  a  different  order, 
but  fully  as  heart-warming  is  John  Mason  Brown's 
To  All  Hands:  An  Amphibious  Adventure 
(Whittlesey  House,  S2.75).  This  whilom  dramatic 
critic  stood  on  the  bridge  of  a  ship  which  he  calls 
the  Spelvin  during  the  hours  of  our  Sicilian  invasion 
and  described  via  the  microphone  what  was  going 
on  for  the  benefit  of  the  men  below  decks.  As 
"Bridge  Announcer"  of  the  Spelvin,  Lieutenant 
Brown  sometimes  quoted  Matthew  Arnold  or 
Shakespeare.  His  tact  and  taste  and  ability  to 
link  classical  literature  to  the  common  mood  of 
a  tense  moment  went  over  big  with  oilers  and  gun 
crews  and  pantrymen.  Surprisingly  enough,  the 
broadcasts  make  an  enduring  book;  Brown's  sense 
of  style  never  deserts  him,  not  even  in  moments 
of  ad  libbing. 

When  the  war  is  over,  no  one  will  want  to  read 
the  books  of  Max  Werner,  But,  before  his 
Attack  Can  Win  in  7943  (Little,  Brown)  is  forgotten, 
it  should  be  noted  that  Mr.  Werner  was  the  one 
prophet  whose  predictions  measured  up  against 
events.  Maybe  the  final  attack  will  not  come  until 
the  spring  of  1944;  the  boys  of  the  general  staff's 
are  evidently  going  to  play  it  safe,  waiting  for 
Sir  Arthur  Harris's  bombers  to  put  the  German 
industrial  machine  out  of  business  before  swarming 
in  for  the  kill.  But  the  progressive  failures  of  the 
German  army  and  air  force  have  come  just  as  Mr. 
Werner  predicted  they  would  come. 

Of  the  novels  of  1943,  three  will  linger  for  a  long 
time  in  the  memories  of  their  readers.  Betty 
Smith's  A  Tree  Grows  in  Brooklyn  (Harper, 
$2.75)  might  be  called  Farrell  for  the  Millions. 
For  it  adds  just  a  touch  of  sentiment  to  what  might 
have  been  slum  sociology,  and  it  adds  it  without 
slopping  over.  Elizabeth  Janeway's  The  Walsh 
Girls  (Doubleday,  Doran)  shows  a  talent  that  is  up 
to  writing  many  fine  novels  of  character.  And 
Christine  Weston's  Indigo  (Scribner,  $2.50),  by  a 
citizen  of  Maine  who  spent  her  youth  in  India,  is 
a  remarkable  story  of  the  clash  of  cultures  and 
temperaments  in  what  is  to  me  the  most  mysterious 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface.  India  brings  out  the 
best  in  novelists  who  are  in  search  of  dramatic 
conflicts,  as  witness  the  works  of  Rumer  Godden 
and,  now,  Christine  Weston. 

Authors  in  Town  Meeting 

The  1943  books  on  ideas  prove  their  vitality 
by  the  way  they  suggest  possible  auctorial  line-ups 
for  town  meetings  of  the  air.  Questions  of  foreign 
policy  and  the  reconstruction  of  Europe  are 
answered  with  more  or  less  completeness  by  a 
whole  host  of  1 943  documents,  from  Willkie's  One 
World  (Simon  and  Schuster)  to  Ely  Culbertson's 
Total  Peace  (Doubleday, Doran,  $2.50).     Culbert- 


son's scheme  for  applying  the  notion  of  checks  and 
balances  to  a  world  police  force  is  ingenious,  but 
most  card  players  will  probably  want  to  ask  him 
if  he  has  ever  succeeded  in  playing  a  bridge  hand 
before  the  cards  have  been  dealt.  A  very  lively 
argument  could  be  got  up  between  partisans  of 
Count  Richard  Coudenhove-Kalergi's  Crusade  for 
Pan-Europe  (Putnam)  and  Walter  Lippmann's 
U.  S.  Foreign  Policy:  Shield  of  the  Republic  (Little, 
Brown).  For  the  former  book  considers  Europe 
as  a  cultural  entity  that  should  be  made  over  into 
a  federal  version  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
while  the  latter  tends  to  think  of  Europe  as  some- 
thing that  is  split  between  the  "Atlantic  world" 
and  the  world  that  is  caught  between  the  seacoast 
peoples  and  the  Slavs.  Readers  of  Bernard  New- 
man's The  New  Europe  (Macmillan,  $3.75)  will 
probably  want  to  add  that  Europe  is  split  many 
other  ways  as  well.  Mr.  Newman  doubts  that 
Coudenhove-Kalergi's  idea  for  a  grand  European 
federation  is  feasible,  but  he  hopes  for  smaller 
regional  federations. 

If  I  were  holding  a  seminar  on  the  individual 
versus  the  mass,  I  would  choose  two  1943  books  as 
constituting  all  that  one  would  need  for  the  pre- 
liminary groundwork.  They  are  Harold  Laski's 
Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  Our  Time 
(Viking,  $3.50)  and  Isabel  Paterson's  The  God  of 
the  Machine  (Putnam).  Laski  believes  the  in- 
dividual must  serve  society;  Mrs.  Paterson  believes 
the  individual  can  best  serve  society  by  helping 
himself.  In  general,  the  authors  have  been  veer- 
ing in  Mrs.  Paterson's  direction,  even  though  most 
of  them  would  qualify  at  least  to  some  degree 
their  growing  aversion  for  the  statism  that 
Laski  celebrates.  Walter  Lippmann's  1 943  edition 
of  his  The  Good  Society  (Litde,  Brown,  $2), 
Hamilton  Basso's  Mainstream  (Reynal  and  Hitch- 
cock), Charles  A.  Beard's  The  Republic  (Viking), 
Albert  Jay  Nock's  Memoirs  of  a  Superfluous  Man 
(Harper),  and  Henry  Steele  Commager's  Major- 
ity Rule  and  Minority  Rights  (Oxford,  $1.50) 
all  touch  upon  the  problem  that  is  posed  by  setting 
Laski  and  Mrs.  Paterson  off"  against  each  other. 
And  they  are  all  good  books,  some  of  them  even 
remarkable  books.  Incidentally,  they  all  point 
to  a  need  for  a  judicious  selection  from  The 
Federalist  Papers,  a  selection  designed  to  uncover  the 
bare  bones  of  the  American  political  system.  Such 
a  book  read  in  conjunction  with  Beard's  The 
Republic  would  be  a  liberal  education.  Won't 
some  publisher  get  busy? 

The  Negro  Speaks  Up 

The  Negro  came  into  his  own  in  the  literature  of 
1943.  He  came  into  his  own  in  Pearl  Buck's 
What  America  Means  to  Me  (John  Day,  $2),  a 
book  that  is  eloquent  with  warning  about  what 
may  happen  to  American  interests  in  and  desires 
for  a  stable  Asia  if  we  fail  to  solve  problems  of 
"color"  here  at  home.  A  factual  estimate  of  the 
Negro's    current    position    is    provided    by    Roi 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


The 

5i^iipost 

By  E.  Arnot  Robertson 

Author  of  lour  Frightened  People 

is  a  novel  that  is  at  once  fresh,  strong  and 
ig.  It  is  the  stirring  love  story  of  a  young 
iwoman  and  a  convalescent  R.A.F.  pilot  on 
in  the  Donegal  village  of  Kildooey  in  neutral 
i.  "The  scenes  are  so  fresh,  so  unexpected,  so 
:  wit  and  charm  that  they  could  be  played 
verbatim  on  any  stage."— Henry  Seidel  Canby. 
(Published  Jan.  4.)  $2.50 

ok-of'the-Month  Club  Selection  for  January 


Far  oo  tV.e 

By  George  Roller 


an4  <^^  P**^* 

tUe  PacUic 

,Uc  the  first  deto-^^^  P    fl.50 
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,;,.  The  author  longa^  j^^ 

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.       nFEandTlMBphotographe      P^^i 
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^°^':lrSout  war-ravaged  ^^^^^^ 


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By 
Artnur  Koestlep 

Author  of 
Darkness  at  Noon 

"The  best  novel  the  war  has  so  far  produced,**  says 
James  Gray  of  this  powerful  and  intensely  exciting 
story.  It  is  written  with  "full  awareness  of  the  individ- 
ual and  collective  problems  posed  by  the  war  for  this 
generation."— N.  Y.  Times.  "I  cannot  too  strongly  urge 
it  upon  you,"  says  Clifton  Fadiman  in  The  New  Yorker, 
"Koestler  may  become  the  great  writer  of  our  genera- 


tion. 


genera- 
$2.00 


Arrival  and 
Departure 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


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A  timely  and  significant  report 

MY  NATIVE 
LAND 

By  Louis  Adamic 

Here  is  the  first  full-length  report 
on  the  Partisan-Chetnik  conflict  in 
Yugoslavia. 

"  In  a  way  It  goes  far  beyond 
the  confines  of  a  small  Balkan  country  and  deals  with 
issues  which  all  the  world  will  have  to  face." —  Emil 
Lengyel,  N.  Y.  Times  Book 
Review.  $3.75 


HARPER 


Ottley's  JVew  World  A-Coming  (Houghton  MifBin) 
which  is  even-tempered  at  all  times.  Bucklin 
Moon's  novel,  The  Darker  Brother  (Doubleday, 
Doran),  backs  up  Mr.  Ottley's  book  in  more 
emotional  term^s.  Mr.  Ottley,  who  is  a  Negro 
himself,  tells  us  that  his  race  will  fight  Jim  Crow 
to  the  bitter  end,  and  Mr.  Moon  shows  us  how  the 
fight  is  proceeding  as  Negroes  join  the  army  with 
the  mental  proviso  that  this  is  their  war,  or  else! 

For  a  long  time  I  have  been  hoping  to  get  fi-om 
Stuart  Chase  his  precise  recipe  for  mixing  a 
"mixed  economy."  Chase's  ideas  on  "planning" 
have  always  been  vague;  at  times  he  has  talked 
like  a  technocrat,  one  who  would  give  an  "industrial 
general  staff"  the  dictatorial  power  over  an  entire 
economy,  and  at  other  times  he  has  talked  like  a 
"tax  and  tax  and  spend  and  spend"  politico.  But 
now,  in  Whereas  the  Money  Coming  From? 
(Twentieth  Century  Fund,  $1),  he  has  at  last  come 
down  to  cases.  He  would  mix  the  mixed  economy, 
and  maintain  full  employment,  not  by  tech- 
nocratic devices  of  subsidized  planned  production, 
but  by  Beveridgean  social  security  consumer 
spending  and  by  pumping  money  into  a  laggard 
system  through  public  works  programs  which  do 
not  drastically  compete  v/ith  private  investment. 

Mr.  Chase  is  all  for  experimenting  with  such 
devices  as  "incentive  taxation,"  the  taxation  of 
idle  bank  balances,  and  the  like.  In  other  words, 
the  Chase  idea  is  to  preserve  the  free  market,  free 
enterprise,  and  all  the  rest,  but  let  the  government 
play  a  compensatory  and  a  gyroscopic  role  in 
keeping  the  economy  going  and  the  national 
income  up.  This  convergence  of  Chase's  thinking 
with  that  of  some  of  his  severe  but  friendly  critics 
is  all  to  the  good.  But  the  John  L.  Lewis  who 
appears  in  McAlister  Coleman's  Men  and  Coal 
(Farrar  and  Rinehart,  S3)  won't  like  it,  for  it 
would  mean  the  end  of  subsidizing  producers  to 
pay  coal  miners.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  the 
pressure  groups  will  be  Mr.  Chase's  enemies  from 
now  on,  for  his  thinking  starts  with  the  free 
consumer,  a  shopper  who  is  able  to  shift  his  choice 
at  will. 

I  am  glad  to  see  that  Mr.  Chase  has  at  last  seen 
the  tyrannical  catch  in  "over-all"  planning  of 
the  top-down  variety.  There  is  a  world  of  human 
difference  between  a  planned  economy  and  a 
compensatory  economy,  and  Mr.  Chase  is  too 
good  a  man,  too  humane  in  his  responses,  to  stick 
to  the  mercantilist  sort  of  thing  that  ruined  the 
ancien  regime  in  France  and  brought  on  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution  of  1776. 

So  far  as  such  things  as  incentive  taxation  (not 
to  be  confused  with  a  tax  on  incentive)  are  con- 
cerned, I  don't  know  what  hitches  might  develop 
in  trying  to  force  money  into  investment  by 
government  prodding  of  this  sort.  But  theoret- 
ically, a  tax  on  idle  money  would  seem  to  be  a 
boon  to  the  private  enterpriser  who  really  wants  to 
be  enterprising. 


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Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


Harper^ 


VOL  188  No   1124  January   1944 


THE    FUTURE    OF    INTERNATIONAL 

AIRWAYS 

Has  the  United  States  a  Policy? 


BLAIR    BOLLES 


FROM  Miami,  Florida,  planes  fly  to  al- 
most every  part  of  the  world  even  in 
wartime.  The  Air  Transport  Com- 
mand, which  moves  everything  from  let- 
ters to  jeeps  to  the  Army  all  over  the  world, 
operates  out  of  Miami.  Pan  American 
Airways  will  carry  you  from  Miami  down 
to  Rio  de  Janeiro  if  you  can  get  a  priority. 
Eastern  Air  Lines  will  haul  you  northward 
from  Miami  along  the  seaboard  to  New 
York.  And  now,  most  significant  of  all, 
the  Dutch  K  L  M  lines  run  a  flying  pas- 
senger service  across  the  Straits  of  Florida 
and  the  Caribbean  Sea,  connecting  Miami 
with  Curacao  and  Venezuela.  The  K  L  M 
route  over  the  old  Spanish  Main  is  a 
juicy  strip  for  commercial  flying,  and 
traverses  a  part  of  the  globe  of  great  stra- 

Copyright,  1943,  by  Harper  & 


tegic  and  political  importance  for  the 
United  States — the  eastern  approaches  to 
the  Panama  Canal. 

The  concentration  of  aviation  activity 
at  Miami  focuses  attention  on  what  is 
probably  the  cloudiest  and  one  of  the 
most  important  questions  of  the  time: 
how  is  the  United  States  going  to  fit  into 
the  scheme  of  international  aviation  com- 
munication after  the  war?  To-day,  for 
practically  all  governments,  aviation  plan- 
ning is  second  only  to  war  planning. 
Unless  there  is  an  international  agreement 
on  the  subject  the  struggle  for  flying  routes 
is  likely  to  provide  one  of  the  great  com- 
mercial and  political  rivalries  of  history. 
Like  everybody  else,  like  the  British  and 
French  and  probably  like  the  Germans 

Brothers.     All  Rights  Reserved. 


98 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  Japanese,  people  In  the  United  States 
are  contemplating  global  flying  on  a  scale 
much  greater  than  anything  which  existed 
in  1939. 

Miami  gives  substance  to  the  airy 
vision  of  the  future.  In  the  first  place, 
the  Air  Transport  Command  can  exhibit 
the  technical  advances  of  the  time.  It 
dispatches  four-motored  land  planes  with 
huge  cargoes  across  oceans;  a  few  years 
ago  slow  amphibians  with  severely  limited 
freight  space  handled  the  transoceanic 
business. 

In  the  second  place,  Miami  synthesizes 
the  tumultuous  rivalries  and  political  dif- 
ficulties connected  with  the  overseas  air 
operations.  There  is  Pan  American,  mak- 
ing money  on  its  South  American  flights; 
is  it  to  be  allowed  to  continue  as  the  Ameri- 
can monopoly  in  that  fat  portion  of  the 
earth?  (For  example.  Pan  Am  has  flown 
the  West  Coast  of  South  America  through 
an  alliance  with  the  Grace  people,  who 
control  steamships,  banks,  factories,  and 
other  interests.  This  jointly  owned  line  is 
Panagra.  Now  these  allies  have  split,  and 
Grace  wants  landing  rights  in  the  United 
States  for  a  Panagra  controlled  by  Grace 
alone.  It  will  be  interesting  to  see  whether 
or  not  she  gets  them.)  There  is  Eastern, 
raising  the  question  of  where  domestic 
air  lines  are  to  fit  into  the  scheme  of  the 
future.  Eastern  and  another  domestic 
operator — National — were  invited  by  the 
United  States  government  to  bid  for  the 
privilege  of  flying  from  Miami  to  the 
northern  South  American  coast;  to  their 
astonishment,  the  United  States  govern- 
ment then  turned  down  their  bids.  To 
their  greater  astonishment,  the  same  gov- 
ernment, through  the  Civil  Aeronautics 
Board,  authorized  on  April  7th  five  foreign 
lines  in  the  Caribbean  to  come  into  Miami. 
Of  these  five,  K  L  M,  the  Dutch  line,  and 
Expreso  Aereo  Inter-Americano,  con- 
trolled by  American  and  Cuban  interests, 
have  actually  made  use  of  these  certifi- 
cates. The  other  three — Compania  Na- 
cional  Cubano  de  Aviacion  (a  Pan  Am 
subsidiary),  British  West  Indian  Airways, 
and  TACA — have  not. 

K  L  M  set  up  its  Caribbean  line  in 
1936;  travelers  and  airmen  knew  it  for  an 
efficient  carrier  which  had  inaugurated 
service  between  Europe  and  the  Far  East 


with  its  1930  Amsterdam-Batavia  line. 
The  British  West  Indian  Airways  was  cre- 
ated in  1 940  by  an  energetic  New  Zealand- 
er  named  Lowell  Yerex,  who  had  marked 
the  complaint  made  in  the  House  of  Lords 
in  1936  by  the  Earl  of  Cork  and  Orrery; 
the  Earl  had  called  attention  to  the  loss  of 
prestige  Britain  was  suff'ering  in  the  An- 
tilles by  the  absence  of  a  Union  Jack  air 
line  and  by  the  presence  of  Pan  Ameri- 
can. The  same  Yerex  created  TACA,  a 
successful  Central  American  line  organ- 
ized in  Panama  with  operational  head- 
quarters in  Honduras.  TACA  (which 
owns  40  per  cent  of  B  W  I  A,  and  more 
than  50  per  cent  of  Aerovias  Brasil — a 
new  company,  the  remainder  of  whose 
ownership  is  Brazilian,  which  has  re- 
cently filed  for  landing  rights  in  Los  Ange- 
les, Miami,  and  New  York)  holds  one  of 
the  keys  to  the  row  over  Pan  Am's  monop- 
oly. 

In  a  political  sense,  the  granting  of  the 
Miami  privilege  to  those  five  lines  means 
more  for  the  future  of  United  States  over- 
seas aviation  policy  than  all  the  specula- 
tion in  the  world  about  globaloney  and 
freedom  of  the  air.  A  policy  is  jelling  in 
the  United  States  now,  despite  fierce  and 
disturbing  disagreement  within  the  gov- 
ernment, involving  the  State  Department, 
the  War  Department,  and  the  Civil  Aero- 
nautics Board.  Judged  by  Jaits  accomplis, 
the  United  States  policy  has  three  objec- 
tives: to  encourage  competition  among 
international  carriers;  to  cut  into  the 
monopolies  of  Pan  American,  whose  devel- 
opment the  United  States  government 
fostered;  and  to  encourage  aviation  devel- 
opment of  nations  abroad,  while  our 
domestic  lines,  split  among  themselves  on 
what  they  want,  are  encouraged  to  stand 
aside.  The  order  of  April  7th  (which 
followed  close  upon  the  Roosevelt-Eden 
meetings  in  Washington)  was  the  first  of 
two  steps  starting  American  policy  along 
the  road  toward  the  triple  goal. 

The  principal  advocate  of  the  lines' 
admission  into  the  United  States  was 
A.  A.  Berle,  Jr.,  Assistant  Secretary  of  State 
and  chairman  of  the  Interdepartmental 
Committee  on  Aviation,  who  is  fathering 
the  three-headed  policy  now  taking  shape. 
One  objection  raised  inside  the  govern- 
ment to  the  admission  of  these  lines  was 


THE    FUTURE    OF     liN  lERNATIONAL    AIRWAYS 


99 


that  the  proposed  operations  were  not 
needed,  since  travel  was  limited  by  the  war 
and  since  all  the  lines  were  carrying 
materials  from  the  United  States  for  the 
War  Department  anyway  on  a  contract 
basis  or  on  private  charter  flights;  the  War 
Department  said  it  was  afraid  that  the 
attempt  to  conduct  the  regular  service 
might  reduce  the  efliciency  of  the  contract 
operation.  Another  objection  was  that 
the  lines  lacked  planes  to  maintain  the 
service.  A  third  objection  was  that  the 
United  States  lacked  suitable  legal  control 
over  the  foreign  lines'  rates,  safety  regula- 
tions, and  priority  lists,  while  Pan  Ameri- 
can, serving  the  same  general  area,  is 
forced  to  comply  with  the  rigid  United 
States  rulings.  The  final  objection  was 
based  on  the  apprehension  that,  once  the 
foreigners  were  in,  only  an  earthquake 
could  get  them  out.  The  fact  that  the 
authorization,  renewable  at  intervals,  was 
to  end,  at  the  latest,  six  months  after  the 
war's  end  did  not  shake  the  objectors, 
who  argued  that  for  practical  purposes 
the  limiting  agreement  would  have  no 
meaning. 

Mr.  Berle  was  unimpressed;  the  lines 
were  let  in.  At  once  a  number  of  the 
lines— K  L  M,  TACA,  and  B  W  I  A— 
asked  the  American  government  to  make 
available  to  them  planes  to  fly  the  service. 

The  second  step  was  taken  on  October 
15th,  when  the  State  Department  and  the 
Civil  Aeronautics  Board,  on  Mr.  Berle's 
inspiration,  issued  a  joint  statement  which 
again  encouraged  the  foreign  lines  and 
which  jolted  Pan  American.  The  state- 
ment, defining  the  procedure  air  lines  are 
to  follow  in  applying  for  air-route  privi- 
leges abroad  and  into  this  country  from 
abroad,  invited  foreign  carriers  to  send 
applications  through  their  own  govern- 
ments to  the  United  States  for  landing 
rights  here.  It  made  the  point  that  in  the 
future  all  negotiations  for  landing  rights 
for  American  lines  in  foreign  countries  are 
to  be  made  by  the  United  States  govern- 
ment on  an  open-door  basis  (in  the  old 
days  Pan  American  sometimes  was  its  own 
negotiator).  This  statement  caused  con- 
cern to  some  of  the  Administration's  air 
advisers,  who  had  taken  the  position  that 
it  is  naively  unwise  to  pave  the  way  for  the 
entry   of  foreign-flag   operators   into    the 


United  States  until  our  government  has 
decided  on  an  international  air  policy  for 
American  lines  and  until  the  American 
companies  have  agreed  on  a  practical  basis 
for  competing  among  themselves  and  with 
Pan  American.  The  companies  are  grop- 
ing their  way  toward  a  solution;  they  are 
quarreling  together  over  whether  they 
should  pool  their  resources  into  one  foreign 
line  or  whether  every  line  should  compete 
for  the  overseas  business,  limited  as  it  is  by 
economic  factors. 

II 

THE  Wright  brothers  made  their  Kitty 
Hawk  flight  forty  years  ago,  on  De- 
cember 17,  1903.  Seven  years  later  gov- 
ernments began  to  seek  a  basis  for  interna- 
tionalizing air  traffic,  and  the  basis  is  yet  to 
be  found.  The  governments  represented 
at  the  Paris  Conference  of  1910,  at  the 
Aeronautical  Commission  of  the  Versailles 
Peace  Conference,  and  at  the  Westminster 
Conference  of  1 936  favored  the  principle  of 
freedom  of  the  air,  but  invariably  the 
universal  adoption  of  the  principle  failed 
because  individual  nations  could  not  rec- 
oncile their  theoretical  belief  in  freedom  of 
the  air  with  fear  for  their  own  security. 
The  term  "freedom  of  the  air"  means  that 
the  atmosphere  above  any  country  is  open 
to  the  planes  of  all  other  countries;  but 
nobody  can  overlook  the  fact  that  planes 
up  above  can  drop  bombs  on  the  ground 
below.  So  all  countries  embrace  the 
policy  that  each  has  exclusive  sovereignty 
over  the  air  above  its  own  territory  right 
up  to  the  stars. 

Winston  Churchill  and  President  Roo- 
sevelt agreed  last  summer  during  Mr. 
Churchill's  visit  to  Quebec  that  another 
international  air  conference  would  be  held 
when  this  war  is  over,  and  on  October  1st 
the  President  told  his  press  conference 
that  tentative  planning  on  postwar  air 
traffic  had  been  in  progress  for  six  or 
eight  months.  Some  asked  the  question: 
"What  does  he  mean  by  tentative?"  The 
firm  pattern  being  cut  by  Mr.  Berle  will 
be  hard  to  overlook  when  the  global 
planning  begins;  the  United  States,  lean- 
ing backward  to  help  our  allies  in  this 
postwar  project,  is  going  into  a  bargaining 
meeting  with  many  of  its  cards  exposed. 

Actual  city-to-city  travel  by  air  began 


100 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


shortly  after  the  1910  conference  in  Paris. 
Before  the  First  World  War  the  Germans 
ran  a  Zeppelin  line  from  Friedrichshafen 
to  Berlin.  In  this  country  the  first  air  line 
connected  Tampa  with  St.  Petersburg, 
Florida,  for  three  months.  Then  after 
the  First  World  War  country-to-country 
flying  began  on  a  large  scale,  and  the 
absence  of  international  controls  led  to 
fierce  competition  and  to  a  race  for 
bilateral  air  agreements,  in  which  the 
United  States  successfully  joined.  This 
country  now  has  reciprocal  agreements 
with  Colombia,  Italy,  Germany,  the  Neth- 
erlands, Sweden,  Norway,  the  Union  of 
South  Africa,  Denmark,  Great  Britain, 
Eire,  Canada,  France,  and  Liberia. 

The  small  area  of  European  countries 
made  Europeans  aware  earlier  than  the 
Americans  of  the  commercial  and  mili- 
tary advantages  of  international  air  oper- 
ations. By  1920  six  lines — four  French 
and  two  British — were  flying  between 
London  and  Paris.  France,  Germany, 
and  the  Netherlands  began  to  contest  for 
the  business  in  central  Europe.  Toward 
the  end  of  the  twenties  the  British,  French, 
and  Dutch  were  looking  toward  the  Ori- 
ent; they  came  to  see  in  the  air  line  a  great 
artery  of  empire  in  whose  operations 
profit  was  of  subordinate  interest.  They 
still  see  the  air  line  in  that  light.  The 
United  States  has  never  adopted  the 
empire  view  of  the  air  line,  but,  like  every 
other  government,  it  recognizes  the  inter- 
national air  line  as  an  agent  of  prestige  and 
national  policy.  That  attitude  gives  to 
flight  between,  say.  New  York  and  Lon- 
don an  aspect  quite  difl*erent  from  flight 
between  New  York  and  San  Francisco. 

The  decision  to  use  air  lines  to  further 
imperialism  thrust  the  British,  French,  and 
Dutch  into  rivalry  in  the  Middle-East 
Arab  countries,  because  all  three,  to  reach 
the  Orient,  had  to  cross  Iraq  and  Persia 
as  well  as  British  India.  K  L  M  reached 
Batavia  in  1930.  The  French  put  their 
line  through  to  Saigon  in  1931.  British 
Imperial  Airways  reached  Singapore  in 
1933.  The  race  to  the  East  was  matched 
by  a  race  into  Africa,  and  that  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  race  into  South  America. 

Following  the  imperial  policy,  the  Brit- 
ish opened  a  route  from  Cairo  to  South 
Africa  in  1932.     Air  France  flew  across 


Central  Africa  to  Madagascar  in  1936, 
and  in  the  same  year  opened  a  line  to 
South  America  via  Dakar.  The  Italians, 
accepting  the  others'  thesis  that  empire 
gains  strength  from  air  communications, 
opened  a  line  to  Italian  East  Africa  in 
1935  and  to  Ethiopia  in  1936.  The  Bel- 
gians put  a  line  through  to  their  Congo 
colony  in  1935,  and  in  1941  Spain  opened 
a  commercial  air  link  with  its  west  African 
colony  of  Rio  de  Oro. 

South  America  was  the  area  of  rivalry 
where  the  United  States  came  into  con- 
flict with  the  Europeans  who  were  looking 
for  regions  in  which  to  enhance  their 
prestige  by  the  airplane.  There  the 
French,  Germans,  and  Italians  fought  for 
routes  against  this  country's  international 
pioneer — Pan  American  Airways. 


Ill 

.AN  American,  founded  by  Juan  Trippe, 
flies  more  air  miles  than  all  other  lines 
operating  in  Latin  America  put  together. 
It  is  a  profitable  enterprise;  in  1938,  when 
Pan  American  was  losing  money  in  the 
Pacific,  it  declared  a  20  per  cent  dividend; 
in  1940,  when  it  was  losing  money  in  both 
the  Pacific  and  Atlantic,  its  net  income, 
according  to  Oliver  James  Lissitzyn's  In- 
ternational Air  Transport  and  National  Policy, 
was  $2,256,000.  The  dividend  and  the 
net  were  made  possible  by  the  Latin- 
American  operations.  Pan  Am's  oper- 
ating loss  on  Atlantic  service  in  1939  and 
1940,  according  to  Lissitzyn,  was  $761,- 
917. 

Trippe's  experience  as  an  international 
operator,  gained  in  the  Good  Neighbor 
region,  satisfied  the  American  government 
that  it  had  chosen  wisely  when  it  made 
Pan  Am  its  favorite  fifteen  years  ago,  and 
his  line  was  the  instrument  selected  to  do 
the  work  when  Washington  decided  that 
in  view  of  the  growing  Japanese  problem 
an  air  line  across  the  Pacific  would  be 
advantageous  for  the  United  States.  So 
in  1937  Pan  American  opened  its  Pacific 
Clipper  route  from  California  to  the  Phil- 
ippines. Two  years  later  the  government 
helped  it  negotiate  its  way  into  New  Zea- 
land, a  remote  region  where  American 
business  possibilities  suflered  because  of 
the  limited  communications. 


THE    FUTURE    OF    INTERNATIONAL    AIRWAYS 


101 


Nationalistic  political  jealousies  bubbled 
in  the  southwest  Pacific  before  the  war. 
Pan  American  sounded  out  both  Australia 
and  New  Zealand;  but  Australia,  which 
was  served  from  Asia  by  K  L  M  and  by  an 
extension  of  British  Imperial  Airways  from 
Singapore,  refused  to  admit  the  Ameri- 
can line.  Pan  American  subsequently 
got  permission  from  the  British  to  go  into 
Singapore  from  the  Philippines  when  the 
Japanese  situation  began  to  heat  up.  The 
three  years  before  Pearl  Harbor  were  a 
period  of  jockeying  in  the  Far  East;  the 
United  States  refused  to  let  K  L  M  fly  into 
the  Philippines  because  of  the  fear  in 
Washington  that  Germany  might  seize 
the  Netherlands  and  take  that  air  line  with 
the  country.  Down  through  the  south- 
west Pacific  during  the  war  the  Air  Trans- 
port Command  has  built  a  series  of  bases 
which  are  part  of  a  string  running  around 
the  globe,  across  Asia  and  over  Africa; 
these  are  among  the  bases  which  the  five 
circumnavigating  Senators  urged  that  we 
retain  after  the  war.  President  Roosevelt 
has  intimated  that  he  will  disavow  any 
move  to  hold  them. 

In  the  prewar  days  Pan  American  had 
only  occasional  need  for  direct  government 
assistance  in  dealing  with  governments. 
On  April  3,  1937,  after  the  line  had  de- 
cided to  fly  the  Atlantic  as  it  flew  the 
Pacific,  Trippe  concluded  an  extraordi- 
nary contract  with  the  Portuguese  govern- 
ment. This  contract  gave  Pan  American 
exclusive  American  rights, in  Portuguese 
territory — including  the  Azores,  a  trans- 
atlantic steppingstone — for  fifteen  years. 
British  Imperial  Airways  were  granted 
Portuguese  rights  under  the  same  con- 
tract, and  Pan  American  and  Imperial 
agreed  that  they  would  inaugurate  service 
simultaneously  between  the  United  States 
and  the  United  Kingdom. 

Pan  American  retained  its  favored  posi- 
tion with  the  United  States  government 
until  the  war.  By  the  end  of  1938  Trippe 
was  ready  to  begin  flying  across  the  At- 
lantic; but  the  British  said  they  wanted  to 
wait.  The  State  Department  intervened 
by  quickly  negotiating  an  agreement  with 
France  which  allowed  Pan  American  to 
fly  into  Marseilles.  Thereupon  Britain 
permitted  Pan  Am  to  start  flying.  So  on 
May  20,  1939,  Pan  American  opened  its 


transatlantic  service.  When  the  war  be- 
gan it  moved  its  terminus  from  Marseilles 
to  Foynes,  Eire.  It  plans  to  go  into 
England  after  the  war. 

Two  tests  of  Pan  Am's  favored  posi- 
tion came  in  1939  and  1940.  The  Amer- 
ican Export  Lines,  Inc.,  a  United  States 
shipping  firm  serving  the  Iberian  and 
Mediterranean  countries,  organized  the 
American  Export  Airlines  in  1937  for 
transatlantic  operations.  Pan  Am's  dip- 
lomats reached  an  agreement  with  its 
potential  rival  for  dividing  the  European 
business;  American  Export  was  to  have 
full  rights  so  far  as  Pan  American  was 
concerned  for  exclusive  flights  to  Italy, 
the  Balkans,  the  Near  East,  and  North 
Africa.  Pan  American  took  exclusive 
rights  to  the  plums:  Great  Britain,  Eire, 
Bermuda,  the  Netherlands,  Scandinavia, 
and  the  Baltic. 

The  United  States  government  out- 
lawed the  understanding  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  against  the  general  interest. 
In  1939  American  Export  sought  authority 
from  the  Civil  Aeronautics  Board  to  fly 
to  Italy,  and  Pan  American  intervened  in 
opposition.  By  the  time  the  Board  made 
up  its  mind  Italy  was  a  belligerent,  and 
American  Export  could  not  fly  there. 

Now  the  bell  began  to  toll  for  Pan  Am's 
monopoly.  The  Civil  Aeronautics  Board 
announced  that  it  was  "desirable  to  take 
advantage  of  this  opportunity  [the  war] 
to  entrench  American  air  transportation 
more  firmly  in  the  north  Atlantic  field  by 
means  of  a  second  American  air  line," 
and  on  July  12,  1940,  it  granted  a  certifi- 
cate to  American  Export  to  fly  into  Pan 
American's  exclusive  Portuguese  domain. 

Pan  Am  was  still  strong  however.  The 
Portuguese  government,  constricted  by  its 
contract  with  Pan  Am,  refused  to  let 
American  Export  come  into  its  territory. 
The  Civil  Aeronautics  Board  itself  pursued 
a  wavering  course.  American  Export  in 
1940  made  a  deal  to  buy  399,000  of  the 
400,000  shares  of  stock  in  Yerex's  TACA 
lines.  Again  Pan  American  intervened, 
and  the  Board  refused  permission  to  Amer- 
ican Export  to  make  the  purchase  on  the 
ground  that  it  had  not  been  shown  that 
it  was  in  the  public  interest  for  a  shipping 
line  to  control  an  air  carrier.  Soon  after- 
ward   Congress    refused    to    appropriate 


102 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


enough  money  to  permit  the  Post  Office 
Department  to  give  American  Export  a 
mail  subsidy  for  the  Atlantic  service  au- 
thorized by  the  Board.  -» 

But  in  the  end,  shortly  after  Pearl  Har- 
bor, American  Export  was  granted  a 
temporary  certificate  to  fly  to  Foynes, 
Eire,  and  commercial  service  was  begun 
on  June  20,  1 942.  Pan  Am's  transoceanic 
monopoly  was  ended.  Now,  as  American 
Export's  vice-president  Eaton  told  a  re- 
porter, "we  are  a  yardstick  for  Pan  Ameri- 
can— and  Pan  American  is  a  yardstick 
for  us." 

IV 

THE  north  Atlantic  Ocean  promises  to 
be  the  richest  gold  mine  of  the  air 
routes  for  the  future.  In  normal  times, 
when  Americans  go  abroad,  they  go  to 
Europe;  six  years  ago  seventy-nine  per 
cent  of  the  passengers  on  water  carriers 
made  their  destination  Europe  or  the  Afri- 
can Mediterranean  countries.  The  At- 
lantic is  the  ocean  fringed  by  most  of  the 
world's  most  powerful  countries,  which 
look  upon  the  airplane  as  a  messenger  of 
national  prestige.  Britain,  which  main- 
tained an  air  route  to  Canada  for  a  few 
months  in  1939,  is  ready  to  resume  the 
transatlantic  hop  when  the  fighting  stops; 
it  has  established  a  new  company,  British 
Overseas  Airways  Corporation — all  of 
whose  stock  is  owned  by  the  government — 
to  make  that  run  and  the  others  which 
formerly  were  operated  by  Imperial  Air- 
ways and  British  Airways.  France  has 
plans,  the  Netherlands  has  plans,  and  the 
Spaniards  have  plans  for  crossing  the  At- 
lantic. Sweden  keeps  an  air  mission  in 
Washington  to  negotiate  for  rights  to  run 
a  transatlantic  air  line  between  the  United 
States  and  Sweden  and  on  to  Moscow  via 
Canada  and  Scotland.  American  domes- 
tic air  lines  are  looking  across  the  Atlantic. 
The  TWA  has  applied  for  a  line  to  Paris. 
Pennsylvania  Central  proposed  a  line  to 
Europe  with  three  seadromes  floating  in 
the  Atlantic  as  landing  fields.  And,  final- 
ly. Pan  Am's  only  current  transoceanic 
rival,  American  Export,  filed  application 
with  GAB  for  routes  extending  across 
Europe  and  the  Middle  East  to  Bombay 
and  for  a  south  Atlantic  route  to  Cape- 
town via  the  Caribbean  and  Brazil. 


Obviously,  fierce  rivalries  are  brewing 
that  will  make  the  prewar  contests  seem 
tame  unless  some  international  agreement 
checks  the  rivalries.  In  one  way  the 
prospective  commerical  and  political  air 
battle  for  the  Atlantic  is  uneven:  it  would 
pit  governments  abroad  against  individual 
air  lines  in  the  United  States.  For  the 
Europeans  approach  international  flying 
with  a  diflferent  view  from  the  people  in 
the  United  States.  To  advance  the  na- 
tional interest  they  organize  overseas  air 
lines  into  monopolies  under  the  strict 
control  and  usually  the  ownership  of 
governments,  like  the  British  Overseas 
Airways  Corporation.  The  point  of  view 
was  made  plain  in  the  Ottawa  House  of 
Commons  last  April  2nd  by  Prime  Minis- 
ter Mackenzie  King  of  Canada,  who  said: 

The  fact  that  international  negotiations  of 
great  importance  must  shortly  take  place  confirms 
the  wisdom  of  government  policy  under  which  its 
freedom  of  action  in  international  air  transport 
services  is  not  limited  by  the  existence  of  private 
interests  in  international  air  transport  services. 

Along  with  government  ownership  Mac- 
kenzie King  believes  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
"chosen  instrument" — the  use  of  one  air 
line  by  a  country  for  all  its  overseas  oper- 
ations. Canada,  ambitious  to  become  a 
center  of  international  air  travel,  has 
Trans-Canada,  publicly  owned  and  the 
avowed  chosen  instrument.  (The  Cana- 
dian Pacific  Railroad  has  tried  without 
success  to  start  a  rival  line,  and  it  is  re- 
ported that  the  Canadian  government 
has  bought  a  block  of  Canadian  Pacific 
stock,  which  will  help  it  to  reinforce  its 
chosen  instrument  policy.)  Air  France 
was  a  French  governmental  monopoly; 
the  Dutch  government  has  owned  most 
of  the  stock  in  K  L  M  for  more  than  ten 
years;  the  Belgian  government  and  the 
Congo  government  hold  most  of  the  shares 
in  the  single  Belgian  line,  Sabena;  the 
Spanish  government  bought  51  per  cent  of 
the  shares  in  the  Iberia;  the  Swedish 
government  owns  the  majority  stock  in 
ABA,  which  has  a  monopoly  on  air-line 
business  in  Sweden. 

The  American  official  trend  runs  in  the 
opposite  direction.  The  growing  signs 
that  Pan  Am  is  being  abandoned  as  a 
chosen  instrument  are  one  symptom.  On 
October  1st  President  Roosevelt  said  he 


THE    FUTURE    0¥    INTERNATIONAL    AIRWAYS 


103 


opposed  government  ownership  and  in- 
dicated that  he  favored  overseas  competi- 
tion by  many  Hnes.  The  report  of  Mr. 
Berle's  Interdepartmental  Committee  on 
Aviation  advocated  the  same  pohcy;  this 
report,  completed  last  June,  has  been  kept 
secret  from  the  public,  but  highest  air- 
line executives  have  been  given  a  glimmer 
of  its  contents.  They  got  it  from  General 
H.  H.  Arnold,  commander  of  the  Army 
Air  Forces,  who  held  a  meeting  with  the 
air-line  executives  soon  after  the  report 
was  completed  and  told  them  the  Army 
had  no  intention  of  going  on  with  the 
operation  of  its  Air  Transport  Command 
world-route  lines  when  the  war  was  over; 
the  Army  intended  to  get  out  of  the  trans- 
port flying  business.  He  suggested  that 
the  executives  reach  some  sort  of  under- 
standing about  their  own  policy  on  over- 
seas flying.  The  executives  thought  Gen- 
eral Arnold  was  hinting  for  them  to  go 
after  Pan  Am,  although  nothing  in  what 
he  said  directly  indicates  such  a  proposal. 

On  July  15th  the  presidents  of  fifteen 
domestic  air  lines,  using  Samuel  Solomon, 
president  of  Northeast  Airlines,  as  their 
spokesman,  issued  a  statement  indicating 
the  desire  of  each  one  of  the  fifteen  to 
enter  the  over-water  international  field. 
They  urged  open  competition. 

There  were  two  prominent  executives 
who  were  not  included.  One  was  the 
president  of  American  Export,  who  was  in 
favor  of  "regulated  competition,"  a  status 
of  very  diff'erent  brand  from  that  favored 
by  the  fifteen  lines.  The  other  was  W.  A. 
Patterson,  president  of  United  Air  Lines, 
who  had  been  in  on  the  discussion  but 
refused  to  sign  the  statement  because  the 
other  fifteen  presidents  turned  down  his 
proposal  for  including  this  sentence: 

If  it  should  be  found  on  further  study  that  our 
country's  interest  could  best  be  served  by  joint  or 
co-operative  operation,  the  air  lines  are  willing 
to  give  consideration  to  such  a  plan. 

Patterson  had  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  international  air  operations  are  in- 
escapably agents  of  national  policy  and 
therefore  cannot  be  conducted  on  a  simple 
commerical  basis.  He  believed  in  the 
chosen  instrument.  A  plan  that  is  gain- 
ing some  following  in  Washington  as  the 
fruit  of  the  Patterson  objection  calls  for 
domestic  air  lines  jointly  to  establish   a 


transatlantic  operating  line  and  buy  out 
Pan  American's  and  American  Export's 
interest  in  the  North  Atlantic. 


V 

HANS  Oppikofer  once  told  the  League 
of  Nations:  "The  State's  interest  in 
aviation  is  not  economic  but  political." 
The  trend  abroad — like  Canada's  policy 
of  having  a  government-controlled  air 
line  as  the  single  chosen  instrument — 
seems  to  bear  him  out.  Patterson  appar- 
ently agrees. 

The  story  of  the  airplane  in  South 
America  best  reveals  the  primacy  of  polit- 
ical considerations  in  international  air 
operations.  The  Western  Hemisphere 
to-day  fascinates  Europe  almost  as  much 
as  it  did  in  the  days  of  Columbus  and  his 
successors.  The  airplane  has  given  Eu- 
ropean countries  an  instrument  for  de- 
stroying the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  the 
biggest  commercial  and  political  battles 
have  been  over  the  air  lines. 

In  the  1 930's  Germany  was  the  aviation 
aggressor  in  South  America.  It  not  only 
linked  that  continent  to  Europe  by  Deut- 
sche Lufthansa  service  but  it  established  a 
number  of  German  air  lines  in  difl'erent 
South  American  countries  under  dummy 
ownership.  Many  of  them  ran  at  a  con- 
stant financial  loss  into  sparsely  settled 
regions.  Rates  on  heavily  traveled  routes 
were  low.  The  lines  helped  Germany 
develop  its  high  economic-political  policy 
of  winning  advantageous  favor  in  South 
America,  and  they  provided  Germany 
with  a  system  of  airfields  and  radio  com- 
munication in  South  America  that  might 
have  become  useful  if  the  war  in  Europe 
had  gone  diflferently  and  Germany  had 
won  an  opportunity  to  squeeze  the  United 
States  from  the  south.  The  Reich-owned 
lines  were  content  to  lose  money  so  that 
Germany   might   gain   in   the   long   run. 

At  the  time  of  the  invasion  of  Poland 
the  Germans  and  Italians  controlled  20,- 
000  miles  of  air  lines  in  the  western  hemi- 
sphere, while  Pan  American  had  about 
15,000,  and  its  affiliate,  Panair  do  Brasil, 
had  under  10,000.  The  Germans  were  in 
Brazil  with  their  Sindicato  Condor,  Virig, 
and  Vasp;  in  Bolivia  with  Lloyd  Aereo 
Boliviano:  in  Educador  with  Sedta,  and  in 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Colombia  with  Scadta.  Lati  and  Aero- 
posta  served  Argentina.  The  German 
dummy  lines  were  outlawed  after  the  Eu- 
ropean war  began,  but  only  skillful  and 
high-pressure  diplomacy  brought  about 
the  outlawry.  Pan  An.erican  bought  the 
balance  of  Scadta's  stock  and  turned  it 
into  Avianca,  which  is  now  a  Pan  Am 
affiliate.  Condor  was  changed  into  Cru- 
zeiro do  Sol. 

Remembering  the  German  penetration, 
a  number  of  officials  in  Washington  have 
been  opposing  the  generous  course  pursued 
by  Mr.  Berle  lest  it  be  interpreted  by 
foreign  countries  as  a  new  invitation  to 
fly  not  only  into  the  United  States  but 
also  into  and  about  South  America.  How 
Brazilian  are  the  Brazilian  companies? 
As  we  have  seen,  Aerovias  Brasil  is  con- 
trolled by  Yerex's  TACA.  And  how  Bra- 
zilian will  the  other  Brazilian  lines  remain? 
The  Deutsche  Reichsbank  still  had  debtors 
in  Brazil  when  Brazil  declared  war  on 
Germany.  Some  officials  believe  it  is  not 
impossible  that  the  fields  built  with  United 
States  money  in  Brazil  for  the  United 
States  Army  could  eventually  be  used  to 
injure  the  United  States. 

When  Edward  Stettinius,  Jr.,  was  cho- 
sen Under  Secretary  of  State  the  Wash- 
ington whisper  was  that  Pan  American 
had  won  a  great  triumph;  for  Stettinius 
is  Trippe's  brother-in-law.  Yet  events 
since  Stettinius's  appointment  don't  seem 
to  indicate  that  Trippe  has  gained  any- 
thing. The  United  States  is  apparently 
going  to  let  Trippe  sink  or  swim  in  Latin 
America;  recently  domestic  lines  as  well  as 
foreign  lines  have  been  given  encourage- 
ment to  plan  operations  southward. 

Early  in  the  autumn  the  Civil  Aero- 
nautics Board  announced  that  it  would 
receive  applications  for  routes  from  the 
United  States  to  the  Caribbean,  Mexico, 
and  South  America.  This  was  not  a 
modification  of  the  stand  that  had  let 
K  L  M,  B  W  I  A,  and  TACA  into  Miami; 
it  was  a  request  that  apparently  looked 
toward  the  future.  At  once  Eddie  Rick- 
enbacker,  president  of  Eastern,  applied  for 
an  extension  of  his  line's  facilities  to  Mex- 
ico, Cuba,  and  South  America. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  Board 
approved  the  purchase  by  the  United 
Air  Lines  of  Lineas  Aeras  Minereas,  SA, 


in  Mexico,  one  of  the  earliest  Pan  Ameri- 
can preserves.  A  few  weeks  later  TACA, 
which  was  about  ready  to  fly  a  regular 
service  from  San  Jose,  Costa  Rica,  to 
Miami,  sold  more  than  half  its  stock  to 
various  American  companies,  the  largest 
buyers  being  TWA,  Adams  Express,  and 
Time,  Inc.  The  split-up  of  the  majority 
stock  interest  among  several  American 
buyers  had  the  practical  result  of  leaving 
British  capital  in  control  of  this  Central- 
American  line,  whose  Miami  franchise 
makes  it  a  far  greater  threat  to  Pan  Amer- 
ican now  than  it  was  in  1938  (when  Pan 
Am  tried  to  drive  it  to  the  wall  in  Hondu- 
ras) and  greatly  improves  the  British 
competitive  position  against  American  op- 
erations. 

Such  goings-on  surely  mark  the  end  of 
the  old  era  during  which  the  United  States 
government  in  the  late  1920's  gave  Pan 
American  high  subsidies  that  enabled  it  to 
drive  three  competing  U.  S.  lines  from 
South  America;  during  which  Postmaster 
General  Walter  Brown,  in  1931,  advised 
the  domestic  lines  to  stay  out  of  the  foreign 
field  and  Pan  American  to  stay  out  of  the 
domestic;  and  during  which  Postmaster 
General  Jim  Farley,  in  1937,  refused  to  let 
the  domestic  Branifi*  line  have  a  subsidy 
to  run  to  Mexico  City,  in  Pan  American 
territory. 

The  problem  of  foreign  air  operation  in 
South  America  is  above  all  a  problem  of 
national  security.  The  opponents  of  Mr. 
Berle's  policy  have  argued  with  him  that 
since  invitations  to  foreign  lines  to  seek 
certification  into  the  United  States  are 
invitations  to  South  American  lines,  he  is 
in  fact  asking  European  operators  to  set 
up  Latin-American  companies  and  then 
send  them  after  United  States  business. 
There  is  TACA-controlled  Aerovias  Brasil, 
for  instance,  which  as  we  have  seen  has 
already  requested  the  right  to  fly  into  the 
States.  British  railway  interests  in  Ar- 
gentina have  toyed  with  the  idea  of  pro- 
moting an  air  line  which,  taking  advantage 
of  the  Berle  policy,  could  shoot  northward 
to  the  United  States.  The  South  American 
countries  themselves  are  not  in  a  position  to  put 
out  the  capital  needed  for  international  air 
lines. 

Perhaps  the  principal  bone  of  conten- 
tion is  the  future  of  a  group  of  wartime 


THE    FUTURE    OF    INTERNATIONAL    AIRWAYS 


105 


airfields  built  in  Brazil  by  Pan  Am  for  the 
War  Department  in  1940  and  1941,  when 
the  United  States  and  Brazil  were  osten- 
sibly neutral.  The  Army  wanted  the 
fields  created  and  equipped  because  it 
thought  the  war  was  coming  our  way  and 
therefore  wanted  military  plane  bases  to 
be  ready.  Hesitant  to  undertake  the  job 
itself  when  the  United  States  was  not  at 
war,  the  Army  asked  Pan  Am  to  set  up  the 
fields.  Pan  Am  agreed  on  one  condition: 
that  Trippe's  line  would  not  subsequently 
suffer  for  its  virtue;  so  the  War  Depart- 
ment agreed  secretly  that  the  fields  would 
not  be  open  to  Pan  American's  competi- 
tors. Now  pressure  is  being  brought  from 
Brazil  to  make  the  fields  available  to  all,  to 
the  lines  of  Brazil  as  well  as  of  the  United 
States.  (It  may  or  may  not  be  significant 
in  this  connection  that  Aerovias  BrasiPs 
recent  application  for  landing  rights  in  the 
United  States  was  made  on  a  full  recipro- 
cal basis.)  The  issue  is  whether  Ameri- 
can-built fields  are  to  be  used  by  rivals  of 
American  lines.  It  is  not  easy  to  evolve  a 
policy  for  the  air. 

VI 

FOR  THE  new  era  the  Air  Transport 
Command  at  Miami  has  proved  that 
intercontinental  air  travel  can  be  swifter 
and  more  practical  than  it  was  before  the 
war.  But  it  probably  won't  live  up  to  the 
Jules  Verne  dreams  of  men  and  women 
who  foresee  stratosphere,  commuting  for 
everybody.  The  prospects  for  aviation 
are  not  all  clear  and  rosy.  Economics 
are  not  working  overtime  for  the  airmen, 
and  the  politics  of  international  aviation 
are  murky. 

Economics:  Before  the  war  the  United 
States'  air  routes,  in  this  country  and  out 
of  it,  totaled  more  miles  than  those  of  any 
other  single  country:  72,632.  The  British 
Empire  and  Commonwealth  total  was 
89,077;  the  Soviet  Union,  which  has 
sponsored  international  trial  flights  across 
the  North  Pole,  65,865;  France,  40,833; 
Germany,  32,720;  the  Netherlands,  23,- 
998;  Italy,  23,583;  Belgium,  11,388;  Mex- 
ico,  10,104;  Brazil,  9,182;  and  Japan, 
8,694.  For  the  most  part  the  United 
States  lines  are  flown  to  make  money,  and 
there  will  be  more  lines  and  more  money 


after  the  war  than  there  were  before  it. 
Overseas  planes  carried  4,300,000  pounds 
of  air  express  from  the  United  States  to 
Europe  from  1940  through  the  first  half 
of  1943.  The  four-motored  Douglas  Sky- 
master  plane,  which  took  CordcU  Hull 
part  way  to  Moscow,  can  carry  42  passen- 
gers and  6,450  pounds  of  cargo  across  the 
ocean  every  trip;  two  trips  a  week  would 
give  one  Skymaster  alone  almost  7,000,- 
000  pounds  of  cargo  in  one  year.  The 
Lockheed  Constellation  is  larger  than  the 
Skymaster,  the  Mars  flying  boat  is  larger 
than  the  Constellation,  and  even  bigger 
planes  are  planned.  Since  the  plane  op- 
erators can  make  more  money  from  freight 
cargoes  than  from  passengers,  the  use  of 
some  planes  for  freight  alone  is  in  the  plans 
for  the  future. 

But  planes  have  been  expensive  haulers 
of  freight  in  the  past;  in  domestic  flights 
the  price  was  at  least  fifty  cents  a  ton  mile, 
compared  with  the  railroads'  average  of 
one  cent.  Much  lower  rates  are  promised 
for  the  future,  and  there  are  of  course 
places  like  Central  America  and  China 
where  even  the  higher  rates  compare  more 
favorably  with  those  for  land  transport 
than  they  do  in  this  country.  But  the 
standard  items  of  air  express  and  air 
freight  in  the  past  have  been  flowers, 
jewels,  and  other  specialties,  and  except  in 
unusual  circumstances  high  hauling  cost 
will  tend  to  restrict  aviation's  share  in  the 
transport  of  general  cargoes. 

Another  but:  While  more  money  is  sure 
to  be  spent  on  transatlantic  flying,  the 
urgent  question  to-day  is  whether  there  is 
enough  money  in  flying  the  north  At- 
lantic, rich  as  the  route  might  be,  for 
division  among  a  British  company,  a 
French  company,  a  Swedish  company,  a 
Dutch  company,  and  a  number  of  compet- 
ing American  companies.  Even  though 
the  foreign  lines  are  not  by  practice  con- 
cerned with  making  money,  could  each 
American  company  make  enough  to  keep 
it  from  bankruptcy  or  from  pleading  for 
increasingly  strong  governmental  financial 
bolstering? 

Plane  manufacturers  and  shipping  owners 
as  well  as  air  carriers  have  an  immediate 
economic  interest  in  the  overseas  opera- 
tions. So  have  the  taxpayers,  who  through 
the  government  now  own  521  plants  for 


106 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  production  of  airframes,  engines,  and 
accessories.  These  manufacturing  indus- 
tries are  worth  $2,700,000,000,  but  any 
hope  that  they  can  be  profitably  converted 
from  making  warplanes  to  manufacturing 
commercial  planes  to  fit  into  the  world 
carrying  scheme  is  vain. 

These  plants  and  the  privately  owned 
plants  made  about  85,000  planes  in  1943. 
The  Civil  Aeronautics  Board's  Economics 
Bureau  estimated  a  few  months  ago  that 
at  the  most  235  planes  (presumably  two- 
engined  Douglas  DC3's,  which  are  smaller 
than  the  Skymasters)  could  have  carried 
all  the  first-class  mail  which  in  1939  was 
carried  in  surface  ships  between  the  United 
States  and  overseas  countries.  W.  A. 
Patterson,  who  is  not  inclined  to  speak  dis- 
paragingly of  aviation,  estimated  for  the 
Los  Angeles  Rotary  Club  on  August  16th 
that  54  planes  (of  one-hundred-passenger 
capacity)  could  handle  the  transatlantic 
service  after  the  war. 

The  more  business  goes  to  transatlantic 
planes,  the  less  business  will  go  to  ships. 
The  United  States  Chamber  of  Commerce 
woke  up  to  this  last  summer  and  promptly 
appointed  a  Committee  on  International 
Transport,  which  in  turn  appointed  a 
subcommittee  on  Air  Transport.  The 
subcommittee  adopted  a  resolution  recom- 
mending legislation  to  permit  ship  lines 
to  control  competing  air  lines.  John  C. 
Cooper,  vice-president  of  Pan  American, 
a  member  of  the  full  committee,  wrote 
a  letter  of  protest  against  the  resolution  to 
Eric  Johnston,  the  Chamber  president; 
then  the  full  committee  turned  down  its 
subcommittee's  recommendation.  The 
subcommittee  had  two  members  repre- 
senting air  lines:  John  E.  Slater,  executive 
vice-president  of  American  Export  Air- 
lines, and  S.  J.  Solomon,  the  president  of 
Northeast  Airlines  and  the  spokesman  for 
the  proponents  of  free  competition  in  the 
air  over  the  Atlantic. 

Political    Murk:    Admiral    Howard    L. 


Vickery  of  the  War  Shipping  Administra- 
tion told  a  press  conference  this  autumn 
that  the  United  States,  builder  of  more 
than  10,000  Liberty  ships,  intended  to 
stay  deep  in  the  shipping  business  after  the 
war.  A  few  months  earlier  Clive  Baillieu, 
then  a  high  officer  in  the  British  Supply 
Council  in  North  America,  told  an  au- 
dience in  New  York  that  Britain  after  the 
war  would  have  to  seek  export  markets 
greater  than  those  she  had  had  before  and 
that  she  would  need  to  carry  the  exports 
as  much  as  possible  in  British  bottoms. 
In  the  December  American  Magazine  Sena- 
tor George  L.  RadclifTe  of  Maryland  wrote 
an  article  on  the  theme,  "Our  merchant 
marine  must  be  second  to  none."  A 
political  collision  over  shipping  between 
the  United  States  and  the  United  King- 
dom seems  unavoidable. 

A  disagreement  over  sea  carriers  would 
make  the  prospect  of  getting  an  interna- 
tional agreement  over  air  carriers  remote. 
The  airplane  is  just  one  of  a  number  of 
interrelated  instruments  in  national  eco- 
nomics and  politics.  The  other  countries, 
especially  Britain,  are  preparing  for  cut- 
throat air  business  through  chosen  in- 
struments in  case  the  international  agree- 
ment is  not  born.  (There  is  talk  of  form- 
ing a  second  British  overseas  line  with  the 
backing  of  English  shipping  interests,  but, 
even  if  this  is  done,  the  British  government 
will  undoubtedly  own  much  of  the  stock.) 
Mr.  Berle  however  is  betting  high  on  the 
international  agreement  and  apparently 
sees  no  need  for  having  a  chosen  instrument 
ready  in  case  it  flops.  He  is  apparently 
betting  too  that  the  Congress  which  re- 
fused to  appropriate  a  subsidy  for  a  second 
American  air  line  across  the  north  Atlan- 
tic can  be  persuaded  to  provide  subsidies 
for  up  to  sixteen  lines  over  that  same  ocean. 
If  Mr.  Berle  is  right,  well  and  good;  if  not, 
and  if  we  have  no  alternative  policy,  then 
everybody  will  be  ready  for  the  contest 
except  the  United  States. 


OIL    FIELDS    IN    THE    ARCTIC 


WALLACE  E.  PRATT 


A  map  of  the  Arctic  Oil  Re-  ] 
gions  appears  in  Personal  and  \ 
Otherwise.  ) 


THE  international  commerce  of  the 
future  promises  to  depend  so  much 
upon  direct  transport  between  the 
United  States,  Canada,  the  Union  of  So- 
viet SociaHst  RepubHcs,  and  China  that 
the  region  of  the  North  Pole  may  become 
the  crossroads  of  the  world.  For  the  fuel- 
ing of  the  airplanes  engaged  in  this  traffic, 
indigenous  sources  of  oil  throughout  the 
polar  region  should  be  of  great  value. 
The  evidence  is  convincing  that  such 
sources  exist,  awaiting  only  to  be  de- 
veloped. The  lands  that  edge  the  Polar 
Sea — the  northern  shores  of  Siberia,  Alaska, 
and  Canada — are  marked  by  a  series  of 
conspicuous  seepages  of  oil. 

Generally  we  associate  the  origin  of 
petroleum  with  abundant  sunlight  and 
teeming  life.  We  think  of  the  humid, 
equable  climates  of  past  geologic  ages;  of 
an  incredibly  prolific  vegetation  which 
flourished  throughout  eons  of  time  over 
the  great,  swamplike  lowlands  of  the 
earth's  surface;  and  of  myriad  microscopic 
creatures  which  thronged  the  warm  waters 
of  the  adjacent  seas.  It  was  this  luxuriant 
former  life  of  the  earth  that  bequeathed  to 
us  our  great  stores  of  fossil  fuels.  The  old 
forests  left  us  their  carbon;  the  organic 
parts  of  marine  life  buried  in  the  muds  and 
sands  of  the  sea  floor  were  preserved  for  us 
in  the  form  of  petroleum. 

This  conception  of  the  origin  of  petro- 
leum requires  a  tropical  environment  not 
to  be  found  in  present-day  Arctic  wastes. 


Wc  forget  that  the  earth's  polar  ice  caps  are 
evanescent  phenomena  that  have  existed 
for  only  a  relatively  short  period.  Of  the 
two  thousand  million  years  through  which 
we  can  peer  dimly  back  in  earth  history 
these  polar  ice  caps  are  discernible  only 
during  the  past  million  years  or  so.  For 
the  greater  part  of  geologic  time  plant  and 
animal  life  alike  have  abounded  in  the 
polar  regions.  Fossil  plants  in  the  rocks  of 
the  island  of  Spitsbergen  prove  that  in 
comparatively  recent  times,  geologically 
speaking,  tropical  palms  and  ferns  grew  in 
profusion  in  latitude  80°  north.  There 
are  still  plants  in  Spitsbergen,  but  in 
place  of  the  tropical  forests  of  twenty  mil- 
lion years  ago  there  are  now  only  scattered 
patches  in  sheltered  coves  where  a  few 
stunted  tree  plants  like  the  dwarf  birch 
still  persist.  The  hardiest  of  these  tree 
plants  (the  Arctic  willow)  rarely  exceeds 
a  height  of  two  inches. 

To  be  sure,  life  still  abounds  in  the 
polar  regions.  Birds,  fish,  and  marine 
mammals  thrive  in  both  the  Arctic  and  the 
Antarctic.  Stefansson  says  that  greater 
tonnages  of  animal  life  per  cubic  mile  of 
ocean  are  to  be  found  in  the  waters  along 
the  Arctic  Circle  than  along  the  Equator. 
He  points  out  that  the  great  fisheries  of 
Newfoundland  are  in  the  icy  Labrador 
Current,  not  in  the  Gulf  Stream,  and  that 
the  richest  ocean  life  known  is  found  in  the 
drift-ice  region  that  fringes  the  Antarctic 
Continent. 


108 


HARPERS    MAGAZINE 


The  fossil  evidence  in  the  rocks  of  the 
northland  furthermore  testifies  to  a  warm- 
water  environment  for  the  marine  plants 
and  animals  the  remains  pf  which  were 
buried  in  the  muds  of  the  former  seas. 

In  the  past,  then,  geological  conditions 
were  favorable  for  the  generation  of  petro- 
leum in  the  rocks  of  the  Arctic  region. 
And  even  a  cursory  search  for  petroleum 
in  the  north,  such  as  has  been  already 
carried  out,  reveals  widespread  and  unmis- 
takable evidences  of  its  presence  there. 

The  progress  of  civilization  has  been 
described  as  the  slow  march  of  humanity 
northward  from  all  sides  of  an  ever- 
shrinking  circle  at  the  center  of  which  is 
the  North  Pole.  It  is  a  curious  circum- 
stance, overlooked  by  most  of  us,  that 
whereas  no  human  being,  no  land  mam- 
mal, and  no  flowering  plant  makes  a  per- 
manent home  in  the  south  polar  regions 
(south  of  the  sixtieth  parallel  of  south 
latitude)  yet  in  the  corresponding  area 
round  the  North  Pole  more  than  a  million 
people,  countless  land  animals,  and  tre- 
mendous forests  live  and  thrive.  The 
pioneer  explorers  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
persistent  in  their  search  for  a  •"northwest 
passage,"  already  realized  that  northward 
lay  the  shortest  route  from  Europe  to  the 
Orient.  Now,  with  the  increasing  use  of 
the  airplane,  it  is  fortunate  that  the  Far 
North  is  provided  with  potential  stores  of 
petroleum  because  this  resource  will  be  in- 
dispensable to  the  development  which 
appears  to  be  in  store  for  the  region. 

Up  till  now  the  United  States,  with  an 
area  of  2.4  million  square  miles  in  which 
petroleum  may  reasonably  be  expected  to 
be  present,  has  produced  more  than  60 
per  cent  of  the  world's  petroleum.  The 
Far  North,  by  comparison,  includes  a 
land  area  (north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel) 
of  1.5  million  square  miles  which  may  also 
be  described  as  favorable  for  petroleum. 
This  comparison  affords  a  reasonable  ba- 
sis on  w^hich  to  judge  the  potential  petro- 
leum resources  of  the  Far  North.  They 
may  well  be  half  as  large  as  our  own 
American  resources. 

Most  of  the  land  area  in  the  North 
Polar  region  lies  within  the  borders  of  the 
Union  of  Soviet  Socialist  Republics  in  the 
Eastern  Hemisphere;  the  most  extensive 
exploration  for  petroleum  in  the  north  has 


been  carried  out  by  the  Soviet  Govern- 
ment. It  is  understandable  therefore  that 
the  evidence  accumulated  so  far  indi- 
cates larger  resources  of  petroleum  in  the 
Soviet  domain  than  in  the  rest  of  the  Far 
North.  Soviet  geologists  have  examined 
areas  in  Siberia  aggregating  one  million 
square  miles  (north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel) 
which  they  consider  favorable  for  the  oc- 
currence of  petroleum.  In  the  Western 
Hemisphere  our  own  geologists  estimate 
at  about  one-half  million  square  miles  the 
land  area  (north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel) 
favorable  for  petroleum.  Notwithstand- 
ing this  disparity  in  area  some  of  the  most 
important  known  prospects,  including  one 
of  the  oldest  active  oil  fields  in  the  Far 
North,  are  to  be  found  in  the  VV'estern 
Hemisphere. 

The  waters  that  cover  the  North  Pole 
occupy  a  depression  in  the  earth's  surface 
which,  although  never  of  extreme  depth, 
has  persisted  throughout  most  of  geologic 
time.  These  waters  should  properly  be 
thought  of  as  a  sea  rather  than  as  an  ocean. 
They  are  landlocked  like  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico-Car- 
ibbean Sea  region.  It  is  of  interest  in  this 
connection  to  reflect  that  the  environs  of 
these  two  mediterranean  regions — the  Cas- 
pian, Black,  and  Mediterranean  seas  in 
the  Old  World,  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
and  Caribbean  Sea  in  the  New  World — 
are  the  sources  of  by  far  the  larger  part 
of  all  the  petroleum  so  far  found  on  earth. 
It  is  in  large  part  to  their  character  as 
long-enduring  mediterranean  seas  (seas 
in  the  midst  of  the  land)  that  these  regions 
owe  the  great  accumulations  of  petroleum 
we  find  in  them.  Owing  to  their  general 
character  therefore  the  environs  of  the 
Arctic  Sea  become  a  likely  prospect  for  the 
oil  finder.  Almost  continuously  since  a 
very  early  period  in  earth's  history,  muds 
and  sands  and  rock  debris  have  been 
washed  into  this  sea  by  streams  flowing 
over  the  weathered  surface  of  the  encir- 
cling land  areas  to  the  south  of  it:  the 
great  continental  shields  of  primitive  crys- 
talline rocks  that  constitute  all  of  eastern 
Canada  in  the  Western  Hemisphere,  and 
all  of  Mongolia  and  Tibet  in  the  Eastern 
Hemisphere.  These  old  lands  are  the 
sources  of  the  accumulations  of  sediment 
laid  down  on  the  floor  of  the  Arctic  Sea. 


OIL    FIELDS    IN    THE    ARCTIC 


109 


The  world's  petroleum  is  found  in  rocks 
formed  of  the  sediments  deposited  in 
former  seas:  the  sediments  of  Cenozoic,  of 
Mesozoic,  and  of  Paleozoic  seas,  named  in 
the  order  of  magnitude  of  their  total 
yields  of  petroleum  up  to  date.  The 
Arctic  Sea  was  loaded  with  sediments  dur- 
ing each  of  these  great  cycles  of  earth  his- 
tory. The  modern  Arctic  Sea  however  is 
only  a  shrunken  remnant  of  its  ancestral 
seas,  and  much  of  the  periphery  of  the 
former  sea  floor  is  now  elevated  above  sea 
level. 

The  successive  layers  of  sediment  have 
hardened  into  the  rocks  which  make  up 
the  encircling  land  areas.  These  rocks  are 
promising  source  rocks  for  commercial  ac- 
cumulations of  petroleum.  Oil  and  gas 
seepages  are  so  numerous  and  conspicuous 
that  even  the  early  explorers  were  im- 
pressed a  century  and  a  half  ago  when 
"petrolium"  was  a  rare  curiosity. 

II 

^NE  of  the  most  impressive  surface  mani- 
festations of  petroleum  in  the  West- 
ern Hemisphere  is  situated  near  Cape 
Simpson,  east  of  Point  Barrow,  on  the 
Arctic  coast  of  northernmost  Alaska. 
Surrounding  this  locality  is  a  coastal  plain 
and  foothills  region  more  than  60,000 
square  miles  in  area.  It  consists  of  gently 
folded  Upper  Cretaceous  marine  shales 
and  sandstones  exceeding  10,000  feet  in 
aggregate  thickness.  Beneath  this  series 
of  rocks  lies  the  Lower  Cretaceous,  an 
equally  promising  series  of  shales  and 
sandstones  of  similar  thickness.  Geologi- 
cally, these  conditions  are  ideal  for  im- 
portant accumulations  of  petroleum.  The 
striking  character  of  the  petroleum  seep- 
ages near  Cape  Simpson  is  revealed  in 
the  following  simple  description  by  Sidney 
Paige  of  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey: 

Seepage  No.  1  occurs  near  the  inland  base  of 
this  ridge.  .  .  .  Here  in  an  irregular  area  several 
hundred  feet  in  diameter  the  moss  is  soaked  with 
petroleum  which  also  slowly  seeps  from  the 
gentle  slope. 

Seepage  No.  2  is  ...  3  miles  almost  due  south 
of  Seepage  No.  1  .  .  .  Here  the  residue  covers 
several  acres. 

The  main  petroleum  flow  moves  southward 
down  the  slope  for  600  or  700  feet  to  a  lake. 
This  active  channel  is  6  to  10  feet  wide,  though 


the  area  covered  by  residue  is  several  hundred 
square  feet  and  indicates  that  a  considerable 
flow  is  coming  from  this  seepage. 

The  Point  Barrow  region  has  been  re- 
served to  the  United  States  Navy  over  an 
area  of  30,000  square  miles,  but  no  at- 
tempt at  exploration  has  been  made. 
This  part  of  Alaska  is  open  to  ocean  trans- 
portation only  two  or  three  months  in  the 
normal  year.  No  good  harbor  is  avail- 
able. The  country  is  icebound  and  barren 
of  timber.  The  unfavorable  climate,  the 
lack  of  marine  transportation  facilities,  the 
isolation,  and  the  bleak  environment  have 
discouraged  development.  For  a  navy 
that  has  been  interested  in  petroleum  prin- 
cipally as  fuel  for  battleships  a  reserve  so 
icebound  as  to  be  inaccessible  to  the  fleet 
for  three-quarters  of  the  time  has  had  little 
appeal.  With  the  impetus  given  aviation 
in  Alaska  by  the  present  war  this  attitude 
may  change.  Five  hundred  miles  south 
of  Point  Barrow  is  Fairbanks,  the  inland 
metropolis  of  Alaska,  which  has  become  a 
great  center  of  flying  activity  and  a  main 
base,  both  civil  and  military,  for  airplane 
maintenance  and  supplies  including  avia- 
tion fuel  and  lubricants. 

The  Point  Barrow  oil  contains  a  valua- 
ble lubricating  fraction  and  is  low  in  sul- 
phur, a  common  deleterious  impurity  in 
crude  oil.  Weathered  samples  show  a 
gravity  of  18.6  degrees,  American  Petro- 
leum Institute  scale,  but  the  fresh  oil  might 
well  be  of  lighter  gravity.  The  operation 
of  oil  wells  and  a  modern  cracking  plant  at 
Point  Barrow  could  be  made  largely  in- 
dependent of  weather.  Products  such  as 
aviation  fuels  could  be  moved  southward 
by  pipe  line  across  the  Endicott  Range  to 
Fairbanks  despite  ice  and  low  temperature. 
The  icebound  Arctic  coast  is  not  an  in- 
superable obstacle  to  the  development  of 
this  promising  prospect. 

There  are  other  areas  in  Alaska  which 
would  be  worth  exploring  for  petroleum. 
Extending  north  and  northeastward  from 
the  deltas  of  the  Yukon  and  Kuskokwim 
rivers  over  an  area  of  140,000  square 
miles  are  Cretaceous  and  Tertiary  rocks  of 
great  thickness,  gently  folded  and  of  a 
character  favorable  for  the  occurrence  of 
petroleum.  The  sea  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Kuskokwim  River  is  free  of  ice  throughout 
the  year.     No  exploration  for  petroleum 


vMjRLlNG/\Af 


no 


HARPER^S    MAGAZINE 


has  been  attempted  in  this  promising 
region. 

Another  promising  region  is  the  Alaska 
Peninsula.  Its  accessible  southern  coast 
exhibits  seepages  of  petroleum  at  Gold 
Bay  and  again  120  miles  farther  north- 
eastward. The  rocks  of  Alaska  Peninsula 
are  of  Jurassic  age.  The  oil  from  the  seep- 
ages varies  from  20  degrees  to  30  degrees 
A.P.I,  gravity.  The  possibly  productive 
area  is  about  350  miles  in  length.  Three 
test  wells  have  been  drilled  on  the  penin- 
sula, ranging  in  depth  between  5,000  and 
8,775  feet.  These  tests  failed,  but  obvi- 
ously further  exploration  is  justified  in  this 
region. 

Still  farther  east  along  the  southern 
coast  of  Alaska  is  the  Katalla-Yakataga 
region.  Extending  eastward  from  the 
town  of  Gordova,  it  has  a  length  of  250 
miles.  Here  the  oil-bearing  rocks  are  of 
Tertiary  age  with  an  aggregate  thickness 
exceeding  10,000  feet.  There  are  promi- 
nent seepages  of  petroleum  along  the  en- 
tire length  of  their  outcrop.  Shallow 
wells  at  Katalla  have  a  record  of  past  pro- 
duction of  about  300,000  barrels.  This 
oil  came  from  depths  of  1,800  feet  or 
less.  Formerly  a  local  refinery  operated 
at  Katalla.  The  oil  is  about  40  degrees 
A.P.I,  gravity,  free  from  sulphur,  and 
yields  about  35  per  cent  of  naphtha. 

It  may  be  said  of  Alaska  that  whenever 
the  development  of  its  petroleum  resources 
becomes  worth  while  the  enterprise  will 
doubtless  be  undertaken,  with  every  an- 
ticipation of  a  significant  addition  to  the 
volume  of  the  proved  oil  reserves  of  the 
Western  Hemisphere. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  Ganada.  Near 
Fort  Norman  on  the  Mackenzie  River,  in 
latitude  65°  north,  a  small  refinery  for 
many  years  has  been  producing  gasoline 
and  fuel  oil  for  river  boats,  airplanes,  and 
nearby  mining  operations.  The  petro- 
leum for  this  refinery  is  obtained  from  an 
adjacent  shallow  oil  field  discovered  in 
1920.  Since  the  local  demand  for  prod- 
ucts is  small,  the  output  of  only  two  or 
three  wells  has  sufficed  to  supply  all  needs. 
Recentiy  however  a  number  of  additional 
wells  have  been  drilled  under  the  direction 
of  the  United  States  Army  and  have 
proved  the  existence  of  a  major  oil  field 
at  Fort  Norman  of  first  rank  as  a  petro- 


leum reserve.  In  connection  with  this 
development  pipe  lines  are  planned  to 
make  the  Fort  Norman  oil  available  at 
other  strategic  centers  in  the  Far  North. 

Thus  we  have  the  anomalous  situation 
that  the  United  States  Army  is  driven  by 
the  realities  of  war  to  draw  upon  the  natu- 
ral resources  of  another  nation,  Ganada, 
in  an  efi'ort  to  ensure  adequate  supplies 
of  aviation  fuels  for  the  Air  Gorps,  while 
the  United  States  Navy  holds  a  totally 
undeveloped,  twenty-year-old  petroleum 
reserve  on  United  States  soil  in  the  ad- 
jacent territory  of  Alaska.  We  are  slow 
to  realize  that  our  air  force  needs  fuel  as 
well  as  our  battleships  and  that  our  own 
potential  sources  of  these  critical  fuels  in 
the  Far  North  have  already  been  too  long 
neglected. 

The  Fort  Norman  oil  comes  from  a  lime- 
stone of  Devonian  age  through  wells 
ranging  in  depth  to  as  much  as  2,000  feet; 
it  is  about  40  degrees  A.P.I,  gravity  and 
yields  a  high  proportion  of  gasoline  on 
distillation.  The  first  wells  were  drilled 
because  of  the  presence  of  oil  and  gas  in  the 
surface  rocks  near  Fort  Norman.  Seep- 
age Lake,  only  a  few  miles  from  the  oil 
field,  and  Windy  Point  on  the  north  shore 
of  Great  Slave  Lake,  are  both  celebrated 
for  copious  seepages  of  oil,  long  known  to 
the  Indians  and  early  trappers  in  that  re- 
gion. The  oil  field  lies  in  the  heart  of  a 
sedimentary  basin  160,000  square  miles 
in  area  (north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel). 
Other  important  oil  fields  will  almost  cer- 
tainly be  found  in  this  region  whenever 
systematic  search  is  undertaken. 

The  remainder  of  the  mainland  of 
Ganada  north  of  the  sixtieth  parallel,  con- 
sisting of  the  old  continental  shield  of 
crystalline  rocks,  is  devoid  of  petroleum 
prospects.  But  the  islands  in  the  Arctic 
Ocean  north  of  western  Ganada  from 
Banks  Island  and  Victoria  Island  on  the 
southeast  to  Ellesmere  Land  and  the 
Greenland  coast  on  the  northeast  are  geo- 
logically favorable  for  petroleum.  These 
islands  lie  directly  north  of  our  own  State 
of  Texas  (look  at  a  globe  if  you  doubt  it) 
and  are  scattered  over  a  distance  as  great 
as  that  which  separates  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
from  Lake  Superior.  They  are  composed 
of  gently  folded  sedimentary  rocks,  rich  in 
organic  remains,  ranging  in  age  from  Or- 


OIL    FIELDS    IN    THE    ARCTIC 


111 


dovician  to  Tertiary.  In  southern  Elles- 
mere  Land  the  Silurian  and  Devonian 
rocks  alone  attain  a  thickness  of  8,000 
feet.  Coal  is  present  in  the  Carbonifer- 
ous, the  Cretaceous,  and  again  in  the  Ter- 
tiary. Stefansson  reports  seepages  of  pe- 
troleum along  with  outcrops  of  lignite  on 
northern  Melville  Island,  500  miles  north 
of  the  Arctic  Circle.  On  the  south  coast 
of  the  same  island  he  found  bituminous 
shale  which  he  burned  for  fuel.  Though 
but  little  known,  geologically  this  region 
is  certainly  suitable  for  petroleum  accumu- 
lations, and  the  actual  seepages  of  petro- 
leum already  observed  by  pioneer  ex- 
plorers confirm  the  geological  evidence. 

Immediately  to  the  eastward  of  Elles- 
mere  Land  lies  the  northern  portion  of 
Greenland.  An  ice  cap  three-quarters  of 
a  million  square  miles  in  area  and  thou- 
sands of  feet  in  thickness  conceals  the  sur- 
face of  the  southern  and  central  parts  of 
this  great  island  (the  ice  cap  grows  thinner 
the  farther  north  one  goes!)  and  denies 
us  intimate  knowledge  of  its  geologic  char- 
acter. Presumably  most  of  Greenland  is 
unfavorable  for  petroleum,  but  its  extreme 
northern  end,  which  is  almost  free  of  ice 
and  open  to  geologic  study,  is  not  without 
promise.  Here  the  same  series  of  rocks 
noted  in  Ellesmere  Land  can  again  be 
identified  and  observed  to  maintain  their 
same  favorable  character.  Horizontal 
beds  of  Cambrian  sandstones,  free  from 
deformation,  present  the  same  favorable 
aspect  here  that  they  do" 'directly  across 
the  North  Pole  in  Siberia,  where  Soviet 
technologists  are  already  recovering  oil 
from  them.  Overlying  the  Cambrian  is 
an  extensive  succession  of  rocks,  Silurian, 
Carboniferous,  Triassic,  Jurassic,  Cre- 
taceous, and  Tertiary.  Coal  at  several 
horizons  and  abundant  fossil  plants  in 
these  rocks  indicate  warm  climates  which 
certainly  persisted  until  Tertiary  times. 

Ill 

THE  million  square  miles  of  territory  in 
Siberia  which  Soviet  scientists  desig- 
nate as  favorable  for  petroleum  stretch 
from  the  Ural  Mountains  eastward  nearly 
3,000  miles  to  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk.  Over 
this  region  many  seepages  of  petroleum 
have  been  discovered  and  investigated;  a 


large  number  of  test  wells  have  been 
drilled.  Guided  by  exhaustive  geological 
and  geophysical  surveys,  this  exploration 
has  been  under  way  since  1934.  The  re- 
sults of  the  work  are  not  generally  avail- 
able, but  it  is  stated  that  some  half-dozen 
regions  have  been  outlined  in  which  the 
presence  of  petroleum  has  been  demon- 
strated in  rocks  of  various  ages — Cam- 
brian, Devonian,  Jurassic,  Cretaceous, 
and  Tertiary.  This  energetic  search  by 
the  Soviets  for  petroleum  in  the  Far 
North  serves  to  emphasize  the  significance 
they  accord  to  the  northland.  Already  in 
possession  outside  the  Arctic  regions  of  the 
largest  potential  resources  of  petroleum  on 
earth,  these  people  show  more  awareness 
than  the  rest  of  us  of  the  future  that  beck- 
ons from  the  north  and  prepare  to  take 
advantage  of  it. 

In  looking  at  the  petroleum  resources  of 
the  Soviets  we  cannot  limit  our  view  to 
Siberia  nor  to  the  Far  North.  West  of  the 
Ural  Mountains  lies  other  favorable  terri- 
tory which  in  its  extension  to  the  south 
of  the  sixtieth  parallel  is  already  producing 
petroleum.  And  in  Siberia  proper  the 
areas  favorable  for  petroleum  extend  far 
to  the  south  of  the  sixtieth  parallel.  But 
from  our  discussion  of  the  Far  North  these 
extensions  to  the  south  are  excluded,  as 
are  also  the  promising  indications  on 
Kamchatka  Peninsula  and  the  producing 
fields  on  Sakhalin  Island.  Excluded  also 
are  the  Kuznetz  District  and  the  Lake 
Baikal  area  in  southern  Siberia,  in  both 
of  which  successful  exploration  for  petro- 
leum is  reported. 

Returning  to  the  Far  North  in  Siberia, 
we  find  petroleum  coming  to  the  surface 
along  the  estuary  of  the  Yenisei  River  in 
latitude  70°  north.  As  a  result  of  these 
showings,  which  persist  from  Dudinka 
southward  to  Turukhansk,  a  distance  of 
some  300  railesj  a  number  of  wells  have 
been  drilled. 

Six  hundred  miles  farther  east  along  the 
Arctic  coast  near  Nordvik  on  Khatanga 
Bay  there  are  numerous  seepages  of  pe- 
troleum. A  test  well  has  been  drilled 
here  which  encountered  petroleum  at  suc- 
cessive depths  in  Cretaceous,  Jurassic,  and 
Devonian  rocks.  This  is  a  region  char- 
acterized by  the  presence  beneath  the 
surface  of  "salt  domes,"  remarkable  intru- 


112 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


sions  of  plastic  salt  which  force  themselves 
upward  through  the  earth's  crust  from 
great  depth  and  form  ideal  reservoirs  for 
the  accumulation  of  petroleum.  Salt 
domes  distinguish  also  cur  own  most  pro- 
lific source  of  petroleum — the  coastal  plain 
fringing  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

A  thousand  miles  still  farther  east  along 
the  Arctic  coast  in  the  Yukahirs  district 
Soviet  geologists  have  outlined  an  area  of 
some  300,000  square  miles  which  they 
consider  promising  for  petroleum.  We 
know  little  of  the  basis  for  this  opinion, 
but  it  is  readily  acceptable  in  view  of  the 
extensive  evidence  of  petroleum  through- 
out the  Lena  River  drainage  system  far- 
ther south. 

It  is  said  that  "oil  has  been  found  for 
a  thousand  miles  along  the  Tolba,"  a 
headwaters  tributary  of  the  Lena  River. 
Here  the  oil  is  found  in  Lower  Cambrian 
rocks,  only  slightly  deformed.  Wells 
have  been  drilled  along  the  Naya  River 
in  the  eastern  part  of  the  district  within 
200  miles  of  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk,  and  again 
in  the  Olekminsk  district  600  miles  to  the 
west  of  the  Sea  of  Okhotsk.  The  wells 
flow  copiously  and  this  Tolba  region, 
which  includes  an  area  of  more  than  3,000 
square  miles,  is  believed  to  have  great  po- 
tentialities. 

Petroleum  products  from  this  region 
could  be  readily  transported  by  pipe  line 
to  a  Pacific  Ocean  outlet  on  the  Sea  of 


Okhotsk  to  the  east  as  well  as  to  the  north- 
ern branch  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway 
450  miles  to  the  south.  Eastern  Siberia 
therefore,  like  much  of  the  rest  of  the  Far 
North,  appears  to  be  provided  with  re- 
sources of  liquid  fuel  and  lubricants  ade- 
quate to  support  a  greatly  expanded  fu- 
ture industrial  economy. 

Oil  in  the  Arctic  awaits  the  advance  of 
civilization  upon  this,  the  last  of  our 
geographical  frontiers.  Conspicuous  evi- 
dences of  petroleum  confront  us  through- 
out this  region:  prolific  seepages  in  the 
rocks  of  Alaska;  other  seepages  and  a  ma- 
jor oil  field  on  the  mainland  of  Canada; 
seepages  on  various  Canadian  Arctic  is- 
lands; seepages  and  oil  wells  at  frequent 
intervals  along  the  entire  Arctic  Coast  of 
Siberia.  But  only  the  forward-looking 
Russians  have  availed  themselves  so  far 
of  these  potential  sources  of  fuel  and  en- 
ergy. Perhaps  the  rest  of  us  have  yet  to 
grasp  the  fact  that  the  Great  Ice  Age  is 
already  behind  us.  We  escaped  its  ex- 
treme advance  at  the  end  of  the  Pleisto- 
cene only  "by  the  skin  of  our  teeth,"  ac- 
cording to  Thornton  Wilder's  colorful 
drama,  but  now  at  length  we  should  have 
pulled  ourselves  together  sufficiently  to 
begin  to  follow  up  its  retreat  and  to  re- 
claim for  mankind  the  vast  empire  re- 
leased to  us  by  the  return  of  the  sun  to  the 
"friendly  Arctic." 


i=^ 


BEFORE    THE    MEN   MARCH    HOME 


A  Letter  to  the  Churches 


BERNARD     IDDINGS    BELL 


m 


uvr-^  yAR  makes  for  few  conversions," 
\/\/  ^^^^  Bishop  Charles  Palmerston 
V  V  Anderson  of  Chicago  during  the 
first  world  conflict.  "War  only  makes 
people  more  strongly  what  they  were  when 
the  struggle  began.  If  they  were  in- 
temperate when  they  went  into  uniform, 
they  will  usually  have  become  much 
harder  drinkers  by  the  time  they  come 
back  home.  If  they  were  careless  of  sex 
morality,  they  are  almost  sure  to  have 
become  more  slimy  in  that  respect.  If 
they  were  noisy  braggarts,  you  may  expect 
them  to  return  intolerable  boasters.  If 
they  were  selfish,  their  selfishness  will  have 
increased.  If  they  were  honest,  decent, 
modest  men,  the  war  will  usually  have 
improved  those  good  qualities.  If  they 
despised  God,  they  will  have  come  out 
more  sure  in  scorn;  if  they  loved  God  a 
little,  they  will  have  learned  to  love  Him  a 
lot.  But  there  will  be  no  more  conversions 
than  in  peacetime,  rather  less.  All  his- 
tory shows  it  true  that  no  religious  revival 
ever  began  or  was  fostered  by  battle." 

This  still  seems  to  be  the  truth,  if  one 
may  judge  by  the  letters  which  many 
chaplains  have  been  writing  home  lately. 
Even  those  whose  units  have  been  facing 
death  have  observed  few  instances  of 
change  of  heart  toward  God.  A  number 
seem  disgusted  with  current  talk  about 
there  being  "no  atheists  in  shell-holes." 


"That  may  be  so,"  writes  one  who  was  a 
great  pastor  in  peacetime,  "but  if  so  it  is 
because  there  are  few  atheists  anywhere. 
There  are  a  lot  of  new  would-be  magicians 
in  shell-holes  though,  asking  desperately 
only  that  God  do  miracles  for  their  benefit 
in  the  way  of  deflecting  deadly  missiles. 
If  you  call  that  religion,  you  can  have  it; 
but  if  religion  means  for  a  man  to  give  his 
life  to  God  and  not  merely  to  whine  for 
God  to  give  more  life  to  him,  the  front 
changes  very  few  men.  What  they  were 
religiously,  they  remain — more  intensely 
but  the  same;  and  if  the  Church  back 
home  is  relying  on  the  war  to  do  for  the 
lads  what  the  Church  did  not  do  for  them 
before  they  put  on  uniforms,  namely,  to 
make  God-lovers  and  God-servers  out  of 
them,  then  the  Church  had  better  stop 
kidding  itself." 

Things  seem  not  to  have  changed  in 
these  respects  since  the  First  World  War, 
when  I  watched  more  than  one  thousand 
young  men  stream  by  me  at  Great  Lakes 
Training  Station,  going  into  the  Navy  and 
then,  after  months  of  service,  coming  out 
again.  The  great  majority  of  men  in  the 
armed  forces  knew  then,  and  know  this 
time,  next  to  nothing  about  religion.  The 
separation  of  Church  and  State  in  the 
schools,  and  the  astounding  incompetence 
of  most  of  the  churches  in  respect  to 
religious  education,  and  the  indifference  of 


114 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


parents  to  God,  have  combined  to  turn  out 
a  group  of  young  people  composed,  to  the 
extent  of  about  eighty  per  cent,  of  religious 
illiterates.  * 

So  it  was  with  men  in  the  First  World 
War.  So  it  still  is  if  the  chaplains  whose 
letters  I  see  are  to  be  trusted,  and  if  one 
may  believe  many  officers  and  men  I 
know  who  are  Christians  and  have  their 
eyes  open.  When  the  ten  million  and 
more  come  marching  home  again — such 
of  them  as  do  come  back — most  of  them 
will  not  be  bothering  their  young  but 
hard-boiled  heads  any  more  about  reli- 
gion in  the  old  home  parish  than  they  did 
about  religion  in  their  outfits — which  was 
mighty  little.  This  will  not  be  their  fault 
or  the  fault  of  the  chaplains  or  indeed  the 
fault  of  war.  The  churches  had  not  won 
them  in  the  days  before  they  went  away. 
They  will  not  have  lost  religion  while  in 
the  forces.     Few  of  them  had  any  to  lose. 

But  what  of  those  few  who,  with  under- 
standing and  afi'ection  for  God  and  man, 
were  really  Christians  when  the  war 
began?  They  will  come  back  with  that 
understanding  and  that  aff'ection  driven 
deeper  into  their  very  being  by  the  things 
they  have  observed,  endured.  Will  they 
be  satisfied  to  resume  their  former  places 
in  the  churches? 

The  service  people  whom  I  know  and 
trust  doubt  it  very  much.  Great  numbers 
of  the  more  religious  soldiers,  sailors, 
marines,  these  report,  are  no  longer  as 
attracted  by  organized  religion  as  once 
they  were.  More  often  than  not  they 
are  a  little  scornful  of  it.  Churches 
as  social  clubs  seem  in  memory  to  have 
been  trivial,  and  churches  as  places 
where  men  adore  God  and  are  empowered 
by  Him  appear  in  retrospect  to  have 
been  largely  nonexistent.  Were  not  the 
churches  smothered  by  respectability  and 
enervated  by  timidity?  It  seems  so  in 
retrospect.  The  churches,  these  men 
surmise,  were  led  chiefly  by  parsons  more 
intent  to  please  the  congregations  than  to 
blurt  out  the  disconcerting  will  of  God; 
and  the  churches  were  controlled  (and  the 
parsons  too  often)  by  small-bore  laymen 
fearful  lest  the  Church  blow  ardently  upon 
the  latent  fires  of  spiritual  and  moral 
revolution.  They  are  now  aware  that  the 
churches  were  impotent   to    prevent   the 


war,  which  war  they  loathe  even  while 
they  bravely  fight  it.  Nor  do  they  see 
evidence  of  vitality  enough  in  the  churches 
to  enable  them  effectively  to  stand  for 
prevention  of  a  revengeful  and  dishonest 
peace,  which  most  of  them  think  is  the 
kind  of  peace  that  the  politicians  are  pre- 
paring to  unload  on  the  world,  a  peace 
which  will  be  prelude  to  another  bout  of 
carnage  when  the  nations  have  caught 
their  breath.  They  do  not  believe  that 
the  churches  really  love  God  more  than 
money  or  prestige,  or  that  they  have  an 
intention  to  obey  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  it  be  recalled  that  the  men  referred 
to  here  are  not  the  atheistic,  the  porcine, 
or  the  indifi'erent,  but  rather  the  ones  who 
are  religious,  the  ones  whose  stars  dot  the 
war  flags  of  the  parishes,  the  ones  whom 
those  churches  are  counting  on  to  return 
with  new  enthusiasm  and  take  up  their 
share  of  churchly  activity.  In  the  minds 
of  far  more  of  these  men  than  Church 
people  back  home  suspect,  the  conventicles 
which  in  former  days  they  have  attended, 
known,  even  loved,  now  appear  as  too 
little  religious  and  too  socially  ineffective 
to  command  further  respect. 

THERE  are  three  things  about  the 
churches  which  seem  lacking  to  the 
men  who  are  undergoing  the  tough  dis- 
cipline of  training  camps  or  are  stripped 
to  essentials  on  the  various  fronts  or  at  sea. 
They  deplore  the  absence  of  Simplicity, 
Sincerity,  and  Sympathy. 

Simplicity  is  lacking  because  the  blazing 
centrality  of  God  as  He  is  in  Christ  has 
become  vague  in  churchly  minds.  Fussi- 
ness,  vague  and  stereotyped  prayer,  choir 
music,  hymn  singing,  young  people's 
societies  and  rallies,  no  end  of  trivia,  have 
been  allowed  to  get  in  the  way.  Sermons 
have  dealt  with  derivative  matters,  not 
with  God.  A  living  Christ,  in  Heaven 
and  in  Sacrament  and  in  the  hearts  of  the 
faithful,  is  what  seems  lacking;  and  with- 
out such  a  Christ  a  church  looks  more  than 
a  little  ridiculous  and  parsons  seem  con- 
temptible. The  men  who  come  marching 
home  will  have  seen  that  much  plainly. 
The  Church  had  better  get  rid  of  fustian  if 
it  is  to  meet  the  challenge  in  their  exacting 
eyes. 

Sincerity  too  the  returning  soldier,  sailor, 


BEFORE     lliE     MEN     MARCJH     HOME 


115 


or  marine  most  surely  will  require.  Tic 
may  come  back  himself  anything  but  im- 
maculate; but  at  the  worst  he  will  rarely 
be  cither  a  hypocrite  or  afraid.  His  de- 
mand for  honesty  will  be  brutal.  Are  the 
churches  going  to  show  to  him,  or  require 
of  him,  a  willingness  to  judge  his  own  and 
other  lives  singly,  or  the  nation's  life,  or 
international  life,  by  the  mind  of  God  as 
Christ  has  proclaimed  the  same?  A 
church  which  tones  down  the  reality  of 
judgment  and  the  moral  demands  of  God, 
in  the  way  the  churches  appear  to  most 
observers  to  have  toned  them  down  before 
the  war,  will  be  met  with  deserved  con- 
tempt. Shall  God  ask  less  of  a  man  in- 
dividually than  his  country  has  asked,  or 
let  a  man  break  the  code  and  deny  disci- 
pline and  yet  make  no  demand  for  punish- 
ment? And  what  is  the  Church  going  to 
insist  upon  socially?  The  demand  is  not 
for  churches  which  meddle  in  politics  or 
s[o  into  business.  No  sane  man  wants  the 
Church  itself  to  build  a  righteous  social 
order,  even  to  try  to  do  it.  What  is 
needed  is  a  Church  which  is  the  conscience 
of  Society,  a  Church  which  in  the  name  of 
God  will  condemn  selfish,  nationalistic, 
imperialistic,  compromising  social  action, 
by  whomever  contemplated  or  committed, 
and  insist  upon  a  Society  which  will 
recognize,  as  Jesus  does,  that  man  is  more 
than  a  producer  and  consumer  of  goods, 
more  than  a  breeder  of  wage-slaves  and 
cannon-fodder.  Christian  Social  Action 
is  no  accidental  aspect  of r -religion ;  it  is 
central  to  any  Christianity  which  is  not 
a  "phony."  Christianity  is  a  perpetual 
revolution  against  the  mores  of  the  canny 
and  the  worldly.  Let  the  Church  behave 
accordingly.  Moral  and  spiritual  revolu- 
tion is  coming;  it  is  overdue.  If  the 
Church  has  a  first-rate  variety  of  such 
revolution  to  offer,  let  the  Church  trot  it 
out,  or  else  forever  hereafter  hold  a  shame- 
ful peace. 

And  Sympathy  is  demanded,  not  pity  but 
fellow-suffering,  which  is  what  the  word 
"sympathy"  by  derivation  means.  The 
churches  are  called  on  to  show  willingness 
themselves  to  suffer  and  to  lead  their 
members  gladly  to  suffer,  alongside  those 
who  must  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being  in  a  world  all  shot  to  hell,  a  world 
starving   and    ragged    and   homeless   and 


tired  and  shcll-shorked  and  disillusioned. 
There  are  people  who  think  that  the 
wounds  of  the  world  can  be  cured  when 
the  guns  cease  firing,  that  the  hearts  of 
men  can  be  healed,  merely  by  way  of  a  lot 
of  new  gadgets,  mechanical  and  political. 
Such  men  are  not  apt  to  be  found  under 
arms.  A  lot  more  than  that  will  be  re- 
quired. Sympathy,  shared  suffering,  will 
be  needed.  Are  the  churches  prepared  to 
furnish  it?  What  did  they  ask  for  before 
the  war?  Chiefly  that  their  bills  be  paid, 
their  own  spiritual  and  social  goings-on 
financed,  and  "Give  us  a  dime  for  the 
heathen."  Such  a  program,  such  pur- 
poses, soft  parsons,  padded  pews,  polite 
piety,  respectability  for  its  own  sake, 
ecclesiastical  exemption  from  the  travail  of 
mankind — these  receive  a  ribald  derision 
from  those  who  have  seen  the  war  and 
tasted  of  its  sorrows.  The  churches  must 
lose  their  lives  for  Christ's  sake  and  that  of 
the  brethren,  become  the  hidden  leaven  of 
a  selfless  love  in  the  lump  of  misery  called 
mankind,  go  out  and  share  the  bitter 
things  with  not  one  timid  shudder,  or  else 
be  trodden  under  foot  by  men  who  have 
learned  what  life  is  all  about. 

Do  the  churches  want  the  postwar  al- 
legiance and  help  of  those  of  their  own 
men  who  are  now  in  service  and  who  have 
had  conventions  stripped  away,  who  now 
insist  upon  reality  in  religion?  Do  they 
wish  to  use  such  a  man  as  Thomas,  for 
instance,  who  writes  from  the  Middle 
East?  He  is  a  university  graduate,  bril- 
liant, urbane,  not  quite  thirty  years  old. 
Before  the  war  he  was  a  layman,  with 
rather  more  than  a  good  start  in  a  manu- 
facturing business.  He  now  writes:  "I 
always  believed  in  God;  I  know  God  now. 
I  have  seen  Him  in  the  desert  and  in  the 
eyes  of  forsaken  and  oppressed  people.  I 
have  seen  Him  weeping  as  the  damned 
shells  break  and  tear  Him.  I  must  be  His 
utter  servant.  By  the  Lord  God  I  shall 
compromise  no  more.  I  must  preach 
Him,  proclaim  Him.  If  I  come  back  the 
ministry  is  my  vocation.  But  do  you 
think  the  Church  has  room  for  me  in  the 
ministry?" 

Well,  I  wonder  a  little  myself  about  that 
man,  if  and  when  he  comes  up  before  the 
usual  vestry  or  parish  committee  that  is 
cautiously  looking  for  "a  pleasing  clergy- 


116 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


man."  Are  such  righteously  impatient 
people — there  are  a  lot  of  them — going  to 
be  used,  in  the  ministry  or  anywhere  else; 
or  will  they  shake  the  dust  of  organized 
Christianity  off  their  f  :et  because  of  their 
own  faithfulness  to  Christ?  And  if  the 
churches  cannot  hold  and  use  the  religious 
men  among  the  returning  millions,  what 
chance  have  they  to  win  to  God  the 
multitudinous  heathen  that  are  among 
them? 

u'T"^  THAT  do  you  advocate?"  someone 
Yv    rnay  ask.     That  is  a  fair  question. 
It  does  no  good  to  diagnose  this  far  unless 
one  goes  a  little  farther.     Well — 

1 .  I  suggest  that  every  clergyman  write 
to  each  serviceman  on  his  parish  list,  send 
him  a  copy  of  this  article,  ask  him  if  it  tells 
the  truth,  and  request  him  (if  it  seems  to 
him  at  all  a  fair  presentation  of  the  facts) 
to  write  back  and  recommend  what  he 
would  like  to  see  dif  event  about  his  home 
church  when  he  comes  back.  Ask  him  to 
be  frank,  and  specific.  Tell  him  to  over- 
look his  supposed  sentimental  attach- 
ments, forget  that  the  inquirer  is  a  parson, 
and  spill  his  real  ideas.  The  answers  will 
be  interesting.  Some  will  refuse  to  an- 
swer.    Some  will   be   polite.     Some  few 


will  have  no  fault  to  find.  Many  of  the 
replies  will  shake  complacency.  Then,  as 
the  clergyman  gets  his  answers  (he  should 
promise  that  no  names  will  be  revealed), 
let  him  tell  his  congregation  what  its  men 
in  uniform  are  thinking. 

2.  I  suggest  that  the  War  Commission 
(whatever  it  may  be  called)  of  every 
denomination  do  the  same  sort  of  thing 
with  its  chaplains  (again  promising  that 
names  will  not  be  used) ;  let  the  replies  be 
analyzed,  digested,  and  printed  for  cir- 
culation in  that  denomination. 

3.  Let  no  plans  be  made  for  postwar 
work  by  any  communion  unless  and  until 
its  chaplains  have  a  fair  chance  to  criticize 
the  same. 

4.  Put  a  tough  returning  chaplain  on 
the  faculty  of  every  theological  seminary 
(in  the  preaching  and  pastoral  depart- 
ment), and  one  or  more  on  every  strategic 
denominational  committee,  commission, 
and  board. 

5.  Revise,  now,  the  whole  set-up  of 
parochial  religious  education,  so  that  in 
future  emergencies  like  this  war  the  young 
men  may  not  go  forth  quite  such  spiritual 
ignoramuses. 

Other  suggestions  come  to  mind;  but 
these  are  probably  enough  for  a  beginning. 


NOTES    ON    AN    ENGLISH    VISIT 


FREDERICK    LEWIS    ALLEN 


I.  Blackout 

I  REACHED  London  early  last  October  at 
seven  o'clock  of  a  cloudy  evening,  just 
as  the  nightly  blackout  took  effect. 
Stepping  from  the  bright  interior  of  the 
train  onto  a  station  platform  whose  gloom 
was  only  faintly  alleviated  by  an  occa- 
sional hooded  lamp  of  low  candle-power, 
and  wondering  how  anybody  could  recog- 
nize anybody  else  in  this  crowded  dim- 
ness, I  was  nevertheless  recognized  and 
hailed  and  led  away  to  a  car  which  whirled 
me  out  into  the  vast  dark  of  London.  We 
drove  at  what  seemed  to  my  unpracticed 
eyes  a  wildly  confident  speed — down  half- 
empty  avenues,  round  almost  invisible 
corners,  past  traffic  islands  marked  only  by 
a  small  x  of  light;  past  an  occasional  taxi 
tearing  along  with  the  same  sublime  confi- 
dence, its  headlamps  playing  dimly  down- 
ward on  the  roadway  ahead  of  it;  past 
vaguely  illuminated  double-decker  busses 
thundering  through  the  night. 

We  stopped  before  a  hotel — not  a  glim- 
mer showing  from  it — while  my  compan- 
ions went  inside  to  inquire  about  reserva- 
tions; and  for  a  few  minutes  I  stood  waiting 
beside  the  car  in  a  silence  broken  only  by 
the  rush  and  rumble  of  infrequent  taxis 
and  busses,  by  the  clicking  footsteps  of 
shadowy  people,  striding  by  on  the  side- 
walk (as  briskly,  it  seemed,  as  if  they  had 
cats'  eyes),  and  by  the  fragments  of  their 
conversation  as  they  passed.     Now   and 


then  a  flashlight  would  blink  as  some 
pedestrian  checked  up  on  the  location  of 
the  curb  he  was  approaching.  Across  the 
street  a  tier  of  office  buildings  and  apart- 
ment houses  loomed  lightless  and  im- 
mense. There  is  always,  to  me,  some- 
thing majestic  about  London;  in  this 
portentous  obscurity  its  majesty  was 
intensified. 

I  left  the  city  a  little  over  five  weeks 
later,  likewise  by  blackout.  And  so  my 
last  impression  of  it  complemented  my 
first.  It  was  of  standing  on  another 
equally  dim  railway  platform  in  the  midst 
of  a  clamorous  and  shadowy  confusion: 
soldiers,  sailors,  and  civilians  tramping 
along  to  their  trains,  the  soldiers  and  sail- 
ors laden  with  heavy  kits,  and  some  of  them 
accompanied  by  wives  or  parents  as  they 
searched  one  dark  crowded  railway  car- 
riage after  another  for  a  vacant  space;  bag- 
gage trucks,  heaped  high  with  blanket-rolls 
and  military  equipment,  being  dragged 
clattering  through  the  throng;  smoke 
pouring  from  panting  locomotives  into  the 
high  black  vault  of  the  train  shed,  through 
the  glassless  skylights  of  which  I  could 
catch  glimpses  of  a  full  moon  weaving  in 
and  out  of  bright-edged  clouds.  About 
me  I  could  half-see  the  farewell  embraces 
as  families  were  separated;  and  it  seemed 
to  me  that  the  sense  of  overwhelming 
urgency  that  hung  in  the  smoky  air,  the 
sense  of  imminent  departures  for  unknown 
and  perilous  destinations,  the  sense  that 


118 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


individuals  were  being  implacably  lost  in 
impersonal  groups  beckoned  by  fate,  was 
strangely  accentuated  by  the  blackout 
gloom  which  turned  nlen  into  mere 
moving  shapes. 

And  as  I  look  back  now  upon  those 
English  weeks  it  is  the  blackout  which 
stands  out  in  my  mind  as  the  most  striking, 
and  also  the  most  wearing,  single  circum- 
stance in  British  life  to-day.  Millions  of 
words  have  been  written  about  it,  yet  to 
the  visitor  who  experiences  it  for  the  first 
time  it  comes  nevertheless  with  a  shock  of 
surprise.  For  as  he  sees  how  the  blackout 
circumscribes  his  movements  from  day  to 
day  he  realizes  how  profoundly  it  must 
circumscribe  the  lives  of  millions  of  Eng- 
lish men  and  women  as  they  enter  the  fifth 
winter  of  darkness. 

The  English  seem  to-day  a  worn  and 
tired  people.  For  over  four  years  they 
have  undergone  deprivations  and  manifold 
inconveniences  similar  to  those  which  the 
war  has  imposed  on  the  people  of  the 
United  States  but  much  more  intense. 
On  the  average  they  have  become  more 
deeply  immersed  in  the  war  than  we,  and 
their  lives  are  more  distorted  by  it  than 
ours  are.  Their  food  is  more  drastically 
rationed  than  ours  and  is  short  of  so  many 
things — meats,  butter,  citrus  fruits,  and 
so  on — that  although  there  is  enough  to 
sustain  health  there  is  seldom  enough  to 
make  eating  a  pleasure.  Their  gasoline  is 
much  more  drastically  rationed  than  ours: 
there  is  no  basic  ration  at  all;  nobody  can 
get  a  gallon  unless  he  can  prove  absolute 
necessity — as  for  a  family  in  the  country  to 
go  marketing  once  a  week,  or  for  a  gov- 
ernment official  to  go  on  war  errands. 
Their  clothing  is  so  sharply  rationed  that 
the  purchase  of  a  new  suit  will  eat  up  half 
a  man's  clothes  points  for  the  year.  All 
manner  of  goods  which  we  regard  as  neces- 
sities are  lacking;  matches,  for  instance, 
are  almost  unobtainable  (and  good  ciga- 
rette lighters  are  expensive  and  hard  to 
come  by).  Every  form  of  transportation 
is  infrequent  and  overcrowded,  and  the 
sight  of  men  and  women  standing  quietly 
in  long  queues  at  the  bus  stops  is  ubiqui- 
tous. People  mostly  look  a  little  shabby, 
down-at-the-heel;  the  women's  cotton  and 
wrinkled  rayon  stockings,  for  instance,  and 
the  fact  that  half  the  young  girls  are  bare- 


legged even  in  October,  reflect  a  situation 
in  which  supplies  are  often  lacking  even  if 
one  has  the  ration  points  to  buy.  (One 
morning  in  Cardiff  I  saw  a  long  double 
queue  of  women  stretching  along  the  side- 
walk, and  asked  one  of  them  what  they 
were  in  line  for.  "Stockings,"  she  said. 
Some  shop  had  got  hold  of  a  supply.)  As 
for  living  under  government  regulations, 
the  British  are  far  more  circumscribed  in 
their  day-to-day  freedom  than  we:  con- 
sider the  single  circumstance  that  no  one 
may  change  his  job  without  government 
consent.  For  four  years  they  have  been 
working  long  hours  under  the  spur  of  war- 
time necessity.  All  these  conditions  of  life 
are  wearing — yet  none  of  them  seems  to 
me  to  bear  down  upon  and  hamper  the 
individual  quite  as  does  the  blackout. 

In  summer  its  impact  is  comparatively 
slight,  for  the  evening  twilight  lasts  long. 
But  in  winter  things  are  different.  When 
I  was  in  Glasgow,  toward  the  middle  of 
November,  the  blackout  began  at  about 
5:20  P.M.  and  lasted  till  well  after  eight 
in  the  morning.  Think  what  it  must  be 
to  work  a  shift  from  8  a.m.  to  8  p.m., 
and  in  one's  free  waking  hours,  all  week 
long,  never  to  be  able  to  move  outdoors 
save  in  blackness! 

MAKE  no  mistake  about  it,  this  black- 
out is  strictly  enforced.  When  I 
reached  my  hotel  room  on  my  first  evening 
in  London  I  found  the  windows  already 
shrouded  by  heavy  overlapping  black- 
lined  curtains.  Under  the  glass  top  ol 
the  dressing-table  was  a  warning  notice: 

BLACK-OUT 

PLEASE  DRAW  CURTAINS 

BEFORE 

SWITCHING   ON  LIGHT 

Another  sign  amplified  the  warning: 

IMPORTANT 

It  is  imperative  that  you  comply  with  the  Act 
of  Parhament  regarding  the  "Black-out"  *  which 
is  now  in  force  every  night.  Not  a  single  ray  of 
light  must  be  seen  outside  your  rooms.  Please 
therefore  keep  the  curtains  drawn  correctly,  and 
never  open  a  window  unless  all  lights  are  first 
switched  off. 


*  The  quotation  marks  (as  well  as  the  hyphen)  are 
used  in  most  public  notices  in  England,  as  it  the  very 
name  of  this  unfortunate  if  necessary  institution  were 
hardly  admi-ssible  to  a  respectable  language. 


NOIES    ON     AN     ENGLISH     \1S1T 


119 


By  tho  door  was  a  third: 

A.R.P. 

ALL  LIGHTS  MUST  BE  TURNED 

OUT  BEFORE  THE   ROOM  IS  LEFT, 

IN  CASE  WINDOW  DAMAGE  OCCURS. 

I  switched  ofT  the  light,  groped  my  way 
to  the  windows,  parted  the  curtains,  and 
looked  out — across  a  hotel  court — at  what 
one  might  have  imagined  to  be  a  quite 
untenanted  building,  with  not  a  sliver  of 
light  showing.  Actually  it  was  another 
wing  of  the  hotel,  with  every  room  occu- 
pied. Later  I  moved  to  another  room 
looking  out  over  a  wide  stretch  of  Lon- 
don— rooftops,  chimney  pots,  apartment 
houses,  hotels,  office  buildings;  a  view 
at  least  a  mile  deep.  Invariably  there 
would  be  no  ray  of  artificial  light  visible 
anywhere  after  nightfall  except  at  one 
point  among  the  rooftops  where  a  single 
not-quite-sufficiently  curtained  window, 
invisible  from  the  street,  showed  a  tiny 
line  of  brightness.  Every  evening  as  dusk 
approached  a  chambermaid  made  the 
rounds  of  the  hotel  rooms,  both  occupied 
and  vacant,  darkening  every  window:  the 
inevitable  routine  which  soineone  must  go 
through  every  evening  in  every  house  in 
England.  One  afternoon  I  was  talking 
with  a  publisher  and  a  novelist  when  the 
novelist  glanced  at  his  watch  and  leaped 
to  his  feet.  "My  wife  is  busy  this  after- 
noon," he  said,  "and  I've  got  to  get  home 
to  my  suburb  in  time  to  black  out  thirty- 
eight  windows.'' 

To  the  newcomer  to  England,  particu- 
larly if  he  has  a  map  to  consult  beforehand 
and  a  bump  of  direction,  the  game  of  try- 
ing to  find  his  way  about  London  in  the 
evening  is  rather  good  fun.  When  the 
moon  is  near  1±ie  full,  even  if  the  sky  is 
quite  overcast,  it  is  easy.  Most  curb- 
stones are  marked  at  the  street  intersections 
Vv'ith  white  paint,  as  are  projecting  cellar 
doors  and  other  obstructions;  and  as 
there  is  almost  no  traffic  by  night  you  can 
stride  along  rather  confidently  (with  a 
wary  eye  out  for  unmarked  garage  en- 
trances and  other  changes  in  the  sidewalk 
level  in  the  middle  of  a  block)  provided 
you  can  keep  track  of  how  far  you  have 
gone  without  ever  being  able  to  see  a 
street  sign.  But  in  the  dark  of  the 
moon  .   .  . 


You  go  out  through  the  revolving  door 
of  your  hotel  (this  door  has  been  madr 
lightproof  by  stretching  a  black  strip  of 
cloth  over  each  of  its  glass  panels)  and  find 
yourself  in  blue-black  gloom.  Ahead  of 
you  you  can  see  a  dull  blue  light  set  into 
the  curving  brick  blast- wall  which  protects 
the  hotel  entrance  against  any  bomb 
explosion  outside — but  you  can  see  no 
steps  at  all.  You  feel  your  way  with  your 
feet,  step  down  on  the  sidewalk,  steer  out 
past  the  end  of  the  blast-wall  (which  is 
vaguely  visible  to  you  now  because  it  is 
painted  with  black  and  white  stripes)  and 
stand  bewildered  in  what  seems  total 
blackness.  You  can  hear  people  walking 
by  but  you  can't  see  them.  Better  grope 
your  way  to  the  hotel  wall — unless  you 
have  a  flashlight  (you  are  permitted  to 
carry  one  if  you  have  one) — and  stand 
there  a  minute  till  your  eyes  adjust  them- 
selves.    Then  you  can  set  out. 

Whenever  a  car  comes  by,  your  way 
ahead  becomes  half-discernible,  for  its 
dim  downward-shining  headlights  reveal  a 
bit  of  the  street  and  diffuse  enough  light 
even  outside  their  direct  path  to  indicate 
the  line  of  the  curb.  As  you  approach  a 
street-corner  there  will  be  a  tiny  hooded 
overhead  street  light  to  guide  you,  and 
perhaps  a  small  traffic  light.  If  the  pave- 
ment is  wet  these  lights  will  make  thin 
paths  of  reflected  light  below,  which  will 
help  to  orient  you;  but  if  the  night  is  over- 
cast and  the  pavements  dry  you  may  stop 
helpless  in  the  middle  of  a  block,  unable  to 
tell  which  way  to  move  until  a  car  ap- 
proaches. Your  concentration  upon  the 
effort  to  find  your  way,  the  brief  glimmer 
of  flashlights  showing  here  and  there,  the 
almost  invisible  people  groping  their  way 
along,  the  snatches  of  their  overheard 
talk,  the  computations  going  on  in  your 
mind — "There — here's  the  corner — now 
two  blocks  in  this  direction  and  then  a 
block  to  the  left" — take  on  a  strangely 
dreamlike  quality:  this  episode  in  your 
evening  is  as  sharply  set  apart  from  what 
preceded  and  what  will  follow  it  as  if  you 
were  sleepwalking.  You  reach  what  you 
think  must  be  the  approximate  location  of 
the  building  you  are  seeking;  you  ask  a 
passing  shadow  if  you  are  right  and  he 
tells  you  to  go  a  little  farther  on:  you 
make  out  a  faint  bluish  glow,  find  your- 


120 


HARPER-S    MAGAZINE 


self  mosing  in  behind  an3:her  blaiT-Aall 
and  climbing  sieps  szlz.  Ia>-:ng  youi"  hands 
on  a  revolving  door;  ii  revolves — and 
then  suddenly  you  are  in  a  blaze  of  light: 
a  hotel  lobby  full  of  acti\-ity.  The  dream 
is  over  and  wakeful  life  resumes  again. 

With  a  fiashlighi  in  good  repair  of  course 
it's  easier,  though  the  flashlight  so  condi- 
tions your  night  \-ision  that  if  you  use  it 
\'ou  are  half-helpless  when  it  is  not  shin- 
ing. But  anyhow  you  will  notice  not 
many  Londoners  on  the  streeis.  One 
reason  is  that,  although  they  will  go  out 
without  hesitation  to  places  they  can  readily 
find,  the  difficulty*  of  finding  an  unfamihar 
house,  plus  the  shortage  of  taxis  and  other 
transporiauon  (and  also  of  course  the  ra- 
tioning regulations)  combine  to  reduce 
evening  entertaining  to  a  minimum  and 
to  keep  most  people  at  home  at  night. 
Therefore  by  any  American  standard  the 
streets  of  London  are  ver\-  empi\-  after 
nightfall  and  ver\-  quiet. 

pecial  beautv*:  the  beaurv'  c:  the 
gnostiy  streets  by  moonlight,  with  even.* 
Renaissance  pediment  and  column,  even-* 
bit  o£  white  stonework  in  the  brick  houses, 
shining  imder  the  moon;  the  beauty*  of 
starhght,  with  a  powder  of  stars  overhead 
so  clear  that  I  have  plainly  seen  the  faint- 
est of  the  seven  stars  of  the  Dipper  (the  one 
where  the  handle  joins  the  Dipper  itselQ 
firom  the  sidewalk  of  as  traveled  a  street  as 
Park  Lane;  the  sudden  unexpected  eiiects 
(as  when  once  I  noticed  that  a  supp-osedly 
full  ni::n  seemed  to  have  'r.iz  a  piece 
bitten  :n:  :f  ::.  and  saw  as  I  •  .,ih-:ri  :n 
that  :nr  zr.z  al:ered  its  shape,  ana  rtinzea 
that  I  was  ^etnesiing  a  partial  ecHpse  of 
the  moon  by  a  barrage  balloon  hanring 
above  the  cit\):  and  the  somber  ceau.y  of 
the  scene  firom  a  high  window*  on  a  foggy 
night,  the  dark  shapes  of  the  clustered 
buildings  looming  Like  casded  mountains 
through  the  mist  till  one  imagines  one  is 
not  in  an  inhabited  city  at  all  but  in  some 
silent  land  of  ghostiy  slumbering  peaks 
and  turrets. 

But  even  the  beaut\'  paHs  on  people 
who  have  endured  the  blackout  winter 
after  winter — never  able,  waking  at  night, 
to  turn  on  a  hght  without  first  closing  the 
curtains,  never  able  to  let  night  fall  with- 


out blacking  out  every  window,  never 
ab,e  to  set  out  of  an  evening  without 
calculating  how  to  get  to  their  destination 
and  home  again.  Of  all  the  things  Eng- 
lish people  dream  of  doing  when  the 
Luftwaffe  is  reduced  to  helplessness;  per- 
haps the  first  on  the  list  is  to  see  the  lights 
turned  on  again. 

It  has  gone  on  so  long!  An  English 
friend  of  mine  heard  a  Httie  girl,  pointing 
to  an  electric-Kght  pole  in  the  street,  say 
to  her  mother.  "Whars  that  thing  for?" 
The  child  couldn't  remember  ever  having 
seen  a  lighted  street, 

I  heard  another  anecdote  which  in- 
volves both  the  blackout  and  the  obstinate 
pauem  of  habit  which  help>ed  to  carry*  the 
English  people  through  the  horrors  of 
the  bombings  of  1940-41:  . 
count\*  official  told  me  that 
when  the  Luftwaffe  v.  as  ranging  over 
England  and  bombs  were  failing  he  %'.as 
inimseh  in  a  plane  flying  above  his  county 
a:  abru:  three  thousand  feet,  inspecting 
:i^-e  aaeiuacy  of  the  blackout  arrange- 
men-^i.  As  he  looked  down  into  the  dark- 
ness, he  began  to  see  littie  subdued  fiaslaes 
and  gleams  here,  there,  and  ever%-where. 
"\\"har  s  that,^"  he  asked  the  pUot.  •*Oh, 
that,*'  said  the  pilot.  ''It's  ten  oxI:>ck. 
The)"* re  putting  the  cat  out.*: 


n    Englisin 

one   nieht 


M' 


n.  The  Scars  of  7940-41 

?:Ri7  morning  in  London,  as  I 
±r^  •.'.aiked  out  in  the  streets,  my  first 
reaction  was  similar  to  that  of  many  other 
ne '.comers  these  da\-s:  "I  don't  see  much 
r.  :n:b  damage."  It  was  a  fine  sunny 
~:rning.  the  busses  roUed  mightily  by, 
tine  sidewalks  v.  ere  busy  with  people 
i^perhaps  a  third  :f  :hem  in  uniform,  and 
over  half  of  this  h.ird  in  American  uni- 
form); eve:v:hinr  iii^rd  very  active  and 
normal — tinough  me  ::  a~c  '.vas  far  Ughter 
than  in  New  York.  P.  r.enhy  Pd  come  to 
a  gap  where  a  couple  of  houses  had  been 
removed  and  the  neighboring  buildings 
showed  patched  w*alls,  but  there  didn't 
seem  at  first  to  be  many  such  gaps. 

Soon,  however;  I'd  come  to  a  bigger  gap 
where  several  houses  were  missing.  Next 
to  this  gap  there  would  be  perhaps  a  half- 
\NTecked  house  whose  front  wall  and  floors 
had  been  sliced  off.  disclosing  some  such 


NOTES    ON    AN     LNGLlSli     \JM1 


121 


sight  as  a  sccond-storcy  drawing-room,  its 
fine  wainscoting  still  in  place,  its  green 
wallpaper  torn  and  fluttering  in  the  wind, 
its  ornamental  fireplace  a  mere  niche  in 
the  side  wall,  its  ceiling  and  floor  quite 
gone.  (London  ofTers  an  endless  variety 
of  such  odd  stage  sets;  where  the  side  wall 
of  a  ruined  apartment  house  has  been  left 
standing,  for  instance,  one  can  see  running 
from  the  top  of  this  wall  to  the  bottom 
identical  patterns  of  bathroom  tiling,  with 
identical  arrangements  of  holes  for  the 
plumbing  fixtures.)  Then  I  began  to 
notice  that  around  each  such  area  of  total 
destruction  there  was  a  fringe  of  still 
apparently  intact  but  untenanted  houses, 
most  of  them  with  For  Sale  or  To  Let 
signs  before  them — buildings  so  gutted  or 
shaken  that  they  would  be  unfit  for  use 
until  labor  and  materials,  and  presumably 
government  money,  became  available  for 
their  repair.  And  I  noticed  another 
thing:  I  could  walk  for  two  or  three  blocks 
along  a  street  that  seemed  to  have  suffered 
no  damage  whatever — but  just  out  of 
sight  round  the  corner  on  a  side  street 
would  recur  the  familiar  picture  of  the 
yawning  gap  and  the  houses  all  about 
it  damaged  and  empty,  their  glassless 
window-openings  covered  with  building- 
paper.  About  these  scars  of  the  blitz  the 
life  of  London  flowed  on  unregarding,  for 
now  that  the  wreckage  has  been  mostly 
cleaned  up  Londoners  have  become  as 
used  to  the  marks  of  destruction  as  New 
Yorkers  in  the  nineteen-twenties  were 
used  to  seeing  in  every  other  block  along 
Fifth  Avenue  a  building  being  demolished 
or  a  lot  standing  vacant  to  await  a  new 
skyscraper. 

Of  the  desolation  wrought  at  the  end  of 
1940  in  the  region  east  and  north  of  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral  much  has  been  written; 
but  the  descriptions  have  mostly,  it  seems 
to  me,  failed  to  suggest  its  vast  extent. 
Translating  it  roughly  into  American 
terms,  it  is  somewhat  as  if  in  New  York  a 
zone  a  mile  or  more  wide  from  east  to 
west,  and  stretching  from  near  the  Wool- 
worth  Building  on  the  south  to  say  Wash- 
ington Square  on  the  north,  were  broken 
into  a  chain  of  what  might  be  called  lakes 
of  desolation,  involving  in  all  perhaps  half 
of  the  zone.  St.  Paul's,  with  its  great 
Wren  dome,  stands  virtually  intact;  about 


it  on  the  north  and  east  stand  a  few  un- 
sinashed  buildings  and  a  few  gaunt  and 
l)Iackened  skeletons  of  brick  and  stone; 
then  come  the  open  spaces  in  which  al- 
most every  wall  has  been  demolished 
down  to  the  street  level,  and  you  walk 
along  almost  traflicless  streets  past  endless 
rows  of  deep  cellar  holes  in  which  moss 
and  rank  grass  grow  greenly.  At  intervals 
stand  oddly  surviving  remnants  of  the 
City's  former  pride — a  carved  stone  Ren- 
aissance doorway  or  a  pair  of  stone  statues 
that  once  flanked  an  imposing  office 
building.  Here  and  there,  in  front  of  a 
yawning  cellar  hole,  a  signboard  informs 
you  that  John  Bates  &  Son  are  continuing 
business  at  such-and-such  a  new  address. 
In  one  island,  as  it  were,  of  surviving  build- 
ings I  came  upon  the  Church  of  St.  Giles- 
Cripplegate,  its  tower  partly  intact,  its 
walls  mostly  intact,  some  fragments  of 
stained  glass  still  in  place  in  its  windows, 
but  its  whole  roof  gone  and  its  interior 
burned  out;  beside  the  entrance  doorway 
there  still  stood  an  announcement-board 
listing  the  weekly  schedule  of  Morning 
Prayers  and  Holy  Communions  and 
Vespers.  Close  by,  where  some  cellarless 
buildings  must  once  have  stood,  a  row  of 
vegetable  gardens  flourished  among  the 
wreckage. 


I 


SAW  similar  bomb  damage  in  other 
English  cities  and  towns  (for  on  such  a 
trip  as  mine  one  becomes  something  of  a 
connoisseur  of  modern  ruins):  in  Canter- 
bury, where  whole  blocks  along  its  busiest 
street  have  been  wiped  out;  in  Swansea, 
where  the  shopping  district  was  smashed; 
in  Coventry,  where  the  central  part 
of  the  town  was  eliminated;  and  especially 
in  Dover  and  Plymouth.  One  detects 
among  the  residents  of  these  places  a 
certain  rivalry  for  the  prestige  of  living  in 
the  worst-bombed  town,  but  on  one  score 
Dover's  pre-eminence  is  secure.  It  cer- 
tainly has  been  the  most  frequently  hit 
town. 

The  Dover  air  raid  headquarters  re- 
minded me  a  little  of  some  I  had  seen  in 
New  York — the  same  sort  of  maps,  and 
charts  of  available,  equipment,  and  girls 
sitting  knitting  by  the  telephones — but 
with  this  difference:  the  number  of  alerts 
in  Dover  since  the  war  began  is  numbered 


122 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


in  the  thousands.  And  in  addition  to  occa- 
sional night  bombings  Dover  now  has  to 
submit  to  frequent  shelUngs  from  across 
the  Straits:  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night 
a  shell  which  has  taken  just  one  minute  to 
travel  from  the  Nazi- held  French  coast 
may  approach  in  complete  silence  and 
land  on  a  house  and  blow  it  to  bits.  No 
wonder  that  in  some  parts  of  Dover  half 
the  houses  have  been  hit;  no  wonder  that 
the  population  of  the  town,  which  was 
45,000  before  the  war,  has  now  dwindled 
to  18,000  or  19,000  people,  of  whom  about 
half  spend  every  night  on  iron  cots  ranged 
along  labyrinthine  tunnels  carved  into  the 
celebrated  white  cliffs. 

Dover  was  having  a  quiet  day  when  I 
was  there — not  a  shell  dropped — and  as 
we  stood  on  the  cliff  top  and  looked 
across  the  Straits,  where  a  stiff  southwest 
wind  was  kicking  up  a  rough  gray  sea  and 
had  blown  the  air  quite  clear  of  mist,  the 
wrinkled  cliffs  of  Cap  Gris-Nez  looked 
singularly  peaceful;  and  to  the  left  of  them 
a  few  faint  vertical  marks  on  the  horizon, 
which  powerful  field-glasses  revealed  as 
high  chimneys  and  a  crane  and  a  grace- 
ful tower  in  the  town  of  Calais,  looked 
hardly  less  innocent.  But  the  Doverites, 
going  on  about  their  business  within  eye- 
shot and  artillery-shot  of  Hitler's  Fortress 
Europe,  have  to  be  ready  every  instant 
for  trouble,  and  they  still  get  a  nasty 
amount  of  it. 

Yet  no  place  that  I  saw  has  had  to  face 
such  wholesale  ruin,  in  proportion  to  its 
size,  as  Plymouth.  There  a  city  official 
with  a  gift  for  the  graphic  phrase  told  me 
how  the  ruin  began  on  a  March  eve- 
ning in  1941.  "We  heard  a  sound,"  he 
said,  "as  if  an  immense  hive  had  been 
overturned."  The  Plymouth  searchlights 
played,  but  the  city  of  220,000  people  was 
almost  helpless  as  German  planes  came 
over  by  the  hundreds;  within  a  couple  of 
hours  one  whole  section  of  the  city  was 
mostly  in  flames.  The  next  night  the 
Germans  came  again,  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  the  adjoining  section  of  the  city — 
the  main  business  and  shopping  district, 
containing  most  of  the  public  buildings — 
and  made  a  similar  shambles  of  it.  The 
third  night  bad  weather  came  to  Plym- 
outh's rescue.  "If  the  Germans  had 
come  again  that  night,"  the  City  Clerk 


told  me,  "I  don't  know  what  we'd  have 
done.  We  were  almost  helpless  from 
exhaustion;  I  know  I  hadn't  had  my 
clothes  off  for  sixty  hours." 

The  Germans  didn't  come  to  Plymouth 
again  in  force,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for 
about  a  month.  Then  they  resumed  their 
campaign  and  smashed  a  third  adjoining 
area  and  a  fourth.  (I  have  seen  a  series 
of  maps  on  which  are  marked  the  places 
where  each  bomb  hit,  night  by  night,  and 
it  is  clear  from  the  patterns  that  the  Ger- 
man intent  in  this  series  of  raids  was  not  to 
go  for  military  objectives  so  much  as  to 
plaster  the  city  area  by  area  and  render  it 
unfit  to  live  and  work  in.)  By  the  time 
the  Plymouth  blitz  was  over,  two  hundred 
acres  of  buildings  had  been  ruined,  some 
fifteen  hundred  lives  had  been  lost,  and  the 
city  was  such  a  wreck  that  now  as  one 
drives  through  it  one  exclaims  with  sur- 
prise if  one  discovers  a  whole  block  of 
houses  standing  complete. 

I  find  my  Plymouth  notes  crammed 
with  items  of  the  sort  that  will  undoubt- 
edly live  on  as  legendary  tales  of  the  great 
ordeal,  handed  on  from  generation  to 
generation  in  Devonshire.  The  item,  for 
instance,  about  Dingle's  big  store,  which 
was  demolished  in  the  March  raid:  the 
proprietors  of  the  Dingle  business  leaped 
into  action  and  promptly  rented  twenty- 
four  other  small  properties  in  which  to 
resume  business,  department  by  depart- 
ment— only  to  have  fourteen  of  the 
twenty-four  smashed  before  the  end  of 
April.  .  .  .  The  item  about  the  keys:  the 
ARP  officials  after  the  first  raids  fore- 
handedly  listed  one  hundred  houses  which 
would  be  available  for  emergency  occu- 
pancy, and  stored  away  the  one  hundred 
keys  ready  for  instant  use — only  to  have 
the  ARP  Headquarters  burned,  and  the 
list  of  houses  burned  with  it,  and  all  the 
key-tags  burned  off  the  keys!  "You 
learn  by  experience,"  said  the  man  who 
told  me  this;  "the  fact  that  key  tags  are 
inflammable  just  hadn't  occurred  to 
us."  .  .  .  The  item  about  the  old  woman 
who  had  been  vainly  pestering  the  city 
fathers  for  bricks  to  build  a  shelter,  and 
who,  when  she  was  dug  out  of  the  ruin  of 
her  house  a  few  nights  later,  stood  up, 
blackened  but  uninjured,  and  looked 
about  her  and  yelled,  ''Now  they  can't  say 


NOTRS    ON    AN    ENGLISH     VISIT 


123 


there  are  no  bricks  for  me!"  .  .  .  The 
item  about  the  city's  supply  of  iircwood, 
which  was  buried  under  rubble  for  safety, 
but  was  set  into  a  huge  blaze  when  in- 
cendiary bombs  pierced  the  rubble — and 
now  is  stored  under  water  in  an  estuary. 
.  .  .  And  the  item  about  the  completeness 
of  destruction  wrought  at  the  center  of  a 
high-explosive  bomb  blast:  the  bomb,  I 
was  told,  reduces  everything  within  many 
feet  to  a  fine  blue-gray  dust;  when  a  big 
bomb  made  a  direct  hit  on  a  piano  shop 
the  salvagers  found  nothing  at  the  spot  but 
a  ten-foot  length  of  piano-wire — and  a 
layer,  over  everything,  of  that  blue-gray 
dust.   .  .  . 

THOSE  horrendous  days  are  receding 
into  history,  and  the  people  who  en- 
dured them,  in  Plymouth  and  elsewhere, 
wonder  now  how  they  got  through  the 
exhaustion  and  sleeplessness  and  menacing 
suspense  that  dogged  them  week  after 
week  and  month  after  month;  and  they 
feel  too,  one  sometimes  notes,  a  little  yearn- 
ing of  regret  for  the  exaltation  that  took 
hold  of  them  then:  the  exaltation  of  dis- 
covering that  all  of  them,  rich  and  poor, 
were  knit  together  by  the  sharing  of  labor 
and  peril.  Little  by  little  in  the  interven- 
ing years  that  close  bond  has  been  loos- 
ened. Of  course  this  had  to  happen:  the 
human  spirit  cannot  long  live  on  such  a 
plane.  But  the  bond  has  not  quite  been 
undone.  No  one  can  travel  by  train  in 
England  (to  select  one  test  which  the 
visitor  can  apply  himself  "against  his  pre- 
war experience)  without  noticing  that  the 
Englishman  who  withdraws  into  the 
traditional  frigid  reserve  has  become  a 
rarity.  There  is  as  much,  or  almost  as 
much,  give-and-take  of  conversation  as 
there  would  be  among  Americans  in  a 
similar  setting.  And  though  the  fiery 
resolve  to  remake  postwar  England  which 
accompanied  the  exaltation  of  1940-41 
has  likewise  weakened  as  the  peril  has 
receded  and  men  have  begun  mentally  to 
wrap  themselves  about  their  property, 
privileges,  and  settled  habits,  and  to  say, 
"At  any  rate  you  shan't  change  Mz>,"  the 
psychological  momentum  has  not  all  been 
spent.  Though  you  will  hear  people  say 
sadly,  ^'There's  been  a  great  letdown  since 
then,"  you  will  also  hear  them  add,  "But 


we  learned  something  that  we  won't  ever 
quite  forget." 

III.   German  Air  Raids,  1043  Style 

NOT  that  the  Germans  have  stopped 
raiding  England.  They  were  doing 
it  on  a  minor  scale  while  I  was  there. 
During  the  four  weeks  that  I  spent  in 
London  in  October  and  November  we  had 
something  like  fifteen  or  twenty  alerts 
(warnings  by  siren),  and  on  several  eve- 
nings German  planes  reached  the  city  and 
dropped  bombs.  The  official  news  of 
such  raids  takes  such  vague  and  well-worn 
forms — to  the  eflfect,  let  us  say,  that  the 
bombs  "caused  slight  damage  in  scattered 
residential  sections,  and  some  casualties" 
— that  you  may  have  wondered  just  what 
these  attacks  were  like  and  whether  there 
was  more  to  them  than  met  the  eye  in  the 
censored  dispatches.  So  I  propose  to  set 
down  just  what  I  saw  and  heard  of  them 
myself,  as  a  newcomer  intensely  curious  to 
see  all  I  could  of  the  show. 

The  evening  after  I  arrived  in  London 
— the  evening  of  Thursday,  October  7th — 
I  was  sitting  in  my  hotel  room  writing 
notes  when  the  air  raid  sirens  began  to 
howl.  I  didn't  pay  much  attention; 
they  had  howled  the  night  before,  just 
after  my  arrival,  and  nothing  more  had 
happened,  and  anyhow  I'd  been  told  that 
nobody  bothered  to  go  to  shelters  any 
more.  But  soon  I  began  to  hear  guns 
going  off — distant  ones  going  blip-blip 
and  nearer  ones  going  blunkh,  so  that  I 
could  feel  the  concussion — and  I  decided 
to  investigate.  So  I  went  through  the 
routine  of  turning  out  the  light,  groping 
my  way  to  a  window,  unbuttoning  the 
heavy  blackout  curtains  by  the  sense  of 
touch,  and  pulling  them  apart.  Then  I 
could  open  the  window  and  put  my  head 
out. 

The  position  of  my  room — on  the  eighth 
floor  of  a  nine-storey  hotel,  looking  out  on 
a  wide  court — gave  me  a  big  patch  of  sky 
to  see.  It  all  looked  very  peaceful  now. 
A  half-moon  was  shining  into  the  dark 
court.  The  sky  was  clear  and  glittering 
with  stars.  The  guns  were  still  going  off 
from  time  to  time,  and  when  they  did  I'd 
be  conscious  of  a  sudden  vague  general 
illumination,    something    like    heat-light- 


^VJRLINGAM^ 


124 


HARPER^S    MAGAZINE 


ning.  But  that  was  all.  Xot  a  plane 
could  I  see.  So  I  closed  the  window, 
buttoned  up  the  curtains  again  (folding 
them  over  carefully),  felt  my  way  to  the 
light  switch,  and  settled  do\s'n  to  work 
again. 

Later — maybe  half  an  hour  later — I  was 
conscious  that  for  some  time  I  had  been 
hearing  a  steady  drone  of  planes.  ''The 
RAF  going  to  Germany,"  I  decided,  and 
went  to  take  another  look.  The  drone  of 
planes  continued,  now  louder,  no\\'  fainter, 
and  this  time  the  long  fingers  of  search- 
lights were  moving  about  the  sky.  I 
wondered  whether  it  wasn't  a  confusing 
business  distinguishing  friend  from  foe 
when  both  the  RAF  and  the  Germans 
were  over  England,  and  how  the  anti- 
aircraft people  solved  the  confusion. 
Soon  the  searchlights  went  out,  the  stars 
shone  quietly  again,  and  I  went  back  to 
work. 

But  presently  the  guns  went  off  again, 
and  this  time  some  of  them  were  very  near 
by — they  jarred  the  building — and  I  took 
a  third  look;  and  this  time  what  I  sa\v 
was  spectacular.  Searchlight  beams  were 
moN^ing  all  over  the  sky,  and  now  and  then 
two  or  three  of  them  \vould  concentrate 
on  a  single  spot,  and  others  would  join 
them  till  ten  or  a  dozen  from  different 
directions  would  converge  together — and 
then,  in  their  combined  brilliance,  I  could 
see  a  plane  mo\'ing  along  like  a  bright 
star  transfixed  by  the  searchlight  beams. 
Then  the  guns,  near  and  far,  \vould  bang 
away,  and  just  below  and  about  that 
slowly  moving  star  Pd  see  little  flashes 
like  the  flashes  of  Fourth-of-July  sparklers 
— the  anti-aircraft  shells  exploding.  One 
plane  was  so  brightiy  illuminated  and 
seemed  so  low  that  I  could  distinctiy  see 
its  shape,  make  out  the  fuselage  and  wings. 
Whether  it  dropped  any  bombs  I  couldn't 
tell;  there  was  such  a  banging  and  flashing 
of  guns  that  my  untutored  ear  \vouldn*t 
have  been  able  to  distinguish  the  noise  of  a 
distant  bomb  explosion;  but  I  followed  the 
plane  with  my  eye  till  it  left  my  patch  of 
sky,  the  farther  searchlights  snapping  off 
as  it  moved  on,  and  new  beams  from 
ahead  of  it  picking  it  up  to  keep  it  always 
impaled  on  at  least  ten  beams. 

As  I  ^^•atched  the  thought  suddenly 
came    over    me.    "Tve    been    livine    for 


twenty-two  months  in  a  country  that  is  at 
war,  and  I  had  to  come  to  London  to  hear 
a  gun  fired  in  anger  or  see  a  plane  that  was 
actually  bent  on  dropping  a  bomb  on  me. 
Xo  wonder  Londoners  don't  forget  there's 
a  war  on  I'' 

Finally  things  quieted  down  and  at  last 
the  all-clear  sounded,  lea\*ing  me  wonder- 
ing whether  London  often  offered  a  show 
like  this  nowadays.  The  next  day  the 
newspapers  enhghtened  me.  It  had  been 
the  most  spectacular  raid  for  months. 
The  fact  that,  whether  by  accident  or 
design,  the  German  planes  had  come 
while  the  RAF  was  passing  over  London 
was  a  novelty.  '\\  few  bombs"'  had  been 
•'•'dropped  in  outlying  districts*'  and  there 
had  been  **some  casualties." 

On  subsequent  nights  there  were  other 
raids.  Once  I  was  at  a  stag  dinner  of 
some  fifteen  Englishmen  and  Americans 
when  the  sirens  went  off  and  the  guns 
muttered  and  thumped;  everybody  went 
on  discussing  Russian  political  policy  as 
if  nothing  at  all  were  happening.  Once 
or  rvvice  the  sirens  woke  me  up  with  their 
howling  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and 
Pd  put  on  an  overcoat  and  hang  out  the 
window.  Searchilights  poking  round;  the 
guns  going  off  and  giving  that  odd  heat- 
lightning  effect;  the  clatter  of  the  feet  of 
fire  watchers  belatedly  climbing  up  a  fire- 
escape  to  the  roof;  a  bang  or  two  so  loud 
that  it  might  have  been  a  bomb  landing — 
but  no  N-isible  planes.  Then  all  would 
tiu"n  quiet  again,  the  moon  shining  on  the 
\vall  opposite,  the  stars  shining,  everything 
calm.  One  week  the  sirens  sounded  sLx 
evenings  in  succession,  but  usually  there 
would  be  no  gunfire  or  searchlights  at  all. 

ONE  morning,  reading  in  the  papers 
that  ""a  block  of  luxury  flats  in  a  resi- 
dential area  of  London"  had  been  hit  and 
several  people  had  been  killed,  I  found  out 
from  an  all-knowing  friend  where  the 
bomb  had  landed  and  went  to  have  a 
look.  The  place  was  about  t^vo  miles 
from  my  hotel,  in  a  comfortable  apart- 
ment-house district.  When  I  got  there 
the  scene  was  about  what  you'd  see  in  an 
American  city  the  morning  after  a  two- 
alarm  fire.  In  front  of  one  five-storey 
apartment  house  in  the  middle  of  a  block 
half  the  street  had  been  roped  off.      On 


NOTES    ON    AN     ENCJMSM     VISH' 


125 


the  opposite  sidewalk  there  was  a  thinnish 
crowd  of  people,  with  a  policeman  asking 
them  to  keep  moving.  The  apartment 
house  that  had  been  hit  hadn't  been 
knocked  down;  the  walls  still  stood;  but  a 
gable  at  the  top  had  been  smashed,  every 
windowpane  of  course  was  gone,  and  one 
could  well  imagine  that  the  place  was  a 
mess  inside.  (Later  I  got  a  glimpse  of 
the  back  of  the  building  through  an  alley 
and  saw  that  the  rear  end  of  the  roof  was 
knocked  to  bits.) 

What  interested  me  most  was  the 
incidental  damage  all  about.  Opposite 
the  apartment  house  stood  some  four- 
storey  houses  set  back  from  the  street  with 
cement  walks  running  up  to  their  steps 
between  plots  of  grass.  Practically  every 
window  in  these  houses  had  been  smashed, 
leaving  jagged  projecting  edges  of  glass 
here  and  there,  and  piles  of  broken  glass 
on  the  window  sills,  and  window  shades 
ripped  and  hanging  askew.  Near  by 
every  plate-glass  store-front  had  been 
shattered,  and  I  heard  the  musical  sound 
of  men  shoveling  up  broken  glass  out  of 
the  street  into  trucks. 

Not  a  pretty  sight,  surely.  But  later  I 
got  out  a  big  map  of  London — to  con- 
firm my  impression  that  the  nearest  thing 
which  could  conceivably  be  regarded  as  a 
military  objective  was  some  suburban 
railroad  tracks  and  a  minor  railroad 
station  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away — and  I 
realized  what  a  pinprick  on  the  huge 
expanse  of  London  this  bomb  had  made, 
this  bomb  which  hadn't  even  knocked  a 
house  down. 

That  was  generally  true  of  the  raids  on 
London  during  October  and  early  Novem- 
ber. On  one  occasion,  as  American 
readers  learned  from  their  newspapers,  a 
bomb  hit  a  crowded  dance-hall;  the 
result  was  virtually  comparable  to  the  Co- 
coanut  Grove  horror  in  Boston.  But  that 
apparently  happened  by  blind  chance. 
Lives  were  lost  in  the  other  raids,  but 
compared  with  what  the  RAF  and  our 
Eighth  Air  Force  were  doing  meanwhile 
over  Germany,  these  sorties  of  a  few 
German  planes  at  a  time  over  London — 
dropping  their  bombs  apparently  just 
anywhere  before  cutting  for  the  Continent 
— were  mere  fleabites. 

People     seemed     annoyed     by     them. 


exasperated  by  the  inconvenience  they 
caused  and  by  occasionally  losing  a  little 
sleep  as  a  result  of  them;  and  since  they 
were  becoming  more  frequent  there  was 
an  increase  in  the  small  number  of  Lon- 
doners who  still  preferred  to  sleep  in  the 
uncomfortable-looking  metal  cots  ranged 
in  triple  tiers  along  the  inner  edges  of  the 
tube-station  platforms;  but  to  most  Lon- 
doners these  raids  seemed  to  be  regarded 
about  as  we  regard,  let  us  say,  heavy 
thunderstorms:  they  may  wake  us  up, 
and  we  know  that  somebody  somewhere 
may  be  struck,  but  we  stay  abed  and  think 
little  more  of  it. 

I'm  not  even  sure,  for  that  matter,  that 
the  raids  weren't  in  a  way  welcomed,  as 
visible  demonstrations  of  the  fact  that  the 
enemy's  air  power,  once  so  terrific,  was 
now  so  spent. 

IV.  The  English  Look  at  the  Americans 

No  American  who  visited  England,  as 
I  did,  at  the  invitation  of  the  British 
Ministry  of  Information,  could  very  well 
help  talking  and  thinking  a  good  deal 
about  Anglo-American  relations.  Natu- 
rally I  kept  my  eyes  and  ears  peeled 
for  evidence  of  British  attitudes  toward  the 
United  States.  The  following  observa- 
tions— some  at  first-hand,  others  from 
reliable  hearsay  or  other  indirect  evidence 
— I  set  down  categorically,  as  objectively 
as  I  can. 

1 .  The  American  visitor  is  struck  by  the 
cordiality  toward  him,  not  only  of  those 
official  hosts  whose  job  it  is,  in  a  sense,  to 
help  him  get  a  favorable  impression,  but 
of  all  manner  of  people  with  whom  he 
comes  in  accidental  contact.  I  have 
already  said  something  about  the  apparent 
relaxation  of  the  traditional  aloofness  of 
the  Englishman  one  meets  casually  on 
one's  travels.  I  should  add  that  the 
moment  it  was  discovered  I  was  an 
American  invariably  there  was  a  special 
effort  to  be  hospitably  helpful. 

The  examples  of  this  that  spring  to  my 
mind  were  each  so  tiny  as  items  of  evidence 
as  to  seem  hardly  worth  citing.  If  an 
English  lady  who  had  sat  opposite  me  in 
a  railway  carriage  as  I  talked  for  an  hour 
with  an  American  major  seized  the  first 
opportunity   to   put   in   a  friendly   word, 


126 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


saying  to  me  as  I  pulled  down  my  bag 
from  the  luggage-rack  on  arrival  at  Pad- 
dington,  "You  won't  forget  that  coat  of 
yours,  will  you?" — if  a  Welshman  on  the 
train  to  Cardiff  not  only  answered  my 
questions  fully,  but  volunteered  all  possible 
information  which  might  be  useful  to  me 
in  South  Wales — if  another  English  lady 
entered  into  absorbed  conversation  with 
me  on  a  two-hour  journey  through  the 
Midlands  and  ended  by  shyly  inviting  me 
to  come  and  visit  her  and  her  husband  in 
a  London  suburb — if  three  people  in  a 
first-class  carriage  from  Bristol  to  Plymouth 
took  a  personal  interest  in  my  predicament 
of  being  hungry  and  having  ignorantly 
neglected  to  purchase  something  unknown 
to  America,  a  ticket  for  a  sitting  in  the 
restaurant  car — the  evidence  in  each  case 
was  of  microscopic  size;  but  to  have 
experienced  such  manifestations  of  cor- 
diality again  and  again  and  again  perhaps 
adds  up  to  something.  Once  I  found 
myself  traveling  with  a  group  of  men  who 
made  some  amused  comments  on  the  five 
American  senators  which  might  have  been 
considered  derogatory.  When,  to  spare 
them  any  possible  embarrassment,  I  put 
in  a  word  to  show  that  I  was  an  American, 
their  friendly  reaction  was  instantaneous; 
and  as  if  feeling  that  they  might  have 
offended  me  they  pressed  cigarettes  upon 
me  at  every  opportunity  for  the  rest  of  the 
journey. 

I  think  too  of  another  small  incident 
which  I  found  rather  touching.  A  friend 
of  mine,  a  colonel  in  our  Air  Force,  was 
given  a  birthday  dinner  by  several  of  his 
fellow-officers  at  a  famous  old  village  inn 
— a  party  in  which  I  happened  to  be 
included.  When  we  arrived  at  the  inn, 
before  the  bar  opened,  the  sitting  room 
(all  chintz-covered  furniture  and  ancient 
paneling,  which  was  almost  completely 
obscured  by  hunting  prints  and  assorted 
antique  bric-a-brac)  was  icy  cold,  and  the 
few  English  guests  who  sat  there  seemed 
equally  icy  as  they  talked  among  them- 
selves in  whispers.  When  the  bar  opened 
and  we  eight  Americans  moved  into  it  I 
was  conscious  that  we  pretty  nearly 
monopolized  it  despite  our  polite  efforts  to 
give  room  to  others.  When  we  took  a 
table  at  dinner  it  seemed  to  me  that  we 
made  more  noise  than  all  the  other  twenty 


or  thirty  guests  put  together,  and  I 
wondered  if  we  might  seem  to  them 
unduly  boisterous.  But  when,  at  nine 
o'clock,  the  radio  in  the  dining  room  began 
the  BBC  news  program  and  led  off  with  an 
account  of  the  terrific  damage  done  in 
Germany  by  the  American  bomber  attack 
of  the  preceding  day,  the  whole  company 
turned  with  friendly  smiles  toward  my 
companions,  as  if  to  indicate  appreciation 
of  what  the  Air  Force  that  they  represented 
was  contributing;  and  when  a  little  later 
we  found  that  the  birthday  cake  was  much 
too  big  for  us  to  finish,  and  the  Colonel 
suggested  to  the  headwaiter  that  he  offer  it 
to  the  other  guests  in  the  room,  three 
Englishmen  from  different  tables  came  up 
to  him  in  turn  and  shyly  but  warmly 
expressed  their  thanks  and  congratulations 
and  good  wishes. 

2.  From  every  American  Air  Force 
officer  whom  I  asked  whether  the  RAF 
gave  satisfactory  co-operation  I  got  an 
enthusiastic  reply.  They  couldn't  hope 
for  anything  better.  They  got  everything 
they  asked  for,  and  more  too.  The 
mutual  working  relations  were  unbeliev- 
ably good.  Intelligence  data,  weather 
data,  and  all  manner  of  other  forms  of  aid 
were  provided  for  them  promptly,  effi- 
ciently, and  without  thought  of  who  would 
get  the  credit.  These  statements  were  not 
made  for  the  record  but  under  informal 
circumstances  in  which  I  could  count  on 
their  validity. 

3.  As  to  the  general  British  attitude 
toward  the  American  troops  in  England  I 
cannot  give  such  first-hand  evidence;  here 
I  must  rely  upon  a  variety  of  testimony  at 
second-  and  third-hand.  It  seems  to  add 
up  to  the  fact  that  the  English  people 
regard  the  American  soldiers  with  a 
mixture  of  friendliness  and  irritation. 
Partly  the  irritation  is  inevitable:  no 
foreign  troops  could  be  quartered  in  such 
large  numbers  in  any  small  country 
without  arousing  here  and  there  a  certain 
hostility  simply  because  of  their  strangely 
different  ways.  More  positively  it  can  be 
ascribed  to  the  fact  that  the  American 
soldiers  are  paid  much  more  than  the 
British  soldiers — are  in  fact  rolling  in 
spendthrift  affluence  by  most  British 
standards.  It  is  sometimes  annoying  to 
an  Englishman  to  see  American  soldiers 


NOTES    ON    AN    ENGLISH    VISIT 


127 


on  leave  drive  ofT  in  the  only  taxicabs 
available  at  a  London  station,  or  to  see 
them  throw  their  money  about  (again  by 
British  standards)  in  restaurants  and  bars. 
Then  too,  the  American  soldiers'  compar- 
ative wealth  helps  to  make  them  popular 
with  the  English  girls,  and  this  causes 
some  uneasiness  among  parents  and  some 
jealousy  among  English  rivals.  Their  suc- 
cess with  the  girls  is  heightened,  I  was  told, 
by  an  odd  circumstance:  American  movies 
are  so  popular  in  England  that  to  a  young 
English  girl  an  American  accent  is  roman- 
tic: the  sergeant  from  the  United  States 
sounds  to  them  deliciously  like  Clark 
Gable  or  Jimmy  Cagney. 

Another  cause  for  frequent  irritation  is 
the  fact  that  the  American  boys  drink 
harder,  are  noisier  whether  drunk  or  sober, 
and  are  faster  workers  with  the  girls  than 
most  English  boys.  In  the  early  days  of 
our  Air  Force  in  England  an  American 
colonel  appeared  before  a  group  of  English 
county  officials  to  discuss  mutual  relations 
between  the  American  troops  and  the 
English  community.  It  happened  that 
the  gathering  was  presided  over  by  the 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  the  county,  an  elderly 
and  fastidiously  aristocratic  peer.  "What 
you'd  better  understand  right  now,"  said 
the  American  colonel,  "is  that  our  drink- 
ing habits  are  different  from  yours. 
\Vhen  you  leave  work" — and  here  he 
pointed  his  finger  directly  at  the  presiding 
peer — "you  like  to  have  a  nip  of  beer  on 
the  way,  but  you're  headed  for  home  and 
the  missus.  But  when  the  American 
drinks  he  drinks  for  one  purpose  only — to 
get  drunk."  (The  peer  is  said  to  have 
cringed  a  little  at  the  description  of  his 
evening  routine.)  Of  course  the  contrast 
was  exaggerated,  but  there  was  some  truth 
in  it  nevertheless.  When  American  sol- 
diers by  the  thousands  overrun  London, 
and  Leicester  Square  swarms  with  them, 
most  Englishmen  wisely  understand  that 
men  sometimes  make  a  big  noise  by  way  of 
defiance  of  their  loneliness  in  a  strange 
community;  but  not  everyone  makes  such 
allowances. 

The  behavior  of  our  troops  in  England 
gets  better  and  better,  I  am  reliably  told. 
Certainly  the  commanding  officers  have 
done  their  best  to  make  the  showing 
creditable.     But    the    irritations    remain 


(along  with  the  manifest  English  desire  to 
be  hospitable)  and  in  some  respects 
apparently  increase. 

4.  As  for  the  general  attitude  of  the 
English  people  toward  the  United  States 
as  a  war  ally  and  potential  postwar  co- 
worker, I  can  generalize  only  tentatively. 
From  all  the  evidence,  direct  and  indirect, 
which  I  picked  up,  I  should  put  it  some- 
thing like  this:  the  English  people  are  so 
convinced  that  their  destiny  and  ours  are 
interlocked,  and  feel  so  instinctively  that 
basically  we  share  their  ruling  beliefs — 
their  zeal  for  fair  play,  their  hatred  of 
cruelty,  their  belief  in  personal  freedom, 
their  desire  to  live  and  let  live — that  they 
are  a  little  bewildered  when  they  discover 
evidences  of  suspicion  and  ill-will  among 
some  elements  of  American  opinion. 
When,  for  example,  the  five  senators 
sounded  off  on  various  alleged  British 
misuses  of  Lend-Lease  goods,  and  made 
other  charges  to  the  effect  that  wily 
British  officials  had  been  slipping  over  fast 
ones  on  us — and  these  criticisms  were 
headlined  in  the  British  press — the  average 
Englishman  was  puzzled.  Of  course  he 
couldn't  be  expected  to  understand  the 
ways  of  American  politics — the  fact  that  a 
Congressional  attack  on  the  British  may  be 
in  intent  primarily  an  attack  on  the 
Executive,  or  that  a  Republican  attack  on 
the  British  may  be  in  intent  primarily  an 
attack  on  Roosevelt  as  the  1944  candidate. 
All  the  Englishman  could  see  was  that 
some  American  officials  had  impugned 
England's  honesty  and  loyalty  as  an  ally; 
and  he  was  hurt. 

If  he  had  put  his  inner  thoughts  into 
words  they  might  have  run  somewhat  as 
follows:  "What  are  they  driving  at? 
We're  doing  our  best  to  win  this  war. 
We're  co-operating  all  we  can  with  our 
American  allies.  We  share  everything 
that's  available  for  war  uses — the  Middle 
East  oil  was  not  available  when  the 
Mediterranean  w^as  closed  and  shipping 
was  short — and  we  cheerfully  accept  the 
leadership  of  comparatively  inexperienced 
American  commanders-in-chief;  and  if  it 
so  happens  that  the  Americans  can 
contribute  more  munitions  than  we  can, 
and  this  runs  into  a  sum  of  money,  there 
are  other  things  that  we  can  contribute 
that  can't  be  measured  in  money:  the  fact 


128 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


that  we've  given  more  lives  than  the 
Americans  have  yet  had  to;  the  fact  that 
the  great  majority  of  the  troops  fighting  in 
Italy  to-day  are  British^  We  have  sol- 
emnly promised  to  go  ahead  with  the  war 
in  the  Far  East  after  Hitler  is  beaten,  and 
we  keep  our  promises.  Why  this  sus- 
picion of  us?  Incidentally,  we're  glad  to 
note  that  someone  thinks  our  officials  so 
devilishly  astute;  the  idea  is  new  to  us." 
Such  thoughts  were  not  spoken.  In 
fact,  feeling  (rightly  or  wrongly)  that  a 
Roosevelt  or  a  Hull  or  a  Willkie  was  in  a 
better  strategic  position  than  any  English- 
man to  talk  back  to  a  McCormick  or  an 
Ellender  about  British  policy,  the  British 
press  met  the  aspersions  of  the  five  senators 
and  other  American  critics  with  almost 
complete  editorial  silence.  But  the  sigh  of 
relief  throughout  England  at  the  satis- 
factory ending  of  the  Moscow  Conference 
was  almost  audible,  as  if  the  English  were 
saying,  "So  it's  all  right  after  all." 

To  THESE  tentative  observations  I  add 
two  more,  still  more  tentative: 
1.  Russia  is  hugely  popular  in  Britain 
to-day.  The  feeling  of  gratitude  to  the 
Russians — for  having,  at  such  a  vast 
sacrifice  in  lives,  made  victory  possible — is 
not  confined  to  the  Left.  It  is  shared  by 
large  numbers  of  Tories.  As  a  somewhat 
conservative  Englishman  said  to  me,  "I 
gather  that  in  the  United  States,  at  least 
until  very  recently,  most  people  felt  that 
they  had  to  preface  expressions  of  enthu- 
siasm for  Russia  by  saying,  'Of  course  I'm 
not  a  Communist,  but — .'  Nobody  has 
felt  it  necessary  to  do  that  here  for  a  very 
long  time."  I  am  told  that  the  feeling  is  so 
strong  among  many  British  workers,  espe- 
cially in  the  Midlands  and  Scotland,  that 
some  of  them  if  given  the  choice  might 
choose  Russia  as  an  ally  ahead  of  that  great 
conservative  power,  the  United  States. 
Presumably  not  many  would  actually  do 


so,  for  after  all  Russia  remains  a  very 
foreign  enigma  to  the  average  Englishman 
— who  has  perhaps  never  laid  eyes  upon  an 
actual  Russian.  Yet  the  present  admira- 
tion for  Russia  is  not  to  be  dismissed  lightly. 
An  American  newspaperman  in  London 
remarked  to  me  that  it  might  come  as  a 
shock  to  some  Americans  to  realize  that 
the  problem  of  Anglo-American  relations 
might  not  hinge  on  whether  we  would 
consent  to  play  ball  with  an  England 
whose  need  of  us  could  be  taken  for 
granted,  so  much  as  on  the  extent  to  which 
an  England  already  linked  to  Russia  by  a 
twenty-year  treaty,  and  resolved  to  work 
closely  with  Russia,  would  continue  to 
want  to  play  ball  with  a  remote  and  pos- 
sibly stand-offish  America.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  treaty  with  Russia  is  not  re- 
garded as  a  scrap  of  paper  in  Britain. 
Which  of  course  is  another  reason  why  the 
news  of  the  Moscow  Conference  was  so 
very  welcome. 

2.  A  severe  test  of  future  Anglo-Ameri- 
can friendship  will  come  when  Germany 
falls.  For  despite  the  English  promise 
to  join  wholeheartedly  in  the  offensive 
against  Japan — and  the  certainty  that  it 
will  be  lived  up  to — the  probability  is  that 
the  offensive  against  Japan  will,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  require  from  England 
chiefly  sea  power  and  air  power;  there 
may  not  be  practical  use  for  much  of  the 
British  Army  in  the  Far  East.  If  part  of 
the  British  Army  is  therefore  held  in 
Europe  or  demobilized,  it  will  be  easy  for 
those  Americans  who  look  with  suspicion 
or  dislike  upon  England  to  claim  that  the 
English  are  getting  out  of  the  war;  that 
they  are  taking  a  headstart  in  international 
trade  while  their  American  rivals  are 
occupied  elsewhere;  that  they  are  already 
reconstructing  their  country  while  we  are 
still  up  to  our  necks  in  the  war.  This 
possibility  is  something  to  think  about 
now,  for  the  time  may  not  be  long  distant. 


AURELIO:   THE    PEOPLE'S    CHOICE 


FERDINAND     I.  UNDBERG 


T 


\f  II  s^HE  foundations  of  the  Republic  are 
trembling.  Satan  in  all  his  dark 
majesty  has  ascended  the  bench  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  there  to  mingle  with  angels  of 
judicial  light — Steuer,  McCooey,  Unter- 
myer,  Hofstadter,  Pecora,  Golden,  et  al. 
He  has  assumed  the  judicial  robes  in  the 
person  of  short,  pudgy,  nervous,  mouselike 
Thomas  A.  Aurelio,  First  World  War 
overseas  veteran,  model  husband  and  fa- 
ther of  two  small  children,  deputy  assistant 
New  York  prosecutor  for  six  years,  as- 
sistant prosecutor  for  three  years,  city 
magistrate  for  twelve  years  (appointed  by 
Tammany  Mayor  Walker,  reappointed 
by  New  Deal  Mayor  La  Guardia),  and 
protege  of  the  notorious  Frank  Gostello. 

Of  the  gravity  of  the  situation  the 
citizenry  is  solemnly  assured  by  all  insti- 
tutionalized opinion,  from  heartsick  edi- 
torial writers,  clerics,  and  high-minded 
members  of  the  Bar  to  office-holding 
guardians  of  New  York  civic  virtue.  So 
there  is  no  guarantee  that  Aurelio  will  be 
permitted  to  dispense  justice  undisturbed. 
Big-league  lawyers  are  still  frantically 
leafing  through  the  lawbooks,  seeking  some 
technicality  with  which  to  lay  him  low. 
But  why  the  public  should  be  particu- 
larly uneasy  about  Aurelio's  incumbency 
in  view  of  circumstances  that  will  be  set 
forth  has  not  been  made  too  clear.  Many 
an  American  judge  other  than  Aurelio 
has  had  a  Gostello  in  his  life.     Few  have 


been  the  judges,  outside  a  distinguished 
handful,  not  beholden  for  their  eminence 
to  some  powerful  person  whose  interest  in 
the  law  was  other  than  scholarly.  But 
rarely  has  the  public,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
hapless  Aurelio,  been  practically  guaran- 
teed against  judicial  shenanigans  by  ad- 
vance knowledge  of  the  subterranean  con- 
nection. Aurelio,  with  his  secret  connec- 
tion revealed  and  admitted,  takes  office 
for  a  fourteen-year  term  (at  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  per  annum)  under  cir- 
cumstances that  might  conceivably  make 
him,  willy-nilly,  an  outstandingly  good 
judge. 

As  all  his  decisions  will  be  severely 
scrutinized — assuming  that  his  outraged 
critics  do  not  finally  dislodge  him  from  his 
hard-won  job — he  cannot  in  any  of  them 
show  favor,  or  even  the  suspicion  of  favor, 
to  any  special  interest,  political  boss,  or 
racketeer  without  provoking  an  horren- 
dous outcry.  With  the  crude  mechanism 
behind  his  elevation  revealed,  he  has  now 
the  incentive  of  self-interest  to  conduct 
himself  as  a  perfect  judge  and  to  stand  for 
reelection  in  1957,  God  willing,  on  an  un- 
blemished judicial  record.  Unlike  other 
judges,  he  cannot  even  occasionally  run 
with  the  hares  and  hunt  with  the  hounds. 
He  has  become,  in  short,  a  judge  who 
cannot  afford  to  cut  corners,  of  no  use  to 
forces  of  darkness,  which  must  always 
work  their  will  through  men  publicly 
accepted  as  moral  paragons. 


130 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


In  this  connection  it  will  be  remem- 
bered that  soon  after  his  appointment  to 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  1937 
Justice  Hugo  L.  Black  was  constrained  to 
admit,  which  he  did  with  uncommon 
dignity,  that  in  his  yourger  days  he  had 
been  a  member  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan — an 
enterprise  no  worse,  albeit  franker  about 
its  intentions,  than  a  number  of  less 
thoroughly  ventilated  pro  and  anti  ra- 
cial and  religious  organizations.  Scenting 
warm  blood,  the  forces  of  self-proclaimed 
civic  righteousness  from  coast  to  coast  were 
instantly  rampant.  The  sacrosanctity  of 
the  Republic,  for  which  the  sturdy  yeo- 
manry had  bled  and  died,  for  which  the 
Founding  Fathers  had  slaved,  was  al- 
legedly jeopardized.  Yet  Justice  Black, 
in  the  opinion  of  eminent  barristers  of 
various  political  shadings,  has  proved  him- 
self one  of  the  ablest  judges  ever  to  sit  on 
the  Supreme  Court. 

Here  we  have,  to  the  bafflement  of 
mechanistic  moralists,  good  emerging  from 
supposed  evil,  as  evil  often  emerges  from 
supposed  good.  The  w^orst  judges  and 
public  officials  have  invariably  enjoyed 
high  esteem  up  to  the  moment  they  were 
caught  in  the  act  of  betrayal.  Judging 
by  the  record,  the  most  dangerous  are 
those  surrounded  by  an  oppressive  atmos- 
phere of  unchallenged  virtue,  conjured  up 
by  frequent  ostentatious  appearances  in 
public  with  high  ecclesiastics  and  members 
of  their  families,  and  orgies  of  ineffectual 
ministration  to  the  lame,  the  halt,  and 
the  blind.  Tammany  Hall,  emulated  by 
every  political  machine  in  the  country, 
made  a  science  of  such  theatricals,  and 
for  years  its  successes  were  the  envy  of 
politicians  everywhere. 

A  Democrat,  Aurelio  started  out  for  his 
judgeship  bright-eyed  and  hopeful,  with 
the  endorsement  of  the  Republican  Party, 
gained  through  the  supposedly  nonpar- 
tisan method  of  nominating  judges  in  New- 
York — a  method  which  can  be  used  as  a 
screen  for  bipartisan  backroom  trafficking 
in  judicial  posts.  Under  this  system  the 
two  major  parties  share  available  ballot 
vacancies,  endorsing  each  other's  candi- 
dates. The  public  is  thereby  thought- 
fully relieved  of  exercising  any  choice. 
Voting  is  purely  formal.  Nominees  are 
automatically  elected. 


The  significance  of  the  Aurelio  case, 
however,  does  not  lie  in  any  revelation 
of  wrongdoing  or  intended  wrongdoing. 
The  point  is  that  the  case  provided  the 
public,  in  advance  of  any  wrongdoing, 
with  a  precise,  detailed,  clinical  picture  of 
machine  creation  of  judges.  As  such,  it 
will  long  remain  a  classic.  Even  corners 
such  as  remain  forever  dark  in  other 
similar  scandals  were  in  the  Aurelio  case 
beautifully  illuminated,  as  with  fluores- 
cent lighting.  And  the  light  fell  as 
much  on  other  participants  in  the  system, 
including  the  accusers,  as  on  Aurelio  and 
Costello. 

II 

THE  facts  of  the  case,  briefly,  are  these: 
On  August  23,  1943,  Aurelio  was 
nominated  by  the  Democratic  judicial 
convention  in  New  York  City,  his  nomina- 
tion being  presently  endorsed  by  the  Re- 
publicans. On  August  24th,  minions  of 
District  Attorney  Frank  S.  Hogan,  protege 
of  Governor  Thomas  E.  Dewey,  intercepted 
a  telephone  conversation  while  engaged  in 
wiretapping  under  a  recent  amendment 
to  the  New  York  criminal  code  that  per- 
mits such  sleight-of-hand  with  respect  to 
"notorious  characters."  The  conversa- 
tion was  between  Aurelio  and  a  hitherto 
shadowy  fifty-year-old  personage  named 
Frank  Costello,  convicted  gun-toter,  slot- 
machine  operator,  ex-bootlegger,  race- 
track gambler  and  bookmaker,  vendor  of 
kewpie  dolls  and  other  novelties,  occa- 
sional real-estate  operator,  and  comrade 
of  an  astonishingly  inclusive  number  of 
nationally  notorious  top-drawer  criminals. 
In  this  conversation,  initiated  by  Aurelio 
in  a  call  to  Costello's  private  number,  the 
judge-to-be  effusively  thanked  the  gun- 
toting  kewpie-doU  magnate  for  getting 
him  the  Democratic  nomination  and  as- 
sured him  of  his  ''undying  loyalty." 

As  his  own  testimony  subsequently  re- 
vealed, Costello  had  at  an  earlier  date 
played  an  important  role  in  crowning 
former  Congressman  Michael  J.  Kennedy 
with  the  leadership  of  Tammany  Hall. 
A  leader  of  Tammany  Hall  is  an  important 
figure;  he  has  a  party  status  in  Manhattan 
equivalent  to  that  of  Mayor  Frank  Hague, 
national  vice-chairman  of  the  Democratic 
Party,  in  Jersey  City,  and  Mayor  Edward 


AURELIO:    THE    PEOPLE'S    CHOICE 


131 


J.  Kelly  in  Chicago.  The  Aurclio  job, 
quite  patently,  was  only  an  incidental 
Costello  achievement,  more  by  way  of 
keeping  his  hand  limber  than  anything 
else;  for  the  New  York  Supreme  Court, 
despite  its  august  name,  is  no  more  im- 
portant than  a  county  court  in  other 
States.  At  the  beginning  of  1943  there 
were  listed  127  New  York  Supreme  Court 
judges,  including  the  Appellate  Division, 
.  and  of  these  about  70  sat  in  the  Greater 
New  York  City  area.  The  high  court  of 
New  York  State  is  the  seven-man  Court  of 
Appeals. 

Immediately  after  the  telltale  telephone 
conversation  Hogan  sternly  communicated 
to  Democratic  and  Republican  leaders 
his  high  resolve  of  making  it  public  unless 
Aurelio  withdrew  from  the  ticket.  When 
Aurelio,  summoned  by  Kennedy,  declined 
to  withdraw  on  the  entirely  reasonable 
ground  that  he  had  done  no  wrong,  Ho- 
gan rushed  the  story  to  the  new^spapers. 
Thereupon  ensued  frantic  efforts  by  elec- 
tion-minded Republican  and  Democratic 
politicians,  their  eyes  mainly  on  1944,  to 
be  the  first  to  slit  the  throat  of  the  be- 
wildered Aurelio.  It  was  clear  anyhow 
that  Aurelio  had  been  guilty  of  putting  too 
much  trust  in  the  invention  of  Alexander 
Graham  Bell.  Both  political  parties  "'re- 
pudiated" him,  after  failing  in  efforts  to 
have  him  legally  removed  from  the  ticket, 
even  though  all  he  had  really  done,  to 
date,  was  to  play  the  political  game 
according  to  a  standard  pattern.  Aurelio 
could  hardly  have  won  the  nomination  by 
appealing  to  Bishop  Manning,  Arturo 
Toscanini,  President  Conant  of  Harvard, 
Albert  Einstein,  Arthur  Compton,  Pilot 
Joe  Foss,  the  Mayo  brothers.  Chief  Justice 
Stone,  or  Pope  Pius.  Desiring  the  nomi- 
nation, he  had  to  go  where  it  was  obtain- 
able, and  Costello  was  the  man  sitting  at 
the  levers,  in  the  dim  background.  An 
interesting  point,  discreetly  ignored  in  the 
proceedings,  was  the  presumption  that 
other  judicial  candidates  on  the  ticket — 
before  their  nominations  were  cinched — 
also  had  to  proceed  through  vague  third 
parties  who,  whatever  else  they  might  be, 
were  hardly  saints. 

The  argument  to  be  sustained,  then,  is 
that  moral  indisrnation  was  misdirected 
when   it  focused   on  Aurelio.     It  is  the 


system  that  is  at  fault — and  the  cynical 
attitudes  of  amoral  professional  politicians 
which  make  the  system  possible. 

Aurelio  stuck  to  his  guns  throughout  and 
fought  for  his  hard-won  place,  which  he 
deserves  by  the  test  of  having  played  the 
political  game  exactly  as  most  of  his  official 
critics  play  it.  His  single  miscalculation 
was  that  he  did  not  play  it  carefully 
enough,  so  that  he  inevitably  stands  out  as 
a  gullible  sheep  among  wolves. 

After  failing  to  induce  Governor  Dewey 
to  go  to  the  extreme  of  calling  a  special 
session  of  the  Legislature  to  deal  with  the 
grave  question.  District  Attorney  Hogan 
obtained  the  intervention  of  the  Associa- 
tion of  the  Bar  of  the  City  of  New  York — 
loftiest  of  American  lawyers'  groups — and 
the  Association  instituted  disbarment  pro- 
ceedings before  Special  Referee  Charles 
B.  Sears,  a  highly  respected  retired  justice 
of  the  Court  of  Appeals,  who  was  named 
by  the  Supreme  Court  Appellate  Division. 
Sears  found — and  was  unanimously  sus- 
tained by  the  Appellate  Division — that  no 
offense  had  been  proved  against  Aurelio. 
His  wTitten  decision  was  bulletproof. 

Despite  the  best  efforts  of  Mr.  Hogan, 
no  wTongdoing  was  shown  in  the  pro- 
ceedings, nor  was  any  evidence  adduced 
that  wrongdoing  was  intended.  It  could 
not  even  be  shown  that  Aurelio  knew  of 
Costello's  extra-legal  enterprises.  For  all 
the  evidence  showed,  Costello,  anxious 
about  the  state  of  the  American  judiciary, 
had  decided  like  many  another  male- 
factor turned  Good  Samaritan  to  devote 
his  life  to  good  works,  and  particularly 
wanted  to  see  that  the  New  York  bench 
was  manned  by  judges  of  impeccable 
record.  Suspicion  there  well  might  be, 
to  be  sure,  that  Costello  intended  to  func- 
tion as  the  broker  between  the  under- 
world, so  useful  on  Election  Day,  and 
pseudo-respectable  officialdom,  in  which 
case  he  would  only  have  been  playing  a 
role  long  familiar  in  latter-day  municipal 
politics  in  New  York,  Chicago,  Philadel- 
phia, Boston,  Jersey  City,  Kansas  City, 
San  Francisco,  Los  Angeles,  Buffalo,  St. 
Louis,  New  Orleans,  and  other  American 
towns. 

As  there  was  nothing  very  novel  about 
the  basic  facts,  what  inspired  the  fearful 
animus  suddenly  brought  to  bear  against 


132 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Aurelio?  On  the  surface  the  motivation 
was  clear.  Public  officials  hastily  scurry- 
ing away  from  Aurelio  as  though  he  had 
contracted  the  plague;  ■^editorial  writers 
and  leading  members  of  the  bar  all  pro- 
claimed their  anxiety  lest  public  confi- 
dence in  the  bench  be  lessened. 

But  under  the  surface  two  other  con- 
siderable motivations  appeared. 

1.  The  professional  operators  in  both 
the  Republican  and  Democratic  parties 
unduly  magnified  the  case  as  a  stick  with 
which  to  beat  the  rival  party  in  anticipa- 
tion of  the  coming  important  national  elec- 
tions of  1944.  Whichever  party  enough 
indignant  voters  decided  was  responsible 
for  the  nefarious  situation  might,  it  ap- 
peared, lose  enough  votes  to  lose  valu- 
able New  York  State.  Although  Aure- 
lio was  a  Democrat,  the  contest  to  fix  the 
blame  ended  in  a  draw,  with  the  voters 
refreshingly  apathetic.  The  entire  busi- 
ness made  many  newspaper  readers  think, 
"This  is  where  I  came  in." 

2.  Institutional  moralists  evidently  found 
the  case  useful  in  that  it  enabled  them  to 
loose  the  floodgates  of  indignation  for  a 
change,  something  they  rarely  do  in  mat- 
ters concerning  more  substantial  and  ob- 
vious evidence  of  wrong.  The  news- 
papers, most  of  them  Republican  in  their 
sympathies,  screamed  for  Aurelio's  head 
and  commended  District  Attorney  Hogan 
as  a  St.  George.  Mayor  La  Guardia 
took  bows  right  and  left. 

Is  an  injustice  being  done  to  Mr.  Hogan 
by  suggesting  that  his  zeal  in  the  case  may 
have  stemmed  from  the  fact  that  Aurelio 
is  of  a  different  political  faction?  If  so,  he 
can  prove  it — by  revealing  the  mechanisms 
by  which  other  judges  have  been  created. 
And  he  can  get  his  leads  from  any  political 
reporter.  How  does  one  become  a  judge 
in  American  politics  anyhow?  Certainly 
not  by  praying  for  the  stork  or  taking 
vitamin  pills. 

Ill 

JUDGES  are  made,  mainly,  in  two  ways: 
1 .  They  are  initially  sponsored  by  one 
or  several  men,  not  necessarily  altru- 
ists, and  they  are  appointed  or  placed  on 
the  ticket  by  professional  politicians  de- 
sirous of  having  the  favor  of  the  sponsors, 
who  are  big  campaign  contributors.     The 


sponsors  are  invariably  and  without  ex- 
ception men  best  described  as  vendors. 
They  have  something  to  sell  in  the  public 
market  and  their  interest  in  the  law  is 
selfishly  pragmatic.  Aurelio  won  by  re- 
lying on  this  method. 

2.  They  have  no  special  sponsorship, 
and  are  men  of  outstanding  personal  and 
professional  merit,  but  are  put  on  the 
bench  by  professional  politicians  driven  to 
desperation  by  accidental  disclosures  about 
the  "regulars"  that  threaten  to  bring 
public  reprisals  at  the  polls. 

It  is  by  the  second  method,  a  two-party 
reflex  from  the  operation  of  the  first,  that 
most  of  our  good  judges  have  been  ob- 
tained. Accident  sometimes  operates  to 
elevate  other  good  men,  as  when  they  are 
"kicked  upstairs"  from  posts  where,  as 
hard-hitting  public  executive  officers,  they 
have  begun  to  step  on  someone's  toes  in 
matters  of  crucial  interest. 

The  principal  witnesses  in  the  Aurelio 
disbarment  proceedings  were  Aurelio,  Cos- 
tello,  and  Mayor  La  Guardia,  and  Costello 
was  by  far  the  most  interesting.  Among 
other  things,  it  transpired  that  he  had 
never  voted.  Born  in  Italy,  he  became 
an  American  citizen  in  1921  or  1922,  and 
in  1932  had  to  pay  back  income  taxes  of 
more  than  $600,000  to  New  York  State 
and  the  Federal  government. 

He  asserted  that,  in  addition  to  many 
crooks,  he  numbered  many  "fine,  big 
business  men"  among  his  friends.  Ap- 
parently unaware  of  the  unconscious  com- 
edy of  it.  District  Attorney  Hogan  per- 
mitted Costello  to  name  these  "fine,  big 
business  men"  in  camera,  off  the  record. 
As  Aurelio  was  being  condemned  for 
association  with  Costello,  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  Mr.  Hogan  can  justify  not  bring- 
ing to  light  the  business  men  numbered 
among  Costello's  friends.  But  the  one- 
sidedness  of  his  method  did  not  seem  to 
bother  Mr.  Hogan  nor,  for  that  matter, 
counsel  for  Aurelio,  who  chivalrously  as- 
sured Costello  he  would  not  "embarrass" 
him  by  insisting  on  having  the  names 
made  public. 

To  become  a  judge  in  New  York  City 
it  is  practically  essential  that  a  man  be  of 
Irish,  Italian,  or  Jewish  derivation,  and 
how  these  transcendent  considerations 
weigh  behind  the  scenes  was  brought  out 


I 


AURKLIO:    THE    PEOPLE'S    CHOICE 


133 


in  ihc  proceedings.  Costcllo  testified  that 
he  had  heard  Boss  Kennedy  was  consider- 
ing an  Irish  Cathohc  for  the  vacancy  rather 
than  an  Itahan,  but  Costcllo  was  able  to 
prevail  upon  him.  AureHo  had  been  in- 
Ibrnied,  however,  that  his  chances  would 
be  better  if  Congressman  Louis  J.  Capoz- 
zoli,  his  seat  eliminated  by  reapportion- 
ment, could  be  appointed  in  his  place  as  a 
magistrate,  an  Italian  replacing  an  Italian, 
and  he  went  to  ask  the  Mayor  to  take  ap- 
propriate action. 

"I  told  him  I  wouldn't  do  it,"  the 
Mayor  testified,  adding  with  hauteur:  "I 
told  him  that  if  Capozzoli  was  a  combina- 
tion of  John  Marshall  and  Holmes  and 
Cardozo  I  wouldn't  appoint  him  after 
such  a  request." 

Lest  this  testimony  leave  an  impression 
of  the  Mayor  as  too  much  of  a  People's 
Galahad,  it  should  be  noted  that  in  filling 
vacancies  in  the  Municipal  Court  of  New 
York  City  the  Mayor  has  appointed  "regu- 
lar fellows,"  such  as  Aurelio,  with  due 
consideration  for  whether  the  appointee 
was  Irish,  Italian,  Jewish,  Catholic,  or 
Protestant.  None  of  the  Mayor's  appoint- 
ees could  possibly  be  confused  with  Mar- 
shall, Holmes,  or  Cardozo. 

As  a  result  of  the  disclosures  about  Au- 
relio, disclosures  that  disclosed  very  little 
other  than  the  ways  of  machine  politics, 
the  Democrats  endorsed  Matthew  M. 
Levy,  candidate  of  the  American  Labor 
Party  and  of  the  hastily  improvised  Jus- 
tice and  Integrity  Party,  and  the  Republi- 
cans virtuously  put  up  George  Franken- 
thaler  as  the  nominee  of  the  Judiciary 
Party,  a  political  organization  brought  to 
a  hurried  birth  for  this  occasion.  While 
the  Democrats  were  hymning  the  sudden- 
ly discovered  virtues  of  Mr.  Levy,  the 
acidulous  Westbrook  Pegler,  perhaps  just 
to  show  how  it  could  be  done,  injected  a 
new  sour  note  into  the  campaign.  Levy, 
according  to  Pegler,  "was  pulled  out  of 
the  hat  by  Alex  Rose,  of  the  Hatmakers' 
Union,"  and  "was  counsel  for  New  York 
Local  306  of  the  notorious  Browne-Bioflf 
racket  of  the  movie  industry  from  August 
1,  1935,  to  December  31,  1941"  at  $18,000 
per  annum.  Levy,  according  to  Pegler, 
"lavished  praise  on  Browne  in  June,  1 940," 
by  which  time  "it  had  been  shown  that 
Bioff  was  an  old  brothel-keeper  who  had 


never  worked  and  he  was  in  jail."  Natu- 
rally enough,  Mr.  Levy's  supporters  werr- 
not  slow  in  calling  attention  to  the  fad 
that  Mr.  Levy  had  informed  the  Bar 
Association  that  he  had  had  no  connection 
with  Browne  and  BiolT  whatever.  And 
anyhow,  in  this  country  any  man,  no 
matter  who  he  is,  is  entitlc^d  to  the  advice 
of  counsel.  So  the  campaign  hitched 
along. 

On  election  day  the  voters,  pondering 
the  mess  and  moved  to  no  enthusiasm  by 
Frankenthaler,  who  they  suspected  had 
been  put  up  by  the  Republicans  chiefly 
because  he  was  a  Jew  and  therefore, 
theoretically,  an  effective  counter  to 
Levy,  proceeded  to  elect  Aurelio,  who  ran 
last  of  all  the  winners.  The  combined 
vote  for  Levy  and  Frankenthaler  exceeded 
Aurelio's,  and  had  the  two  major  parties 
been  able  to  agree  on  one  candidate 
Aurelio  would  have  been  defeated. 

Inadvertently  emphasizing  what  all  the 
excitement  was  about.  Mayor  La  Guardia 
after  the  election  accused  the  Republicans 
of  having  really  elected  Aurelio  by  insist- 
ing upon  splitting  the  anti-Aurelio  vote, 
a  grave  consideration  which  New  York 
voters  will  have  to  carry  in  mind  next  fall 
when  it  comes  to  electing  a  President. 
The  wrathful  reaction  of  the  Republicans 
showed  that  they  attached  considerable 
weight  to  the  charge,  and  charges  and 
countercharges  arising  out  of  the  Aurelio 
case  will  no  doubt  be  heard  throughout 
1944. 

IV 

A  URELio,  if  allowed  to  fill  out  his  term, 
j[\^  will  probably  be  a  good  judge.  In- 
deed, hereafter  he  can  do  no  other  than 
devote  himself  to  good  works.  And  he 
will  be  a  good  judge  in  a  State  where  the 
judges  are  better,  despite  frequent  un- 
savory disclosures,  than  in  other  States 
where  two-party  rivalry  is  not  so  evenly 
balanced  nor  the  stakes  so  great. 

So  far  as  fresh  material  was  concerned, 
the  most  pertinent  testimony  was  given 
by  handsome  young  Mrs.  Aurelio,  herself 
a  Tammany  district  co-leader,  who  re- 
lated she  had  once  met  Mrs.  Costcllo  and 
found  her  "very  refined,  very  well  dressed, 
neat,  cultured." 

Of  her  husband,  she  said:  "He's  a  God- 


134 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


fearing  man,  a  good  father,  and  an  excel- 
lent husband.  He's  always  home  nights. 
He's  an  excellent  man.  I  don't  think  he 
could  be  better."  The  truth  of  the  matter 
was  that  Aurelio's  record  as  a  magistrate 
had  been  good,  but  that  was  a  fact  that 
nobody  bothered  about  while  the  uproar 
was  at  its  height. 

With  this  assurance  the  country  can 
prepare  to  discover  in  Mr.  Justice  Aurelio 
a  good  judge.  He  will  never,  like  United 
States  Circuit  Court  Judge  Martin  T. 
Manton,  now  an  ex-convict,  be  in  a 
position  to  sell  judicial  favors.  Nor  is  he 
likely,  after  the  tribulations  he  has  ex- 
perienced, to  be  so  hard  of  heart  as 
County  Judge  Peter  J.  Brancato  of  Brook- 
lyn, who  last  October  gave  the  fourteen- 
year-old  Herbert  Downie  a  sentence  of 
from  fifty  years  to  life  for  murder.  In 
imposing  sentence  Judge  Brancato  re- 
gretted the  passing  of  the  old  West  and 
the  frontier  days  when  summary  judg- 
ments were  possible!  Nor  is  Aurelio 
likely  to  find  himself  rebuked  as  Judge 
Freschi  was  by  the  Court  of  Appeals  when 
the  Court  reviewed  the  case  of  a  non- 


religious  conscientious  objector.  Judge 
Freschi  had  bawled  the  man  out,  accused 
him  of  cowardice,  and  denounced  him 
before  a  court  full  of  people;  t*he  Court  of 
Appeals  sternly  reproved  the  Judge. 

No,  if  there  is  anything  at  all  in  the 
science  of  psychology  Mr.  Justice  Aurelio 
should  make  a  judge  who,  shunning  all 
eccentricities  of  behavior  or  expression, 
comes  to  his  decisions  with  humility  and 
care.  Who  knows  but  what  some  future 
clear-visioned  President,  hearing  about 
his  lonely  work  in  the  vineyards  of  justice, 
may  not  some  day  find  him  fit  material  for 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States? 
The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  Aurelio, 
unlike  many  other  judges,  is  now  com- 
pletely free.  He  owes  nothing  to  any- 
body. Both  parties  repudiated  him 
before  election.  If  Costello  had  any  hopes 
that  Aurelio  would  remember  him  in  time 
of  need,  those  hopes  were  canceled  when 
Costello's  support  was  turned  into  a 
liability.  Aurelio  ascends  the  bench  with- 
out hostages  to  fortune.  Sweet  are  the 
uses  of  adversity  ...  a  Daniel  come  to 
judgment. 


A  Badly  Needed  Definition 


DEMOCRACY  is  not  a  lovely  thing.  It  has  about  as  much  glamour 
attaching  to  it  as  one  finds  among  the  politicians  who  make  of 
democracy  a  profession.  But  there  is  hope  in  it  for  one  good  and 
sufficient  reason:  it  is  not  abstract,  not  doctrinal.  It  avoids  dogmatiz- 
ing itself.  It  is  not  so  much  tolerant  (an  overrated  virtue)  as  content 
with  just  enough  force  to  carry  through  the  business  in  hand.  It  pro- 
ceeds with  the  most  lavish  expenditure  of  social  means  to  attain  half- 
thought-out  ends.  It  is  vulnerable  in  detail,  amorphous  in  organiza- 
tion, prone  to  waste,  unauthoritative  and  insecure,  but  since  it  never 
wholly  commits  itself  it  can  never  commit  the  final  act;  it  cannot  destroy 
itself.  It  can  make  every  mistake  but  suicide.  This  alone,  and  it  is 
enough,  lies  outside  its  sco]^q. ^^^ Asher  Brynes 


RACE     CLASH 


THOMAS    SANCTON 


IN  THE  early  fall  of  1936  I  was  involved 
in  a  race  clash  in  New  Orleans.  The 
experience  drove  home  to  me  the 
utter  immorality  of  the  Southern  caste 
system.  I  was  one  of  the  offending  parties 
in  the  incident  and  for  a  long  time  I 
could  not  remember  this  fact  without 
feeling  a  sense  of  shame.  But  now  I  am 
glad  that  it  happened.  The  whole  thing 
took  place  in  a  brief  and  dangerous  half 
hour,  and  it  taught  me  something  about 
my  Southern  world  that  I  could  not  have 
found  in  a  book. 

This  incident  occurred  at  the  end  of  a 
day  which  had  begun  like  a  youthful 
idyll.  The  time  was  late  September.  It 
was  a  cool,  bright  autumn  day  and  white- 
caps  were  gleaming  on  Lake  Pontchar- 
train.  A  party  of  eight  of  my  friends  had 
met  at  a  yacht  club  four  miles  above  the 
city  to  go  sailing.  The  club  kept  a  fleet 
of  little  sloops  which  were  rented  to  mem- 
bers for  a  dollar  a  day.  We  had  done 
much  sailing  that  summer.  The  feel  of 
the  thing  was  in  us.  We  were  tanned  and 
our  khaki  trousers  and  dungarees  were 
clean  and  faded.  There  were  three  girls 
with  us,  gay  and  beautiful  in  hair  ribbons 
and  lipstick  and  gaudy  sweaters.  Most 
of  us  had  some  connection  with  the  uni- 
versity or  the  big  morning  newspaper 
and  two  of  the  girls  were  still  attending 
school.  Two  older  reporters  with  us  had 
come  along  for  a  romp. 

Almost  every  week-end  that  summer  we 


had  plowed  up  and  down  a  staked-off 
racing  course,  whooping  and  arguing  over 
two  or  three  hundred  yards  of  open  water. 
After  the  race  we  took  a  swim  in  the  lake 
and  went  to  the  Sail  Inn  tavern  for  drinks. 

The  tavern  was  a  weather-beaten  shack 
equipped  with  a  bar,  a  music  box,  a 
couple  of  tables,  and  a  carton  or  two  of 
cigarettes.  It  was  closer  to  the  boat  pen 
than  the  yacht  club  was,  and  it  did  a 
bigger  business.  The  tavern  was  a  great 
place  to  drink  a  beer  or  two  between 
sailing  and  dinnertime.  It  was  a  bad 
place  to  be  marooned  for  the  length  of  a 
fine  autumn  day.     We  were  to  learn  that. 

A  high  wind  was  blowing  and  the  yacht 
club  manager  had  ruled  out  sailing  for 
the  morning.  There  was  not  a  cloud  in 
the  sky,  but  the  wind  gage  had  climbed  to 
the  danger  point.  Lake  Pontchartrain  is 
peculiar.  Its  prevailing  winds  are  er- 
ratic. We  were  always  getting  becalmed 
beneath  a  raw  semitropical  sun. 

Against  this  eventuality  we  usually  car- 
ried aboard  a  bucket  of  ice  and  a  bottle 
of  rum,  or  beer.  We  never  regarded 
ourselves  as  heavy  drinkers.  But  during 
the  1930's  in  New  Orleans  drinking  was  a 
part  of  life.  We  were  restless  and  not 
very  happy.  Huey  Long's  thieves  were 
plundering  our  city.  Our  decade  was 
drifting  inexorably  toward  the  war.  An 
evil,  persistent  wind  blew  into  our  faces, 
a  wind  from  hell,  and  it  withered  the 
good  things  that  were  in  us.     We  ducked 


136 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


into  the  taverns  of  our  spirit  and  there, 
pouring  tall  ones,  we  waited. 

It  was  nine  or  ten  in  the  morning  when 
we  came  out  from  the  city.  There  was  a 
chance  that  the  noon  sun  would  make  the 
wind  fall  off,  and  then  \/e  could  sail.  So 
we  went  into  the  tavern  for  a  drink. 
Someone  took  our  little  bottle  of  rum  and 
made  drinks  for  the  eight  of  us.  It  wasn't 
much  to  go  round.  Yet  as  we  held  the 
icy  liquor  to  the  light  there  was  amber 
fire  in  it  and  on  this  September  day  we 
were  like  tinder.  A  fresh  wind  blew 
through  the  open  tavern  door  and  outside 
we  could  see  the  whitecaps  and  the  gulls. 
The  rigging  of  the  big  boats  cracked  against 
the  hollow  masts.  The  salt  smell  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  was  in  the  air.  There  is 
an  unforgettable  quality  about  autumn 
days  in  the  coastal  South. 

The  wind  blew  so  strong  it  became  a 
joke  to  us.  Someone  would  say,  "Let  us 
go  feel  of  the  wind,"  and  it  began  to  seem 
very  funny.  We  translated  it  into  French 
and  said  it.  We  were  feeling  the  warmth 
and  intimacy  of  working  in  the  same  of- 
fice, of  having  gone  to  school  together. 
The  girls  were  chattering  and  lovely.  We 
teased  them  about  all  kinds  of  things. 
Lunchtime  came  and  went.  We  de- 
voured a  sandwich  in  the  tavern  and  went 
outside  to  feel  of  the  wind  again.  But  now 
we  had  almost  forgotten  that  we  had  come 
to  sail. 

Our  party  developed  into  a  real  New 
Orleans  breakdown.  We  kept  the  music 
box  fed  with  nickels,  beating  out  the  jazz 
that  had  grown  up  almost  within  our 
memories  in  other  taverns  of  our  city. 
The  round  white  Milneburg  lighthouse, 
a  famous  landmark,  stood  in  view  only  a 
short  distance  down  the  lake  shore.  The 
place  had  been  given  a  kind  of  immor- 
tality (and  a  different  spelling)  in  one  of  the 
earliest  jazz  classics,  "The  Milenbergjoys." 
Years  ago  there  was  a  cheap  resort  town 
there,  a  place  of  bathhouses,  fishing  camps, 
and  dancing  pavilions,  where  the  New 
Orleans  Italians  and  Irish  and  boogalie 
French  had  gone  to  hold  their  picnics  and 
fish  frys;  had  caught  heaping  baskets  of 
shrimp  and  crabs  and  brewed  their  fra- 
grant gumbo  soup;  had  got  sunburned, 
drowned,  drunk,  quarrelsome  and  mur- 
dered; and  had  called  for  madder  music. 


It  was  out  of  their  hunger  for  laughing, 
gibbering  horns  and  clarinets  that  New 
Orleans  jazz  was  born.  There  is  some- 
thing in  the  air  there. 

So  we  danced,  sang,  laughed,  and  drank 
through  all  that  day.  At  last  we  saw  by 
the  tavern  clock  that  it  was  four  in  the 
afternoon,  and  three  of  us  who  had  to  go 
to  work  that  night  on  the  newspaper  arose 
and  declared  the  party  at  an  end.  I  took 
a  look  at  our  rum  bottles.  There  were  six 
of  them.  The  clear  air  blowing  through 
the  tavern,  the  absence  of  cigarette  smoke, 
the  atmosphere  of  relaxation  had  kept  us 
clearheaded;  yet  it  came  over  me  that  we 
must  be  faced  with  some  sort  of  retribu- 
tion. 

II 

FOUR  of  us  got  into  a  coup^  owned  by  a 
young  business  man  named  Carter. 
We  sped  down  the  black-topped  road  to- 
ward the  residential  section  of  the  city. 
The  road  paralleled  a  long  navigation 
canal  which  had  been  dug  in  Reconstruc- 
tion days  from  the  lake  to  the  heart  of 
the  city.  Four  miles  inland  from  the 
yacht  club  the  canal  entered  a  fringe  of 
the  city's  residential  section.  Here  the 
road  skirted  the  New  Orleans  country  club 
and  its  lush  green  golf  course.  There  was 
a  short  cut  from  the  highway  at  the  coun- 
try club  which  we  used  to  drive  on,  a 
narrow  street  which  cut  through  a  scrag- 
gly  patch  of  Negro  houses,  crossed  a  drain- 
age canal,  and  led  through  a  mile  of  weed- 
grown  barren  lots  to  one  of  the  principal 
streets  of  the  uptown  residential  area. 

The  front  seat  of  the  coup^  was  badly 
crowded.  There  were  Carter,  Jeff  (one 
of  the  older  reporters),  ine,  and  one  of 
the  girls.  We  were  still  feeling  buoyant. 
Carter  turned  into  the  short  cut  and 
shouted  to  friends  sitting  in  parked  au- 
tomobiles by  the  swimming  pool.  We 
passed  through  the  four  or  five  blocks  of 
Negro  houses.  They  were  tucked  away 
along  the  banks  of  the  drainage  canal, 
back  in  the  weeds,  back  in  a  bald  and  de- 
serted section  of  the  city  where  no  one 
else  particularly  wanted  to  live. 

As  we  passed  through  the  Negro  section 
and  entered  the  open  road  again  all  of  us 
sighted  down  it  instinctively.  It  was  a 
narrow,  dangerous  road.     Two  or  three 


RACE     CLASH 


137 


hmidrrcl  y;irds  ahead,  a  red  delivery 
truck  drove  in  from  a  dusty  side  street. 
In  one  voice  wc  shouted  to  Carter.  We 
had  been  singing  a  ballad  about  a  clam 
digger.  Carter  shook  his  head  from  side 
to  side  and  continued  to  shout  the  words. 
A  reckless  smile  suddenly  illuminated  his 
face.  He  turned  quickly  to  the  left  side 
of  the  road  and  shouted,  "Out  of  my 
way!"  and  sped  at  the  oncoming  truck. 
Jeff  and  I  lunged  for  the  wheel.  Carter 
blocked  us  with  his  shoulder,  laughing 
like  a  maniac.  The  big  red  truck  loomed 
up  before  us.  Suddenly  I  knew  that  six 
bottles  of  rum  had  done  their  work. 

Carter  was  handsome,  shrewd,  and 
reckless,  and  on  this  September  day  he  was 
well  cast  for  the  part  he  played. 

The  truck  was  driven  by  a  Negro  youth. 
He  jammed  on  the  brakes  and  brought 
the  machine  to  a  grinding  stop  and  sat 
there,  in  a  moment  of  terror  I  suppose, 
wondering  if  this  fool  of  a  white  man  was 
crashing  deliberately  head  on.  But  no. 
At  the  last  moment  our  brakes  and  tires 
shrieked  and  the  shiny  chromium  bumper 
slid  to  a  stop  two  feet  from  the  motionless 
truck.  Carter  leaned  out  of  the  window 
and  shouted  again,  "Out  of  my  way!" 

In  my  mind's  eye  I  can  still  see  this 
Negro.  He  wore  a  blue  denim  shirt  with 
sleeves  rolled  above  the  elbows,  exposing 
a  pair  of  sturdy  forearms.  A  black  driv- 
er's cap  with  his  trucking  license  sat  on 
the  back  of  his  head.  On  his  smooth 
chocolate  face  there  was  a  look  of  humilia- 
tion and  exasperation—and  a  wry  ac- 
ceptance of  the  event.  Three  centuries  of 
slavery  spoke  to  him  in  his  blood.  He  sat 
there  for  a  moment  with  a  pained  smile 
on  his  face.  Garter  kept  whistling  omi- 
nously and  jerking  his  thumb  to  the  other 
side  of  the  road.  Finally  the  Negro  shifted 
to  reverse  and  began  to  back  slowly  away 
to  drive  round  us. 

Ordinarily  Carter  would  have  let  it  go 
at  that.  But  a  devil  had  got  inside  him. 
This  gag  had  to  be  played  out  to  its  wild, 
unpredictable  end.  He  slammed  the  gears 
of  his  powerful  automobile  and  followed 
the  retreating  truck.  He  crashed  into  the 
bumper  and  stepped  on  the  gas,  pushing 
the  truck  ahead  of  him  down  the  road. 
The  Negro  applied  brakes.  The  two 
machines  struggled  to  a  stop. 


"Get  it  out  of  the  way,"  Carter  cried, 
warming  to  the  game.  He  stepped  on  the 
throttle  again,  the  two  bumpers  groaned 
together,  and  the  truck  tires  chirped  and 
skidded  ten  feet  down  the  road. 

"Get  it  out  the  way !     Out  of  my  way!" 

Then  the  inevitable  happened.  The 
day  reached  a  treacherous  turning,  and 
suddenly  the  imminence  of  violence  and 
murder  hung  in  the  late  red  sunlight. 

The  groaning  of  motors  had  attracted 
a  little  group  of  Negroes,  men  and  women, 
who  came  walking  across  the  open  lots 
from  the  houses  back  by  the  canal.  Carter 
had  forgotten  that  there  was  not  another 
white  man  within  half  a  mile  of  us.  The 
Negroes  stood  on  the  sidewalk  watching 
the  truck  and  coupe  buck  it  out.  At 
first  they  stood  in  silence,  beholding  one 
more  scene  of  an  immemorial  humiliation. 
/\t  first  there  had  been  only  two,  or  three, 
or  five,  and  we  in  the  car  had  hardly  been 
conscious  of  their  presence.  Suddenly 
there  were  more — twenty,  perhaps  thirty 
— and  they  were  staring  at  us  and  mutter- 
ing. 

In  another  moment  Carter  doubtless 
would  have  backed,  turned  past  the  truck 
on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  road  and 
driven  off;  and  we  should  have  talked 
about  the  incident  for  ten  minutes  and 
forgotten  it  forever.  But  suddenly  a  tall, 
bony,  mean-faced  Negro  left  the  crowed 
and  ran  round  the  truck.  The  truck  had 
no  doors.  He  jumped  on  the  running 
board  and  gave  the  chocolate-faced  boy 
a  contemptuous  shove.  The  boy  slid  over 
instantly  and  a  different  kind  of  man 
was  at  the  wheel.  A  third  Negro  youth 
jumped  on  the  running  board  and  sat 
beside  them. 

The  driver  ripped  the  gearshift  into 
first  and  set  the  big  Mack  engine  thun- 
dering. Carter  did  the  same  and  the 
bumpers  smashed  and  ground  together. 
Under  this  tremendous  pressure  some- 
thing had  to  give.  The  front  of  Carter's 
lighter  coupe  lifted  for  a  moment  off  the 
street  and  our  bumper  slid  over  the  truck's 
thick,  beveled  bumper  and  locked  behind 
two  crosspins.  The  truck  bumper  ate 
into  his  grillwork  and  crumpled  his 
fenders.  Suddenly,  with  a  feeling  of  dis- 
gust and  fear,  I  realized  that  our  car  was 
trapped. 


138 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Carter  pushed  back  at  the  truck  for  a 
few  minutes,  though  there  was  no  longer 
any  point  to  it.  The  truck  was  fighting 
back,  and  it  had  the  power.  The  Negroes 
were  fighting  back,  and  they  had  the 
numbers.  Our  tires  began  to  burn  on  the 
asphalt.  Finally  he  locked  the  emergency 
brake  and  it  held.  The  machines  came 
to  a  halt,  like  exhausted  stags. 

"God  damn!^^  he  muttered  in  disgust. 
We  sat  there  for  a  moment  in  silence. 
The  girl  with  us  had  courage.  She  said 
nothing,  knowing  we  should  have  to  work 
our  way  out  of  this  jam  as  best  we  could. 
Carter  got  out  of  the  car  on  one  side  and  I 
on  the  other.  If  the  three  men  in  the 
truck  had  been  white  we  should  have  ex- 
pected to  fight  instantly.  And  what  we 
would  not  have  given  then  merely  to  be 
faced  with  the  necessity  of  slugging  it  out 
with  two  or  three  husky  Italian  boys 
driving  a  produce  truck  from  the  farming 
section.  We  would  have  been  licked  no 
doubt,  but  a  fist  fight  holds  no  terrors  for 
the  young.  But  we  were  faced  with  some- 
thing different — a  race  clash — the  South- 
ern nightmare.  White  men  and  black 
men  fight  to  kill.  They  use  weapons:  a 
stick  of  firewood,  a  garden  spade,  a  heavy 
wrench,  a  knife.  Suddenly  I  sensed  the 
bitter  knowledge  that  a  thousand  Negroes 
have  died  with — the  feeling  of  being 
outnumbered. 

And  yet  we  were  white  men  and  this 
was  still  an  advantage.  It  meant  that  a 
simple  fist  fight  was  impossible;  but  it 
meant  also  we  were  untouchable  so  long 
as  the  Negroes  did  not  lose  their  heads. 
For  death  was  in  the  offing  for  them  too. 
They  had  only  to  plunge  a  knife  or  wield 
a  jack  handle,  and  there  were  six  feet  of 
hungry  rope  waiting  in  the  Parish  Prison. 
They  had  not  yet  forgotten  that. 

There  we  stood  on  this  dirty  New 
Orleans  back  street,  only  a  mile  from  our 
homes,  but  in  the  heart  of  a  savage  land. 
A  caste  system  had  marooned  this  Negro 
settlement  in  white  society.  Now  we  were 
captives.  But  still  we  were  white.  It  was 
a  fearful  thing  to  injure  us.  Scattered 
across  the  city  were  jails  and  firearms, 
nightsticks  and  shotguns,  and  all  of  it  in 
the  hands  of  white  policemen. 

Carter  and  I  looked  at  the  bumpers. 
The  Negroes  got  out  of  the  truck  and 


watched  us.  I  could  see  a  gleam  of  burn- 
ing excitement  in  the  tall  black  driver's 
face.  He  was  the  one  to  watch.  He  was 
almost  past  the  point  of  caring  what  hap- 
pened.    I  was  afraid  of  him. 

Carter  looked  at  the  Negroes  and  said  in 
an  even  voice,  "Let's  lift  my  bumper  off." 

"White    son-of-a-bitch!"     The    Negro 
choked  with  rage. 

"Nigger  bastard!     Wait  till  the  cops 
come." 

The  Negro  made  no  move.  He  stood 
looking  at  Carter.  Behind  me,  I  could 
hear  Jeff  opening  the  back  compartment 
of  the  coupe.  He  was  one  of  the  older 
reporters,  almost  middle-aged,  slender, 
tense.  Heavy  tools  rattled.  Jeff  got  in 
the  car  again  and  I  heard  the  clunk  of 
steel  as  he  put  them  on  the  floor.  He  had 
got  our  weapons.  In  my  mind's  eye  I 
could  see  them  lying  on  the  floor  of  the 
car:  heavy  wrenches,  a  hammer,  a  jack 
handle,  a  tire  lever.  I  was  afraid  of  the 
Negro.  Man  to  man,  no;  but  this  was 
something  different.  I  could  see  he  was 
trying  to  make  up  his  mind.  What  was 
passing  behind  those  eyes?  Was  he  trying 
to  decide  whether  to  go  for  his  knife? 
He  was  standing  on  my  side  of  the  auto- 
mobile. I  had  it  figured  how  to  get  a 
wrench  in  my  hand.  It  would  take  him  a 
few  seconds  to  fumble  in  his  pocket.  Jeff 
had  the  door  open.  Before  the  Negro  had 
his  knife  out  I  would  have  a  plump,  mur- 
derous wrench  in  my  hand.  So  would 
JefT.  So  would  Carter.  Then  I  wouldn't 
be  afraid  any  more.  Then  there  would  be 
only  one  thing  left  in  life  for  me  to  do: 
bring  that  iron  crashing  on  Negro  skulls. 

Ill  ^ 

1WENT  back  to  the  car.  Jeff  had  an 
unconcerned  look  on  his  face.  He 
looked  and  spoke  as  though  we  were  still 
driving  down  the  highway. 

"You'd  better  call  the  cops,"  I  said. 
"They  know  your  name."  He  was  a 
well-known  reporter. 

"Where?" 

"We  passed  a  little  store  a  few  blocks 
back." 

He  thought  for  a  few  moments  and  then 
grunted  something  indistinguishable.  I 
knew  he  didn't  want  to  give  the  police  his 


RACE    CLASH 


139 


name.  They  would  have  something  on 
him.  Finally  he  left  and  was  gone  ten 
minutes.  Carter  leaned  on  the  opposite 
door  and  we  talked  a  little  with  the  girl. 
I  looked  at  the  tall  Negro's  face.  He  had 
heard  me  ask  Jefi'  to  call  the  police.  The 
word  hung  heavy  in  the  air. 

Jeff  came  back  and  sat  in  the  car. 
"They're  coming,"  he  said  in  a  loud  voice. 
There  was  a  police  station  half  a  mile  back 
toward  the  lake,  across  the  boat  canal. 
Several  Negroes  left  the  crowd  and  walked 
slowly  through  the  weeds,  pausing  to  look 
back  over  their  shoulders.  We  waited 
for  a  long  time;  the  police  did  not  come. 
Carter  and  I  went  to  the  bumpers  and  be- 
gan to  jump  on  them. 

"Leave  it  dere!"  the  Negro  shouted  in- 
stantly. "Leave  de  cops  see  it!"  We 
ignored  him. 

"Leave  it  dere!"  he  shouted  again  and 
jumped  out  of  the  truck  and  walked  up  to 
us.  My  stomach  was  constricted  in  a 
tight  knot.  I  wanted  to  lurch  into  him, 
smashing  haymakers  at  his  mean,  skinny 
face.  And  yet — I  was  afraid  of  him.  If 
this  Negro  fought  a  white  man  he  could 
not  count  on  surviving;  and  he  would 
not  let  me  count  on  it  either.  His  knife 
would  be  out  and  he  would  try  to  "take 
me  with  him."  That  phrase  had  mean- 
ing. We  stood  there  staring  at  each 
other,  beneath  the  spell  of  the  old  Southern 
tragedy. 

I  walked  to  the  little  Negro  grocery 
store — with  eyes  boring  holes  in  my  back 
— and  called  the  chief  dispatcher  at  police 
headquarters.  I  told  him  we  were  drink- 
ing and  had  driven  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  road.  I  told  him  there  would  be  a  riot 
if  the  cops  did  not  come.  I  had  been  a 
police  reporter  and  I  knew  him. 

"Jesus,"  he  said,  in  the  curious  New- 
Orleans  accent.  "Why  didn't  yez  tell 
me.  I  couldn't  make  out  what  that  other 
guy  was  talking  about.  He  wouldn't  give 
me  his  name." 

I  returned  to  the  car  feeling  relieved 
and  ashamed.  The  police  would  come 
quickly  now.  We  had  put  down  the 
rebellion.  The  light  horse  cavalry  would 
top  the  hill  and  drive  the  Comanches  from 
the  wagon  train..  White  blood  had  called 
to  white  blood.  The  native  uprising  was 
broken.     I  felt  rotten. 


I  leaned  on  the  door  of  the  car  and  told 
Carter  the  police  would  come  in  a  minute. 
The  girl  breathed  a  sigh  of  relief.  Carter's 
face  was  flushed  and  his  eyes  bloodshot. 
Mine  were  too.  The  tension  had  sobered 
us,  but  we  were  tired.  The  red,  swollen 
sun  dipped  toward  the  roofs.  We  were 
looking  directly  into  it.  This  day  that 
had  been  so  cool  and  sweet  had  come  to  a 
shoddy  end. 

I  was  no  longer  worrying  about  the  tall 
Negro,  but  instead  I  was  mulling  over  the 
day's  events.  "This  is  wrong,"  I  thought. 
"This  is  wrong."  In  a  few  minutes  the 
police  came.  I  watched  the  final  scene  as 
though  I  were  not  even  a  part  of  it. 

IV 

THE  police  came  roaring  down  the 
little  road,  making  a  hellish  racket. 
Two  motorcycle  cops  and  a  long  black 
patrol  wagon  drew  up  with  sirens  scream- 
ing. The  motors  and  the  wailing  struck 
the  fear  of  God  into  the  Negroes  on  the 
sidewalk.  In  their  wide-eyed  faces  I 
could  see  that  most  of  them  would  like  to 
run.  It  was  too  late.  The  law  had 
arrived.  Altogether  there  were  eight 
burly  cops.  It  was  odd  the  way  they  came 
at  us  all  in  a  bunch.  Not  one  at  a  time, 
not  by  twos,  not  straggling.  They  con- 
verged on  the  scene  all  at  once.  It  made 
them  seem  big  and  terrible,  like  giants. 
The  motorcycle  engines  were  thundering. 
Here  indeed  was  frightfulness. 

A  police  sergeant  came  to  our  car. 
"I  phoned  Charlie  Boudreaux,"  I  said. 
Carter  told  him  we  had  hit  a  rock;  that 
the  brakes  had  thrown  us  to  the  left  side 
of  the  road. 

I  will  not  forget  the  look  on  the  Negro's 
face.  He  stood  there  in  defeat,  tall,  silent, 
malevolent.  He  looked  steadfastly  at  me 
and  Carter  as  we  told  our  lies.  I  believe 
he  realized  that  he  had  really  beaten  us. 

The  sergeant  said  nothing  to  me  or 
Carter.  Charlie  Boudreaux  had  told  him 
to  get  us  out  of  this  jam  and  not  to  book 
us  at  the  police  station.  The  cop  walked 
over  to  the  Negroes. 

"All  right,"  he  said  ominously,  "get 
these  bumpers  unhooked." 

The  chocolate-faced  boy — the  first 
driver — hopped  to  it.     He  must  have  been 


140                                           HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

relieved  to  see  the  police.     Now  he  knew  crowd.     "Break  it  up  now.     Show's  over, 

where  he  stood.     He  had  never  wanted  Go  on  home.     Okay,  boy,  get  this  damned 

to  fight  with  white  men  in  the  first  place,  truck   out   the   way.     Go   on   with   your 

Here  at  last  was  the  law,  telling  him  what  delivering." 

to  do.  It  was  all  over.     Carter  backed  slowly 

"Come  on,  you  niggers,"  the  chocolate  from  the  truck,  put  the  car  in  first,  and 

boy  said.     His  voice  was  wheedling  and  we  were  away.     He  breathed  a  long  sigh, 

melodious.     "Git    dis    yere    bumper    off  "That's  the  stupidest  thing  I  ever  did," 

now!"     He   hunched    his    big   shoulders  he  said.     We  did  not  talk  very  much. 

over  the  bumper.     For  a  long  moment  I  went  home  and  took  a  cold  shower 

the  tall  Negro  stood  looking  at  us.     Then  and   put  on  clean  clothes  and   went  to 

he  bent  down  slowly  and  went  to  work.  work.    Jeflf  was   working   also.     We   sat 

"All  right,"  the  sergeant  said  to  us  as  the  on   a   desk  for   a  few   moments   talking, 

bumpers  parted.     "You  boys  watch  your-  Then  we  got  down  to  the  night's  routine, 

selves.     Drive  it  on  off  now."  But  the  scene  stayed  in  our  thoughts,   I 

"All  right,  you  niggers,"  he  said  to  the  cannot  say  how  long. 


Advice  to  Emigrants 

''i\  yjTANY  persons  in  Europe  having,  directly  or  by  letters,  expressed 
IVJL  to  the  writer,  who  is  well  acquainted  with  North  America, 
their  desire  of  transporting  and  establishing  themselves  in  that  country 
...  he  thinks  it  may  be  useful,  and  prevent  inconvenient,  expensive, 
and  fruitless  removals  and  voyages  of  improper  persons,  if  he  gives  some 
clearer  and  truer  notions  of  that  part  of  the  world  than  appear  to 
have  hitherto  prevailed. 

"He  finds  it  imagined  by  numbers,  that  the  inhabitants  of  North 
America  are  rich,  capable  of  rewarding,  and  disposed  to  reward,  all 
sorts  of  ingenuity;  that  they  are  at  the  same  time  ignorant  of  all  the 
sciences,  and  consequently  that  strangers,  possessing  talents  in  the 
belles-lettres,  fine  arts,  etc.  must  be  highly  esteemed,  and  so  well  paid 
as  to  become  easily  rich  themselves;  that  there  are  also  abundance  of 
profitable  offices  to  be  disposed  of,  which  the  natives  are  not  qualified 
to  fill;  and  that  having  few  persons  of  family  among  them,  strangers  of 
birth  must  be  greatly  respected,  and  of  course  easily  obtain  the  best  of 
those  oflfices,  which  will  make  all  their  fortunes.  .  .  .  These  are  all 
wild  imaginations;  and  those  who  go  to  America  with  expectations 
founded  upon  them,  will  surely  find  themselves  disappointed. 

"The  truth  is,  that  though  there  are  in  that  country  few  people  so 
miserable  as  the  poor  of  Europe,  there  are  also  very  few  that  in  Europe 
would  be  called  rich;  it  is  rather  a  happy  mediocrity  that  prevails.  .  .  . 
In  Europe  birth  has  indeed  its  value,  but  it  is  a  commodity  that  cannot 
be  carried  to  a  worse  market  than  to  that  of  America,  where  people  do 
not  enquire  concerning  a  stranger,  *What  is  he?'  but  'What  can  he 
do?'  "  ♦  From  Benjamin  Franklin^ s  ^^Information  to  Those  Who  Would 
Remove  to  America^ ^ 


TH 


E  Easy  Chair  'Bermrd  T)6VdtJ0 


THIS  exercise  in  cross  reference  was 
touched  off  by  a  publisher's  cHp 
sheet.  The  author  of  a  book  which 
had  a  large  sale  three  years  ago,  the  notice 
says,  has  finished  a  new  novel  which  is 
being  prepared  for  the  press.  A  union 
rule  forbids  me  to  review  the  novel  before 
reading  it,  but  the  clip  sheet  started  me 
thinking  about  that  earlier  success.  I 
thought  there  might  be  some  point  in 
reviewing  it  as  of  three  years  later,  and  that 
notion  in  turn  set  me  to  rereading  some 
related  stuff.  Among  it  was  the  Easy 
Chair  for  July,  1941,  which  was  written 
immediately  after  Mr.  Charles  A.  Lind- 
bergh resigned  his  commission  in  the 
United  States  Army.  There  was  a  ques- 
tion in  its  second  paragraph,  "How 
important  are  Mr.  Lindbergh's  ideas 
about  foreign  policy?"  That  seemed  to 
me  a  good  question  still  and  I  wondered  if 
the  passage  of  time  had  modified  the 
original  answer.  So  I  have  had  an 
interesting  if  laborious  day  following  Mr. 
Lindbergh's  ideas  through  the  files  of  The 
New  Tork  Times. 

I  suggested  in  July,  1941,  that  some  of 
Mr.  Lindbergh's  ideas  about  foreign 
policy  were  related  to  his  military  ideas 
and  that  there  was  no  reason  to  consider 
him  a  military  expert.  Some  of  the  facts 
are  in  now  and  we  can  check  his  calcula- 
tions against  them.  While  he  still  held 
his  Army  commission  he  made  a  report  to 
the  government  on  the  military  aviation  of 
various  countries.  It  has  not  been  pub- 
lished but  parts  of  it  can  be  restored  from 
his  speeches.  There  is,  for  instance,  his 
finding  that  the  Russian  air  force  was 
inefficient.  He  repeated  that  judgment 
when,  on  January  23,   1941,  he  testified 


before  the  House  Committee  on  Foreign 
Relations,  at  the  invitation  of  Congress- 
man Hamilton  Fish.  What  Mr.  Lind- 
bergh said  about  the  Luftwaffe  at  various 
times  suggested  to  some  people  that 
Marshal  Goering  and  others  took  him 
for  a  considerable  ride  when  he  was 
inspecting  it,  but  it  appears  to  have  been  a 
mild  runaround  compared  to  the  one  he 
got  in  Russia.  Apparently  the  Russians 
showed  him  some  1925  flivvers  held 
together  with  baling  wire,  and  the  will  to 
believe  did  the  rest. 

He  told  Mr.  Fish's  committee  that 
"Oriental  [Japanese]  aviation  is  far  behind 
that  of  Western  nations."  Considering 
what  has  happened  in  the  Pacific,  his  data 
seem  to  have  been  not  only  incomplete  but 
cockeyed.  He  went  on  to  say  that  so  long 
as  we  should  maintain  an  army,  navy,  and 
air  force  of  "reasonable  size,"  and  pro- 
vided we  should  establish  the  essential 
bases,  there  was  no  danger  of  any  invasion 
of  this  continent  either  by  air  or  by  sea. 
Relatives  of  men  killed  in  the  Aleutians 
may  meditate  on  that  one  and  perhaps 
find  solace  in  it.  What  did  he  mean  by 
"reasonable  size"?  He  thought  that  we 
ought  to  have  ten  thousand  modern 
fighting  planes,  plus  reserves,  or  something 
less  than  two  months'  production  at  our 
present  rate — "This  number,  I  believe, 
would  be  adequate  to  insure  American 
security,  regardless  of  the  outcome  of  the 
present  European  war."  Mr.  Lindbergh 
was  always  extremely  regardless  of  that 
outcome,  but  also  he  was  convinced  that 
the  Nazis  had  an  overpowering  tech- 
nological superiority.  They  had  told  him 
that  in  1938  they  could  produce  twenty 
thousand  planes  a  year,  and  by  the  time  he 


142 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


spoke  that  capacity  had  been  increased,  he 
said,  "several  fold."  It  would  take  the 
United  States  "several  years"  to  catch  up 
to  such  production.     It  didn't. 

Interesting  stuff  carne  out  when  the 
committee  questionec'  Mr.  Lindbergh. 
Our  repeal  of  the  arms  embargo  was,  he 
said,  a  mistake.  It  had  increased  the 
bloodshed  in  Europe  and  "our  en- 
couragement of  waging  war  in  Europe 
won't  affect  the  outcome  and  will  increase 
hatred  against  us."  After  all,  the  war  was 
"merely"  a  war  over  the  balance  of 
power.  Here  Mrs.  Rogers  of  Massachu- 
setts suggested  that  if  the  United  States 
continued  to  give  aid  to  the  democracies 
"Russia  will  stay  out  and  dominate," 
and  Mr.  Lindbergh  heartily  agreed.  It 
would,  he  said,  be  better  for  us  and  for 
every  nation  that  the  war  in  Europe  should 
end  without  conclusive  victory — or  pre- 
sumably restitution  of  spoils — and  "a 
negotiated  peace  would  be  the  best  thing 
for  the  United  States."  But  every  month 
"negotiation  becomes  more  and  more 
difficult,"  alas,  "and  the  position  of  Great 
Britain  more  and  more  desperate."  The 
day  before  he  spoke,  the  British  had 
captured  Tobruk;  still  it  was  suicidal  folly 
for  us  to  go  on  helping  them. 

THREE  months  later  Mr.  Lindbergh 
addressed  an  America  First  rally  at 
Manhattan  Center,  while  Bundists  heiled. 
Social  Justice  was  hawked  through  the 
overflow  crowd  in  the  streets,  and  Joe 
McWilliams'  goon  squads  slugged  a  picket 
line  of  protesters.  The  United  States, 
meaning  the  President,  had  persuaded 
France  to  declare  war  on  Germany  in 
1939,  Mr.  Lindbergh  told  the  Bund. 
England  and  France  had  not  had  a 
reasonable  chance  of  winning  the  war 
they  entered,  and  we  ought  not  to  enter  a 
war  unless  we  had  a  reasonable  chance  of 
winning,  which  we  assuredly  had  not. 
"It  is  now  obvious  that  England  is  losing 
the  war."  Even  the  English  knew  they 
were  licked,  he  said,  but  they  had  one 
last,  desperate  plan.  They  hoped  to 
persuade  us  to  send  another  A.E.F.  and 
"to  share  with  England,  militarily  as  well 
as  financially,  the  fiasco"  of  this  war. 
Perhaps  we  might  at  that  but,  he  said,  we 
could  not  possibly  win.     Even  if  we  took 


our  Navy  from  the  Pacific  to  convoy  ship- 
ping, the  best  we  could  accomplish  would 
be  to  "permit  her  [England]  to  exist  under 
the  constant  bombing  of  the  German  air 
fleet."  That  bombing  has  turned  out  to 
be  something  less  than  constant,  and  the 
prophet  turns  out  to  have  been  wrong  also 
in  his  idea  that  even  if  we  had  an  air  force 
we  could  not  use  it  effectively  over  Europe. 
"Some  of  our  squadrons  might  be  based  on 
the  British  Isles  but  it  is  physically  im- 
possible to  base  enough  aircraft  in  the 
British  Isles  to  equal  in  strength  the  air- 
craft that  can  be  based  on  the  continent 
of  Europe."  One  thinks  of  what  our  air 
force  and  the  RAF  have  done  to  that 
continent  and  moves  on  to  another 
judgment.  Even  if  we  had  an  army  or  an 
air  force  and  dared  to  move  the  Navy  to 
the  Atlantic,  "I  do  not  see  how  we  could 
invade  the  continent  of  Europe  success- 
fully as  long  as  all  of  that  continent  and 
most  of  Asia  is  under  Axis  domination." 
He  expressed  his  certainty  that  we  could 
not  invade  Europe  in  several  speeches. 
The  combined  general  staffs  however  went 
ahead  with  Sicily  and  Italy. 

Many  other  exploded  military  ideas 
could  be  added  to  this  list,  but  let  us  rest 
on  a  quotation  from  a  speech  he  made 
just  thirteen  years  lacking  one  day  after 
the  transatlantic  flight  which  is  his  chief 
claim  to  military,  or  any  other,  distinction. 
"To  be  successful  in  modern  warfare,"  he 
said  on  May  19,  1940,  "a  nation  must 
prepare  many  years  before  the  fighting 
starts."  Our  success  in  the  modern  war- 
fare for  which  we  did  not  prepare  was 
underwritten  by  attributes  of  the  Ameri- 
can democracy  which  obviously  were 
outside  Mr.  Lindbergh's  awareness,  and 
one  moves  on  to  his  other  ideas.  In  that 
same  speech,  for  instance,  he  said  that  only 
our  own  actions  could  prevent  a  continua- 
tion of  peaceful  relations  between  America 
and  the  countries  of  Europe — meaning 
Germany.  If  we  want  peace,  he  said,  we 
need  only  stop  asking  for  war.  "No  one 
wishes  to  attack  us  and  no  one  is  in  a 
position  to  do  so."  It  will  be  useful  for 
some  time  to  come,  I  think,  to  take  an 
occasional  look  at  that  state  of  mind. 


p 


ART  of  it  was  his  theory  of  hemisphere 

defense.     The    United    States    would 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


143 


defend  this  hemisphere,  he  said,  but  the 
countries  that  compose  it  must  not  eni^ai^e 
in  "foreign"  war.  He  was  thinking  of  the 
Canadians.  We  would  defend  them  if 
they  were  attacked,  he  promised,  "but 
have  they  the  right  to  draw  this  hemi- 
sphere into  a  European  war  simply  be- 
cause tliey  prefer  the  Crown  of  England 
to  American  Independence?"  They  had 
better  give  up  that  dangerous  preference 
and  it  would  be  a  good  idea  for  us  to 
detach  the  British  islands  as  well.  That 
message  to  Canada  is  fascinating.  One 
turns  it  over  and  over,  and  each  revolution 
reveals  further  meanings.  Another  part 
of  his  state  of  mind  was  his  expectation 
that  we  must  eventually  defend  the  white 
race  as  such  and  "fight  side  by  side  with 
the  English,  French,  and  Germans." 
That  notion  dovetails  beautifully  with 
hemisphere  defense  and  even  more  beau- 
tifully with  the  Nazi  party  line  as  short 
v/ave  was  daily  expounding  it  at  the  time 
— before  the  honorary  Nordics  spoiled  that 
play. 

And  do  you  remember  his  speech  at  Des 
Moines  three  months  before  Pearl  Harbor? 
England's  situation  was  still  desperate,  he 
said;  she  could  not  win  the  war  either  by 
invasion  of  Europe  or  by  aviation.  But 
she  had  more  hope  now,  for  "the  British, 
the  Jewish,  and  the  Roosevelt  administra- 
tion" were  pressing  this  country  toward 
war.  The  international  situation  had 
been  used  to  get  Mr.  Roosevelt  a  third 
term — you  and  I  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it — and  the  power  of  his  Administration 
depended  on  maintaining  a  wartime 
economy.  The  unholy  despotism  of  the 
majority  that  re-elected  Mr.  Roosevelt 
alarmed  Mr.  Lindbergh  a  good  deal  more 
than  the  Nazis  ever  did,  but  the  Jews 
apparently  alarmed  him  even  more.  He 
conceded  that  Jews  had  been  persecuted 
by  the  Nazis — the  only  admission  he  ever 
made  that  anyone  had  any  real  case 
against  the  Hitler  crowd — but  "instead  of 
agitating  for  war  the  Jewish  groups  in  this 
country  should  be  opposing  it  in  every 
possible  way,  for  they  will  be  among  the 
first  to  feel  its  consequences."  That 
might  have  passed  as  a  friendly  caution 
rather  than  as  a  threat,  except  that  he 
went  on  to  say,  "Their  [the  American 
Jews']  greatest  danger  to  this  country  lies 


in  their  large  ownership  and  influence  in 
our  motion  pictures,  our  press,  our  radio, 
and  our  government."  He  wanted  them 
to  stop  agitating  for  war,  though  it  would 
be  enough  if  either  the  British  or  the 
Administration  stopped.  If  any  of  those 
three  groups  would  stop  agitating,  he  told 
us,  there  would  be  no  war.  It  will  be 
useful  to  remember  that  Des  Moines 
speech  from  time  to  time.  December  7th 
would  be  a.  good  day  for  remembering  it. 
In  the  July,  1941,  Easy  Chair  I  said 
that  Mr.  Lindbergh's  ideas  about  foreign 
policy  were  worthless.  Rereading  them 
in  the  Times,  I  see  that  I  should  have  said 
dangerous,  and  I  have  come  to  understand 
his  exalted  tranquillity,  his  majestic  in- 
difference to  small  things.  The  Jews  had 
some  reason  to  feel  vexed  perhaps,  but  in 
the  polity  of  nations  nothing  much  had 
happened.  It  didn't  seem  to  matter  to 
Charles  A.  Lindbergh  that  the  Jews  were 
being  exterminated.  The  Jews  didn't 
seem  to  matter  nor  the  Poles  nor  the 
Czechs  nor  the  Greeks.  The  destruction 
of  France  didn't  seem  to  matter,  nor  the 
invasion  of  Russia,  nor  Holland,  Belgium, 
Norway,  Denmark.  Massacre,  the  bomb- 
ing of  Coventry  or  Warsaw  or  Rotterdam 
didn't  seem  to  matter,  the  enslavement  of 
millions,  the  starvation  of  millions,  the 
slaughter  of  millions.  What  the  hell?  It 
was  just  the  same  old  game  about  the 
balance  of  power.  If  we  would  only  mind 
our  own  business  we'd  be  able  to  get 
along  with  the  Germans. 

MRS.  Lindbergh  however  had  a  differ- 
ent slant.  The  looting  and  the 
enslavement  and  the  extermination  did 
matter  to  her,  in  a  way.  They  were 
deplorable,  in  a  way.  She  would  not  for 
a  moment  condone  them,  in  a  way.  But 
she  had  a  message  about  them  for  us  and 
she  put  it  in  a  book,  a  book  which  she 
subtitled  A  Confession  of  Faith.  Her  faith 
was  above  the  battle,  well  above  it.  It 
enabled  her  to  see  some  things  about 
Nazism  which  people  who  looked  at  the 
horror  could  not  see.  Behind  Nazism 
some  new  "and  perhaps  even  ultimately 
good  conception  of  humanity"  was,  in  a 
not  too  happy  metaphor,  "trying  to  come 
to  birth."  Our  duty  was  to  disregard  the 
perhaps  evil  events  which  attended  the 


144 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


birth  of  the  new  conception  and  to  fix  our 
minds  on  the  ultimate  good.  There  was 
something  which  the  "Democracies"  must 
understand — and  it  was-^Mrs.  Lindbergh, 
not  I,  who  put  the  quotes  round  that 
word.  They  must  understand  that  they 
were  the  Forces  of  the  Past,  of  Yesterday, 
whereas  Nazism  and  Fascism  were  the 
Forces  of  the  Future,  of  To-morrow.  The 
"Democracies"  must  also  understand  that, 
as  the  Forces  of  the  Past,  they  could  not 
possibly  win.  War,  she  told  us,  was  not  a 
matter  of  "material  defenses  aione.''^  (Her 
italics.)  Germany's  success  had  not  been 
due  to  her  superb  equipment  alone,  but  to 
moral  forces  as  well.  Mrs.  Lindbergh 
assured  us  that  she  would  not  at  the  mo- 
ment support  the  means  by  which  those 
moral  forces,  the  national  spirit  of  the 
Germans,  had  been  incited.  But  there 
they  were,  something  which  the  "Democ- 
racies" did  not  have,  something  which 
revealed  the  future. 

"There  is  no  fighting  the  wave  of  the 
future,  any  more  than  as  a  child  you  could 
fight  against  the  gigantic  roller  that 
loomed  up  ahead  of  you  suddenly.  .  .  . 
All  you  could  do  was  to  dive  into  it  or  leap 
with  it.  Otherwise  it  would  surely  over- 
whelm you."  She  liked  that  image  from 
her  childhood  and  called  her  book  The 
Wave  of  the  Future.  We  should  be  foolish 
to  try  to  prevent  the  future  from  happen- 
ing. And  we  ought  not  to  be  appalled  by 
the  catastrophe  of  our  age,  for  the  poet  had 
told  us  that  every  age  must  be  either  a 
dream  that  is  dying,  like  the  dream  of  the 
"Democracies,"  or  a  dream  that  is  coming 
to  birth,  like  the  dream  of  the  Forces  of  the 
Future.  Of  course  we  were  right  to  regret 
the  disappearance  of  much  that  was 
certain  to  disappear,  but  we  must  be 
courageous  and,  above  all,  we  must  have 
faith.  All  we  had  to  do  was  to  dive  into 
the  wave  or  leap  with  it.  In  fact,  all  we 
had  to  do  was  to  understand  that  it  truly 


was  the  wave  of  the  future.  Apparendy 
we  were  to  ignore  Warsaw,  forget  Rotter- 
dam, never  mind  the  Poles  and  the  Czechs 
and  the  Greeks  and  the  Norwegians 
and  the  French.  Just  climb  on  the 
bandwagon. 

THAT  was  what  Mrs.  Lindbergh  had  to 
tell  us  in  the  fall  publishing  season  of 
1 940,  a  little  more  than  a  year  before  Pearl 
Harbor.  It  supplements  what  her  hus- 
band had  to  tell  us.  They  agreed,  it 
seemed,  that  there  may  have  been  a 
certain  amount  of  murder  and  destruction, 
perhaps  a  little  enslavement  here  and 
there,  an  occasional  unloveliness — but  let 
us  not  see  it  out  of  proportion.  They 
agreed  that  the  "Democracies"  had  no 
chance.  But  the  Colonel  gave  us  leave  to 
hope  that  we  might  eventually  get  along 
with  the  Nazis  and  help  them  defend  the 
white  race  at  the  appointed  time.  And, 
Mrs.  Lindbergh  added,  let  us  not  forget 
that  behind  all  this  apparent  evil  some- 
thing tremendous  is  coming  to  birth.  He 
told  us  that  the  war  was  none  of  our 
damned  business.  She  told  us  that  if  we 
would  only  get  right  with  God  we  should 
find  that  it  was  all  leading  Somewhere. 

The  publisher's  clip  sheet  which  I  men- 
tioned earlier  says  that  Mrs.  Lindbergh 
has  written  a  new  book.  It  is  a  novel,  a 
novel  of  ideas.  I  wonder  what  ideas  she 
has  now?  That  curiosity  will  presently  be 
settled,  for  the  clip  sheet  says  that  her  book 
is  going  to  be  published.  But  we  have 
not  heard  from  Mr.  Lindbergh  lately. 
Has  he  learned  anything,  I  wonder,  and 
what  are  his  ideas  now?  A  public 
demand  exists,  a  demand  of  at  least  this 
columnist.  I'd  like  a  report  from  him 
and  will  contribute  one  dollar  toward 
buying  him  some  radio  time.  Make  it 
two-fifty,  the  price  of  a  novel  of  ideas. 
Provided,  that  is,  he  will  tell  us  where  he 
stands. 


THOSE    JAPANESE    MANDATES 


HARTLEY    GRATTAN 


T 


■^HE  Japanese  Mandated  islands  in 
the  Pacific  are  to-day  a  worry  to 
the  American  people.  Up  to  De- 
cember 7,  1941,  few  Americans  gave  them 
so  much  as  a  passing  thought;  and  fewer 
still  ever  bothered  to  inquire  exactly  how 
they  got  into  Japan's  hands  about  four 
centuries  after  their  original  discovery  by 
the  Spanish  and  Portuguese.  But  since 
Pearl  Harbor  many  writers  have  discussed 
them  sententiously  on  the  correct  assump- 
don  that  they  played  (and  still  play)  a 
role  in  the  war  dangerous  to  the  United 
States  and  her  Pacific  allies,  and  the  incor- 
rect assumption  that  the  American  people 
might  easily  have  taken  possession  of  them 
at  various  times  in  the  past — and  would 
have  done  so  had  they  not  been  stupid. 
The  island  groups  involved  are  the 
Marianas,  the  Marshalls,  and  the  Caro- 
lines, in  which  a  minor  group,  the  Palaus, 
is  usually  included  since  it  is  joined  ad- 
ministratively. In  this  article  I  call  them 
the  Mandates,  even  though  they  did 
not  assume  that  character  until  after 
the  First  World  War.  They  hang  like 
a  curtain  between  Hawaii  and  the  Phil- 
ippines and  the  Dutch  East  Indies,  and 
extend  Japan's  power  south  almost  to  the 
equator — a  vast  collection  of  stationary 
airplane  carriers,  with  fortifications  of 
unknown  strength  scattered  through  them 
and  a  strong  naval  operating  base  at 
Truk  in  the  Carolines.  American  raids 
into    the    Marshalls    were    described    by 


Fletcher  Pratt  in  Harper'' s  for  January, 
1943. 

Alexander  Kiralfy,  the  writer  on  naval 
strategy,  has  summed  up  the  ''ifs"  of  the 
Mandates  as  far  as  their  strategic  signifi- 
cance goes:  Had  Japan  not  held  them 
"The  raid  upon  Pearl  Harbor  might  not 
have  occurred  and  the  Philippines  could 
have  been  readily  reinforced.  Australia 
and  the  East  Indies  would  have  been  well 
beyond  Japan's  wildest  ambitions."  This 
encompasses  so  much  that  the  chagrin 
of  the  many  commentators  seized  with 
the  same  idea  is  easy  to  understand.  Why 
on  earth,  they  unanimously  shout,  were 
the  Japanese  ever  allowed  to  get  a  hold 
on  those  islands?  On  the  political  side 
Walter  Lippmann  has  fastened  upon  the 
Mandates  as  one  of  many  illustrations  of 
his  thesis  that  the  United  States  for  many 
years  has  lacked  a  living  foreign  policy. 
Assuming  that  Woodrow  Wilson  at  the 
Paris  Peace  Conference  had  the  disposi- 
tion of  the  islands  in  his  hands  and  let 
them  go  to  Japan,  he  wrathfully  writes, 
"Such  a  neglect  of  American  interest,  such 
a  failure  to  see  the  value  of  these  islands, 
would  have  been  impossible  if  Americans 
had  had  a  foreign  policy."  In  various 
terms,  other  writers  have  supported  Lipp- 
mann's  view,  both  before  and  after  he 
gave  it  the  setting  of  a  disputable  general 
thesis. 

The  strategic  value  of  the  Mandates  is 
now  plain  for  all  to  see.     Ex  post  facto  any 


146 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


SIBERIA 


\^i^\SlNGAPCfi£  ( 


%K)NCi^NG 

>WILIPPINE-' °-^ N 

^  ^   !  Caroline:. ;is.-'      "mArj^hall  is. 


^     U^_  -•  TRUK     jALUIT 


ISLANDS 

JOHNSTON  L  CU  S  ) 

KINGMAN        Cy    \^     tz    r\    /\ 


REEP 


YP^  0    ^     ^'       MANDATE     ! 


»-;OWLAND 

".OAKE::?  I 


,  PALMYRA 


EOUA'OR 


NETHERLANDS  EAST  INDIES  V^S^-^-    ^^       nauru  i.         canton  is 


jAf;\-,s 


BATA^lA^rCIb 

JAVA 


_      -^  NEW  \     ^'i 
'^Ǥ=='c^  GUINEA       " 


^<i  SOLOMON 

NEW 
HEBRIDES^. 
NEW  ''^* 

CALEDGNIA^^o 

NOUMEA 


SAMOA  IS.  ' 
^<;7  PAGO  PAGO       0, 

orpijiis.     (US) 


TROPIC  OF  CAPRICORN 


AUCKLAND 

ZEALAND 


S/a/,f.<V-i'/A.'?D 


The  J.\pane5e  Mandated  Islands 


strategist,  armchair  or  professional,  can  be 
wise.  It  is  however  only  an  incidental 
part  of  our  present  purpose  to  prove  that 
strategists  of  both  kinds  on  our  side  saw 
how  important  the  islands  would  become 
in  a  trans-Pacific  war.  For  if  the  strate- 
gists could  not  persuade  the  political  mas- 
ters of  foreign  policy  to  get  possession  of 
the  islands  their  insight  is  very  interesting, 
but  not  of  decisive  importance.  What  we 
want  to  know  is  why  the  political  leaders 
failed  to  take  the  islands  when  opportunity 
offered — if  it  did  offer.  Mr.  Lippmann 
with  magisterial  aplomb  puts  the  failure 
down  to  American  incompetence,  igno- 
rance, and  neglect.  As  is  the  case  with 
so  many  of  the  obiter  dicta  in  U.  S.  Foreign 
Policy:  Shield  oj  the  Republic,  the  facts  do  not 


exactly  bear  him  out.  Rather,  they  pro- 
vide an  admirable  object  lesson  in  the  com- 
plexity of  international  affairs,  even  where 
"unknown*'  islands  are  concerned;  in  the 
powerful  influence  of  the  dead  hand  of 
the  past  in  international  negotiations;  and 
in  the  fact  that  neither  the  complexity  nor 
the  past  is  dissolved  by  war  at  the  behest 
of  peace-planners  with  eyes  dazzled  by 
the  rising  sun  of  a  new  world.  On  this 
globe  we  inhabit  it  is  far  easier  to  fight  a 
successful  war  than  to  write  a  decent 
peace.  The  large  objectives  are  always 
being  compromised  by  the  little,  sticky 
facts.  A  man  who  successfully  negotiated 
Niagara  Falls  in  a  barrel  slipped  on  a 
banana  peel  in  New  Zealand  and  broke  his* 
neck. 


THOSE    JAPANESE    MANDATES 


147 


II 


THE  first  occasion  when  the  United 
States  might  have  found  reason  to 
acquire  some  of  the  Mandated  islands 
was  when  the  Spanish-American  War 
was  being  settled;  for  at  that  time  all  the 
islands,  except  the  Marshalls,  were  pos- 
sessions of  defeated  Spain.  The  Marshalls 
had  passed  to  Germany  in  1885.  In  that 
year  Great  Britain  and  Germany  had 
arranged  a  settlement  of  claims  in  the 
Pacific  whereby  Germany  was  confirmed 
in  possession  of  the  northeastern  portion 
of  New  Guinea,  some  of  the  northernmost 
Solomons,  miscellaneous  islands  north  of 
New  Guinea  eventually  called  the  Bis- 
marck Archipelago,  and  the  Marshalls. 
All  the  other  islands  in  the  Mandates  were 
owned  by  Spain,  loosely  administered 
from  the  Philippines. 

When  the  Spanish  War  broke  out  and 
the  Philippines  fell  into  American  hands 
the  fate  of  all  the  Spanish  possessions  in  the 
Pacific  was  immediately  a  matter  of  inter- 
national concern.  It  is  reliably  reported 
however  that  when  President  McKinley 
heard  the  Philippines  were  ours  he  said 
he  ''could  not  have  told  where  those 
darned  islands  were  within  two  thousand 
miles.''  He  probably  knew  less  about  the 
Mandates,  which  however  were  never 
subjects  of  detailed  conquest.  The  ques- 
tion of  their  disposition  did  not  arise  im- 
mediately even  when  the  war  ended. 
The  question  of  what  to  dp^with  the  Phil- 
ippines was  far  more  important.  But 
even  with  regard  to  them  the  President, 
his  advisers,  and  the  great  American 
public  were  uncertain. 

The  armistice  which  ended  the  fighting 
stated  that  the  question  of  the  Philippines 
was  to  be  discussed  at  the  peace  con- 
ference; the  United  States  asked  for  one 
island  in  the  Marianas  (which  turned  out 
to  be  Guam);  but  the  Mandates  were  not 
mentioned.  When  it  came  to  defining 
America's  wishes  with  regard  to  the  Phil- 
ippines there  was  a  slow,  hitching  move- 
ment toward  asking  for  all  of  them.  It  is 
now  forgotten  that  this  was  so.  It  is  also 
forgotten  that  many  people,  including 
some  of  McKinley's  closest  advisers, 
doubted  the  wisdom  of  taking  all  the 
Philippines — some    thinking    that    Luzon 


alone  was  sufficient,  others  wanting  no 
part  of  the  archipelago.  Hut  in  the  end 
the  United  States  took  the  lot.  We  even 
went  on  and  tried  to  acquire  some  of  the 
Carolines,  but  the  Spanish  finally  refused 
to  negotiate.  They  didn't  have  to,  tech- 
nically, because  the  United  States  had  not 
previously  raised  the  question  of  what  was 
to  become  of  them. 

But  the  real  reason  was  the  fact  that 
the  Spaniards  had  already  tentatively  dis- 
posed of  their  holdings  in  the  Mandates. 
Immediately  the  war  had  broken  out,  the 
Germans  began  to  worry  about  their  dis- 
position. They  were,  at  that  time,  con- 
stantly on  the  alert  for  what  they  called 
"naval  fulcra"  which  would  strengthen 
their  position  in  Asia  and  the  Pacific 
islands.  They  aspired  to  add  the  Spanish 
islands  to  their  Pacific  possessions  admin- 
istered from  New  Guinea.  On  Septem- 
ber 10,  1898,  after  the  Spanish-American 
armistice  had  been  signed,  the  Spaniards 
agreed  to  sell  Germany  certain  of  the 
Carolines  and  "to  grant  Germany  favor- 
able consideration  in  any  future  disposal 
of  Spanish  insular  possessions" — subject 
to  the  treaty  with  America.  On  Decem- 
ber 10th  a  further  treaty  was  signed  under 
which  the  Spanish  agreed  to  sell  all  the 
Carolines  and  also  the  Palaus  and  the 
Marianas  (except  Guam).  Germany  let 
the  United  States  know  about  this  and 
asked  for  American  non-interference — 
which  was  granted,  with  a  "reproach" 
from  Secretary  of  State  John  Hay.  Even- 
tually the  Germans  got  the  coveted  islands 
for  four  million  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars.  All  the  Mandates  were  thus  in 
the  hands  of  Germany.  This  put  them 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  United  States — 
even  theoretically — until  1919. 

There  is  little  evidence  that  the  United 
States  seriously  wanted  the  Mandates  any- 
how. For  strategic  reasons  some  naval 
people  thought  they  should  pass  to  the 
United  States,  but  the  greatest  of  all  the 
naval  theorists,  Mahan,  "saw  no  sufficient 
reason  for  our  opposition"  to  their  trans- 
fer to  Germany.  Some  missionaries 
thought  we  should  have  taken  the  Caro- 
lines, where  they  had  been  laboring  off  and 
on  for  half  a  century.  Our  belated  move 
to  get  some  of  the  Carolines  was  inspired 
by  the  idea  that  they  might  be  useful  as 


148 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


cable  stations.  But  the  evidence  is  really 
overwhelming  that  American  eyes  were 
elsewhere  in  the  Pacific. 

Ignoring  the  windy  moralism  of  the  im- 
perialists of  1898,  American  eyes  were  on 
China,  Hawaii,  and  Samoa.  The  princi- 
pal tangible  argument  for  taking  the  Phil- 
ippines, or  any  part  of  them,  was  the 
assertion  that  Manila  would  serve  as  a 
trans-shipment  port  for  the  China  trade. 
The  imperialist  outlook  was  commercial 
in  character.  And  consider  what  was 
happening  in  China  at  that  time  to  arouse 
American  cupidity  and  alarm:  Germany 
took  Kiaochow  on  the  Shantung  penin- 
sula on  March  6,  1898,  Russia  took  Port 
Arthur  on  March  27th,  Great  Britain  took 
Weihaiwei  on  April  2nd,  France  took 
Kwangchow  on  April  22nd,  and  on  June 
9th  Great  Britain  extended  her  holdings 
at  Hongkong.  It  looked  as  though  the 
powers  were  about  to  partition  the  ancient 
Empire.  The  Americans,  with  British 
backing,  were  eventually  to  block  the  logic 
of  these  changes  by  announcing  the  "open 
door"  policy.  But  for  our  purposes  it  is 
sufficient  to  note  that  the  imperialists 
thought  of  the  Philippines  vis  a  vis  China 
and  the  trade  there  which  they  hoped  to  cut 
in  on,  and  the  events  in  China  in  1898  ap- 
peared to  increase  the  urgency  of  the  need 
for  them.  But  while  the  imperialists  were 
riding  high  enough  to  win  the  Philippines 
the  opposition  was  very  strong.  The 
treaty  with  Spain  came  within  two  votes  of 
failing  in  the  Senate.  In  this  situation  it 
was  better  strategy  to  concentrate  on  the 
Philippines — to  the  acquisition  of  which 
the  anti-imperialists  were  bitterly  hostile — 
than  to  scatter  the  fire  and  perhaps  lose 
the  whole  case.  And  there  was  always  the 
danger  that  trying  to  grab  too  much  would 
lead  to  a  violent  collision  with  the  Ger- 
mans. 

Moreover  the  United  States  had  lately 
come  into  possession  of  what  was  then  and 
for  many  years  after — right  up  to  Decem- 
ber, 1941 — regarded  as  the  best  strategic 
position  in  the  Pacific  Ocean  America 
could  possibly  possess.  This  was  Hawaii. 
Acting  chiefly  under  the  pressures  of  the 
Spanish  War,  both  Houses  of  Congress 
passed  the  joint  resolution  annexing  the 
Hawaiian  Islands,  and  McKinley  signed 
it  on  July  7;  1898.     This  gave  the  United 


States  possession  of  Pearl  Harbor,  a  site 
for  a  naval  base  coveted  for  many  years 
and  subject  to  some  American  control  for 
several  years  previously. 

And  hardly  was  the  war  over  than  the 
United  States  acquired  still  another  long- 
coveted  site  for  a  naval  base  in  the  Pacific. 
The  Samoan  Islands,  long  the  object  of 
rivalry  between  the  British  (urged  on  by 
the  New  Zealanders),  the  Germans,  and 
the  Americans,  were  split  between  Ger- 
many and  the  United  States  in  a  conven- 
tion signed  on  December  2,  1899.  The 
British  took  compensation  elsewhere.  The 
United  States  got  Pago  Pago,  allegedly  the 
best  natural  harbor  in  the  Pacific  islands 
after  Pearl  Harbor.  This  the  navalists 
had  coveted  for  sixty  years — since  Captain 
Wilkes  had  visited  it  in  1839. 

Wake  Island  also  formally  passed  to 
American  possession  in  1899.  Midway 
had  belonged  to  the  United  States  since 
1867,  and  Alaska,  including  the  Aleutians, 
also  became  an  American  possession  in  the 
same  year.  The  Americans  had  a  strong 
position  in  the  Pacific. 


I 


III 

F  THE  Mandates  escaped  the  net  thrown 
out  by  the  American  expansionists  of 
1898,  why  did  they  again  escape  the  grasp 
of  the  United  States  in  1919?  Oddly 
enough,  the  two  situations  have  a  family 
resemblance.  Once  again  the  Mandates 
were  immersed  in  a  complex  stew  of  inter- 
national politics.  It  is  impossible  to  see 
how  they  could  have  been  neatly  lifted  out 
of  it  and  dealt  with  as  a  separate  issue. 
At  least  this  could  have  been  done  only  at 
the  expense  of  a  costly  and  dangerous  row. 
The  stew  came  to  a  boil  at  the  Paris  Peace 
Conference,  but  it  had  been  on  the  fire 
long  before. 

When  the  First  World  War  broke  out  in 
1914  the  Pacific  immediately  became  a 
matter  of  secondary  interest  to  the  great 
European  powers.  The  Allies  of  course 
wanted  Germany  eliminated  from  the  Pa- 
cific as  soon  as  possible.  They  wanted  her 
possessions  taken  away  from  her  and  her 
warships  and  raiders  hunted  down  and 
destroyed.  Japan  was  an  ally  of  Great 
Britain,  but  the  British  were  fearful  of  what 
the  Japanese  might  do  if  they  came  into 


THOSE    JAPANESE    MANDATES 


149 


the  war,  for  the  expansionist  elements 
were  in  power.  They  wanted  to  confine 
Japan  chiefly  to  naval  patrol  work.  But 
the  Japanese  had  other  ideas,  and  when 
they  declared  war  on  Germany  on  August 
23,  1914,  they  undertook  not  only  patrol 
work  (which  they  continued  throughout 
the  war)  but  also  immediately  began  to 
take  over  German  possessions  in  the  East. 
They  took  Kiaochow  on  the  Shantung 
peninsula,  and  then  went  on  and  took  all 
the  German  islands  north  of  the  equator — 
the  famous  Mandates.  The  United  States 
made  no  important  move  to  stop  Japan, 
either  by  acting  directly  or  by  prodding  the 
British,  although  it  was  well  understood 
that  the  islands  menaced  our  strategic  po- 
sition in  the  Pacific  and  we  proceeded 
to  oppose  other  Japanese  activities.  The 
Japanese  were  thus  able  to  put  themselves 
in  a  strong  position  to  lodge  a  claim  to  the 
islands;  for  possession  is  always  nine  points 
of  international  law. 

For  their  part,  the  British  also  acted  to 
gather  up  German  possessions  in  the  Pa- 
cific. The  Australians  took  the  German 
portion  of  New  Guinea  and  all  the  German 
islands  south  of  the  equator,  excepting 
Samoa,  which  was  taken  by  the  New 
Zealanders.  The  Australians  were  all 
ready  to  go  on  and  take  the  German  is- 
lands to  the  north  of  the  line  when  they 
received  orders  from  London  to  lay  ofT. 
These  were  to  be  handled  by  the  Japs. 
Thus  before  the  summer  of  1914  was  over 
an  informal  division  of  the  spoils  in  the 
Pacific  had  been  arranged.' 

The  division  was  put  on  a  formal  basis 
in  February,  1917,  after  the  Allies  had  de- 
clared their  peace  terms  to  Woodrow  Wil- 
son and  before  the  United  States  had  en- 
tered the  war.  The  initiative  came  from 
Japan.  There  is  evidence  which  appears 
to  prove  that  the  formal  arrangement  was 
merely  a  putting  on  paper  of  an  under- 
standing dating  back  at  least  two  years. 
But  whatever  the  date  of  its  origin,  the 
agreement  provided  that  the  British  would 
support  at  the  peace  conference  Japan's 
claims  to  all  German  possessions  north  of 
the  equator  in  return  for  Japanese  support 
for  British  (Australian  and  New  Zealand) 
claims  to  German  possessions  south  of  the 
line.  Japan  went  on  to  get  approval  of 
the  deal  from  the  French,  the  Italians,  and 


the  Russians.  Thus  to  the  physical  pos- 
session Japan  added  strong  diplomatic 
support.  This  was  the  situation  as  the 
Peace  Conference  assembled. 

Did  President  Wilson  and  his  advisers 
know  anything  about  this  deal  before  it 
came  up  at  the  Peace  Conference?  Ray 
Stannard  Baker  in  his  Woodrow  Wilson  and 
World  Settlement  (1923)  says  they  didn't, 
but  evidence  has  come  to  light  since  which 
makes  it  quite  clear  that  they  did.  How- 
ever, in  this  instance  as  in  others,  Wilson 
felt  that  the  endorsement  by  the  Allies  of 
his  Fourteen  Points  cancelled  any  prior 
agreements  that  ran  counter  to  them. 
This  proved  to  be  a  mistaken  idea.  Not 
only  did  the  Japanese  enter  the  Conference 
determined  to  hang  on  to  the  ex-German 
possessions,  but  Australia  and  New  Zea- 
land were  equally  determined.  The  Im- 
perial War  Cabinet  endorsed  the  position 
of  the  Dominions  in  the  spring  of  1917. 
What  the  Dominions  demanded  was  out- 
right annexation.  Wilson  was  advised  of 
this  too  before  the  Conference  opened. 

At  the  Conference  the  British-Japanese 
campaign  for  the  right  of  annexation  ran 
headlong  into  Wilson's  desire  to  dispose  of 
ex-enemy  territories  under  the  mandates 
system.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Japanese 
took  little  part  in  the  campaign  against 
Wilson's  proposal,  well  realizing  that  what 
the  British  got  they  would  get  too,  so  why 
antagonize  Wilson?  The  burden  of  the 
fight  fell  on  the  willing  shoulders  of  Wil- 
liam Morris  Hughes,  Prime  Minister  of 
Australia.  After  lengthy  and  complicated 
wrangles,  the  issue  was  settled  by  giving 
the  Dominions  and  Japan  C-class  man- 
dates for  the  ex-German  islands  they 
wanted.  Boiled  down,  a  C-class  mandate 
gave  the  mandatory  power  practically  ab- 
solute control  short  of  sovereignty.  With 
that  reservation — and  a  rather  technical 
one  it  is — possession  was  complete.  Above 
all,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  had 
sought  to  gain  control  of  trade  and  immi- 
gration in  the  islands.  This  they  won, 
and  Japan  won  it  equally.  All  were  for- 
bidden to  erect  fortifications  in  their  man- 
dates. Thus  to  get  the  Pacific  islands 
under  the  mandates  system  at  all  Wilson 
had  to  accept  a  category  of  mandates 
which  severely  compromised  the  principles 
he  wanted  the  system  to  embody,   like 


150 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


freedom  of  trade  to  all,  and  freedom  of 
imimigration.  But  since  his  attention  was 
on  the  basic  idea  of  mandates,  he  was 
willing  to  make  concessions  to  frustrate 
outright  annexation,  whtch  was  the  al- 
ternative offered. 

But  this  is  only  a  part  of  the  story.  The 
complications  were  even  greater.  Wilson, 
it  might  be  argued,  should  have  affronted 
Japan  and  declared  she  had  no  right  at  all 
to  the  islands.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  did. 
He  declared  that  "he  was  by  no  means 
prepared  to  accept  the  Japanese  treaty, 
and  was  doubtful  whether  Japan  could  be 
admitted  there  even  in  the  capacity  of  a 
mandatory  power."  There  were  many 
reasons  why  he  should  take  that  attitude, 
and  as  many  why  it  did  not,  in  the  end, 
rule  his  conduct. 

After  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914  the 
United  States  undertook  the  difficult  task 
of  preventing  Japan  from  freely  realizing 
her  expansionist  dreams  in  all  their  partic- 
ulars. The  principal  focus  of  the  struggle 
was  China,  not  the  islands.  Japan  had 
not  been  content  merely  to  grab  Ger- 
many's concession  at  Kiaochow;  she  had 
gone  on  to  absorb  much  of  the  Shantung 
peninsula;  and  she  had  tried  to  get  China 
to  swallow  the  famous  Twenty-one  De- 
mands (January,  1915)  which  would  have 
given  her  almost  complete  dominance  over 
the  entire  country.  And  she  had  rein- 
forced her  position  in  Shantung  by  treaties 
and  agreements  wrung  from  China  in  May, 
1915,  and  September,  1918.  The  United 
States  had  tried  hard  to  block  these  go- 
ings-on; and  the  skirmishes  climaxed  in 
the  Lansing-Ishii  agreement  of  November 
2,  1917.  This  unfortunate  document  is 
described  and  characterized  by  Professor 
A.  Whitney  Griswold  as  follows: 

.  ;  .  still  one  of  the  most  controversial  subjects 
in  American  diplomatic  history.  Its  studied 
ambiguity  invited  each  signatory  to  construe  it 
to  suit  its  own  purposes.  And  each  has  since 
made  the  most  extreme  claims  of  it:  Japan,  that 
it  w^as  American  recognition  of  her  paramount 
political  influence  as  well  as  economic  interest 
in  Shantung,  Manchuria  and  Mongolia;  the 
United  States,  that  it  was  a  self-denying  ordinance 
pledging  Japan  to  the  most  meticulous  respect 
for  the  open  door  and  the  integrity  and  independ- 
ence of  China .  These  claims  are  neither  realistic 
nor  sincere.  The  framers  of  the  agreement  knew 
what  they  were  about.  They  understood  the 
meaning  of  the  words  they  employed.    Each  had 


recourse  to  ambiguity  as  an  offensive  as  well  as 
a  defensive  weapon. 

At  the  Peace  Conference  President  Wilson 
sought  in  some  measure  to  resolve  the 
ambiguities,  the  product  of  acute  wartime 
embarrassments,  by  forcing  Japan  to  ac- 
cept the  American  position,  especially  with 
regard  to  China.  There  was  thus  then  al- 
ready going  forward  a  struggle  which  was 
to  continue  down  the  years,  in  one  diplo- 
matic form  or  another,  until  it  embraced 
all  the  formulae  of  American  diplomacy, 
old  and  new,  and  ended  in  the  all-out 
smashup  at  Pearl  Harbor.  But  at  the 
Conference  Wilson  found  that,  if  the 
United  States  had  stood  alone  against 
Japan  during  the  war,  and  had  been 
forced  into  defensive  ambiguity,  it  was  __ 
now  doubly  alone  at  Paris.  For  the  prin-  ■ 
cipal  pawn  in  the  game  was  Shantung, 
and  the  British  and  French  (our  allies!) 
were  just  as  much  committed  to  support 
the  claims  of  Japan  to  Shantung  as  to  the 
islands.  Both  Lloyd  George  and  Clemen- 
ceau  acknowledged  that  they  were  obli- 
gated to  support  Japan. 

What  Wilson  tried  to  get  was  the  direct 
return  of  Shantung  to  China  as  the  Chi- 
nese wanted.  Japan  demanded  that  it 
pass  to  her  as  successor  of  Germany. 
Japan  won.  In  the  Peace  Treaty  the 
transfer  is  provided  for  in  Articles  156, 
157,  and  158.  But  Wilson  went  on  to 
wring  from  the  Japanese  an  engagement  to 
return  Shantung  to  China  at  some  later 
date.  The  Chinese  however  were  embit- 
tered by  this  chicanery,  withdrew  from 
the  Conference,  and  refused  to  sign  the 
Treaty. 

A  final  complication.  The  Japanese 
wanted  the  Covenant  of  the  League  to  in- 
clude a  declaration  of  racial  equality. 
Wilson  tried  hard  to  find  a  formula  for  this 
which  would  satisfy  the  Japs  and  not  out- 
rage their  opponents,  but  to  no  avail. 
Therefore,  after  a  good  deal  of  backing 
and  filling,  the  Japanese  lost  their  case. 
In  the  end  Wilson  rejected  the  formula 
finally  off'ered  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
not  unanimously  approved  (it  commanded 
11  votes  to  6)  and  that  nothing  not  unani- 
mously accepted  could  go  into  the  Cove- 
nant. Naturally  the  Japanese  were  dis- 
pleased and  affronted. 

AH  this  wrangling  took  place,  not  as  a 


THOSE    JAPANESE    MANDATES 


151 


separate  and  distinct  phase  of  the  Confer- 
ence, but  before,  during,  and  after  Wil- 
son's bitter  rows  with  the  French  and  the 
Italians,  not  only  over  provisions  of  the 
Treaty  but  over  the  League  as  well.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  emphasize  how  dear 
the  League  was  to  Wilson.  According  to 
Ray  Stannard  Baker: 

The  President  pointed  out  how  inextricably 
the  whole  matter  was  lied  up  with  old  treaties, 
how  Great  Britain  felt  herself  bound  to  Japan  and 
how,  with  Italy  already  out,  Belgium  bitterly 
discontented,  the  defection  of  Japan  might  not 
only  break  up  the  Peace  Conference  but  destroy 
the  League  of  Nations. 

This  was  something  Wilson  could  not 
face.  He  said  to  Baker  that  "the  settle- 
ment was  the  best  that  could  be  had  out  oj  a 
dirty  past:' 

The  wonder  is  not  that  Japan  got  a  C- 
class  mandate  for  the  islands.  The  won- 
der is  that  she  didn't  annex  the  islands 
without  restrictions.  Certainly  the  Aus- 
tralians and  New  Zealanders  fought  hard 
enough  for  that  privilege  south  of  the 
equator,  and  if  they  had  won,  victory 
would  have  been  assured  to  the  Japanese. 
Only  because  Wilson  went  to  bat  against 
the  Australians  and  New  Zealanders,  who 
had  the  backing  of  the  United  Kingdom 
and  France,  was  annexation  ruled  out. 
Wilson  won  a  victory  of  a  kind  by  keeping 
strings  on  the  islands  through  the  League. 
He  thought  those  strings  would  be  strong. 
Wilson  believed  in  the  League.  To  him, 
getting  the  islands  under  the  League's 
mandate  system  was  a  gre^t  victory.  We 
now  see  that  it  was  hardly  that.  But  we 
are  rendering  an  ex  post  Jacto  judgment. 
Mr.  Lippmann  is  mistaken:  the  islands 
did  not  go  to  Japan  in  1919  because  we 
lacked  a  foreign  policy.  Wilson  most 
decidedly  had  a  policy.  It  embraced  the 
League,  the  mandates  system,  and  above 
all  a  philosophy  of  permanent  peace. 
Wilson's  whole  campaign  with  regard  to 
the  Pacific  shows  how  hard  he  tried  to 
effectuate  the  policy  against  tremendous 
odds.  To-day  Mr.  Lippmann  condemns 
Wilson's  policy  of  1919  and  even  implies 
that  no  policy  existed.  But  in  1 91 9  it  was 
real  enough  to  him  and  he  was  himself  a 
partisan  of  it.  Mr.  Lippmann's  famous 
book  is  in  considerable  measure  a  severe 
condemnation    of   his    own    past,    as    he 


shamefacedly  admits.  While  confession 
may  be  good  for  the  soul,  it  is  hardly  profit- 
able to  imply  that  what  you  believe  to- 
day— long  after  the  event — would  have 
prevented  the  "mistakes"  of  yesterday  un- 
less you  are  prepared  to  show  in  detail 
how  you  could  on  that  yesterday  have 
bent  the  forces  at  work  to  your  ends.  Mr. 
Lippmann  undertakes  no  such  demonstra- 
tion; he  merely  asserts  and  implies  that 
the  old  policy  was  no  good  and  offers  a  new 
one.  But  on  the  evidence  I  can  find  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  new  Lippmann 
policy  would,  in  1919,  have  allowed  the 
United  States  to  have  taken  those  is- 
lands for  herself,  entangled  as  they  were 
in  a  "dirty  past"  and  an  unregenerate 
present. 

IV 

THE  next  occasion  on  which  the  United 
States  might  have  done  something 
about  the  Mandates  was  at  the  Washing- 
ton Conference.  They  were  Item  III  on 
the  Agenda.  The  American  government 
had  made  certain  reservations  about  all 
mandates  to  protect  its  rights  in  them,  and 
in  the  Japanese  case  it  was  concerned  to 
protect  its  rights  of  access  to  the  island  of 
Yap  in  the  Carolines,  an  important  cable 
and  wireless  center.  These  rights  it  easily 
obtained  from  Japan  and  a  treaty  was 
signed.  For  the  rest,  a  treaty  was  made 
on  December  12,  1921,  in  which  the 
United  States  recognized  Japan's  status  as 
mandatory  of  the  islands  in  general.  The 
prohibition  of  fortifications,  an  integral 
part  of  the  mandate,  was  reinforced  by  the 
general  treaty  of  the  Conference  which 
provided  for  the  observance  of  the  status 
quo  for  fortifications  in  island  possessions. 
(Incidentally,  Shantung  was  returned  to 
China  as  a  result  of  arrangements  made  at 
the  Conference — a  belated  victory  for 
Wilson.) 

Like  the  League  of  Nations,  the  treaties 
made  at  the  Washington  Conference  were 
based  on  the  proposition  that  the  founda- 
tion stones  of  peace  were  the  honor  and 
self-discipline  of  nations.  In  America  be- 
lief in  these  ideas  had  survived  the  as- 
tounding political  transition  from  Wilson 
to  Harding.  This  belief  hardly  created  an 
atmosphere  which  allowed  the  Americans, 
its  principal  proponents,  to  take  territory 


152 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


away  from  the  Japanese  for  their  own  use. 
The  best  that  could  be  done  was  to  hedge 
about  the  use  of  the  territory  with  restric- 
tions. This  the  architects  gf  the  Washing- 
ton Treaties  valiantly  tried  to  do.  They 
took  this  line  in  the  face  Ox'  the  fact  that  the 
strategic  implication  to  America  of  Ja- 
pan's position  in  the  Mandates  was  widely 
understood  by  naval  experts.  For  the 
general  public,  Hector  Bywater  concisely 
outlined  the  situation  in  his  book  Sea  Power 
in  the  Pacific  (1921).  We  now  know  that 
the  American  effort  utterly  failed.  But  at 
least  we  should  try  to  see  what  it  was  the 
men  who  wrote  those  treaties  were  trying 
to  do. 

After  the  Conference  the  Mandates 
passed  to  the  supervision  of  the  Mandates 
Commission  of  the  League  of  Nations. 
Japan  was  required,  like  all  mandatories, 
to  present  an  annual  report  to  the  Com- 
mission and  send  a  representative  to 
answer  the  verbal  questions  of  the  Com- 
missioners. Japan  met  these  require- 
ments for  a  number  of  years.  But  as  ten- 
sion mounted  in  the  Pacific,  particularly 
after  the  Manchurian  episode  of  1931, 
suspicion  of  Japan's  activities  in  the  Man- 
dates also  mounted.  She  was  accused  of 
duplicity,  of  developing  certain  harbors 
far  beyond  commercial  needs,  probably  to 
make  them  of  use  as  naval  bases.  Many 
persons  passed  from  suspicion  to  belief,  but 
the  case  could  not  be  proved  because  Ja- 
pan excluded  all  casual  travelers  from  the 
islands  and  saw  to  it  that  those  admitted 
kept  to  carefully  defined  itineraries.  The 
Mandates  Commission  proved  powerless 
to  settle  the  argument  by  an  impartial  in- 
vestigation, though  it  questioned  the  Jap- 
anese closely  on  every  possible  occasion. 
To-day  even  its  friends  agree  that  the  prin- 
cipal weaknesses  of  the  Commission  were 
that  it  lacked  an  inspection  service  of  its 
own  and  that  it  lacked  the  power  to  en- 
force its  policies  and  decisions. 

That  the  Japanese  did  a  very  great  deal 
to  develop  the  islands  commercially  is  gen- 
erally admitted,  even  by  their  bitter  ene- 
mies, and  that  they  tied  that  development 
to  the  homeland  is  admitted  to  be  proper, 
though  unfriendly,  by  all  who  recall  the 
terms  of  a  C-class  mandate.  It  was  the 
same  with  the  exclusively  Japanese  immi- 
gration into  the  islands.     If  the  Japanese 


got  away  with  murder  with  regard  to 
fortifications,  as  is  not  at  all  impossible, 
then  the  failure  to  curb  her  goes  back  to 
the  limited  powers  of  the  Mandates  Com- 
mission. In  any  case  the  naval  impor- 
tance of  the  islands  is  to  a  very  great  extent 
inherent  in  their  location.  This  strategic 
value  remains  whether  or  not  they  were 
fortified.  And  the  location  can  be  blamed 
only  on  God. 

When  Japan  gave  notice  on  March  27, 
1933,  that  she  intended  to  leave  the 
League  of  Nations  there  would  have  been 
a  case  for  forcing  her  to  return  her  man- 
date. But  the  case  was  never  put  to  the 
test.  Japan  hung  on  to  the  islands,  thus 
establishing  a  case  for  the  contention, 
which  she  set  up,  that  they  had  become 
an  integral  part  of  the  Empire.  I  strongly 
suspect  that  what  specifically  naval  devel- 
opment took  place  in  the  islands  before 
Pearl  Harbor  took  place  after  1933,  when 
the  Japanese  clearly  saw  that  their  title  was 
not  going  to  be  challenged  short  of  war. 
As  far  as  is  known,  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment did  not  challenge  the  League's 
failure  to  act  to  recover  the  mandate.  It 
is  doubtful  that  the  United  States,  acting 
alone,  could  have  raised  the  issue  without 
provoking  a  major  Far  Eastern  crisis  and 
perhaps  precipitating  war.  It  is  difhcult 
to  believe  that  this  country  would  have 
supported  war  over  the  Mandates  at  any 
time  between  1933  and  1941.  The  blame 
for  allowing  Japan  to  retain  the  Mandates 
after  she  left  the  League  rests,  in  any  case, 
squarely  on  the  League,  or  perhaps  on  the 
powers  then  dominant  in  defining  the 
League's  policies. 

However  that  may  be,  Japan  remained 
in  the  islands.  That  is  the  point  of  the 
story.  And  what  it  has  cost,  and  will  cost, 
is  plain  for  all  to  see. 

In  his  Message  to  Congress  on  Septem- 
ber 1 7,  1 943,  President  Roosevelt  declared : 

It  goes  almost  without  saying  that  when  Japan 
surrenders  the  United  Nations  will  never  again 
let  her  have  authority  over  the  islands  which  were 
mandated  to  her  by  the  League  of  Nations. 
Japan  obviously  is  not  to  be  trusted. 

This   is   an   entirely   negative   statement. 
The  Mandates  are  not  to  be  left  in  Japan's 
possession.     But  who  is  to  get  them? 
The   clear   implication    of   Mr.    Lipp- 


THOSE    JAPANESE    MANDATES 


153 


inann's  attitude  is  that  they  should,  finally, 
become  the  property  of  the  United  States. 
The  same  view  is  taken  by  Mr.  Arthur 
Krock  in  The  New  York  Times  for  October 
7,  1943.  Ignoring  Mr.  Krock's  imphca- 
tion  that  we  should  grab  British  islands 
(and,  in  the  case  of  Canton,  a  British- 
American  island  ruled  as  a  condominium), 
as  well  as  the  Mandates,  here  is  how  he 
put  it; 

Another  objective  of  the  Pacific  war  is  to  take 
away  from  Japan  the  mandated  islands  and  others 
in  that  area,  including  Canton.  These  plainly 
are  essential  to  protect  the  Pacific  approaches  to 
the  United  States  and  to  hold  back  Japanese 
militarism  of  the  future:  therefore,  they  should 
definitely  be  under  the  American  flag.  Though 
the  Atlantic  Charter  says  of  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  that  "they  seek  no  aggran- 
dizement, territorial  or  other,"  these  islands  must 
be  added  for  security  to  American  possessions, 
and  that,  in  any  dictionary  is  "aggrandizement." 

The  opposed  point  of  view  was  expressed 
by  Mr.  Samuel  Grafton  in  the  New  York 
Post  for  October  18,  1943: 

We  think  that  British,  Japanese,  and  perhaps 
Dutch  island  bases  in  the  Pacific  ought  to  be 
given  to  us  for  keeps  after  the  war  because,  well, 
because  we  want  them.  Because  we  say  we  need 
them  for  our  security. 

Look,  honey,  it's  late  and  Tiff'any's  is  closed. 
Why  should  anybody  want  to  give  us  bases? 
American  security  is  not  the  world's  problem. 
World  security  is  the  world  problem. 

Why  should  the  world  give  us  bases  until  it 
knows  whether  we  intend  to  use  them  as  part  of 
a  system  of  world  security? 

Woodrow  Wilson  and  his  followers 
thought  Tiffany's  had  closed  during  the 
last  war.  Yet  recall,  honey,  what  deals 
the  boys  cooked  up  in  the  back  room! 
The  truth  is  there  are  three  courses  open: 
1.  We  can  take  the  islands  ourselves 
and  get  the  other  interested  parties — Great 
Britain,  China,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 


and    the    Netherlands — to    agree    to    our 
taking  them. 

2.  We  can  refuse  the  islands  ourselves 
and  let  them  go  to  one  of  the  interested 
parties  listed  above. 

3.  We  can  assign  them  to  the  care  of 
some  international  body  with  the  proviso 
that  Japan  is  to  have  no  hand  in  governing 
them. 

The  first  two  possibilities  are  directly  in 
line  with  the  "realistic"  settlement  of 
the  war  which  Roosevelt,  Churchill,  and 
Stalin  now  seem  bent  on  achieving. 

The  third  proposal,  supported  by  Mr. 
Grafton,  is  completely  unrealistic.  It  is  a 
dream-world  scheme  to  which  there  is 
now  no  practical  means  of  approach  what- 
ever. The  Four  Nation  Declaration  of 
Moscow  states  that  the  future  "general  in- 
ternational organization"  shall  be  "based 
on  the  principle  of  the  sovereign  equality 
of  all  peace-loving  states."  That  means 
some  sort  of  revived  League  of  Nations. 
But  the  peace  is  obviously  not  going  to  be 
maintained  by  any  such  organization. 
It  is  going  to  be  maintained,  if  at  all,  by 
the  powerful  nations  behind  it — that  is, 
the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  Russia, 
and,  perhaps,  China. 

If  peace  is  to  be  maintained  by  agree- 
ment among  these  powers,  then  the  islands 
should  not  be  left  in  the  hands  of  some  in- 
ternational body  whose  authority  depends 
upon  the  extent  to  which  the  big  powers 
back  it  up.  It  will  be  the  better  part  of 
wisdom  to  get  the  islands  either  into  our 
own  hands  or  into  the  hands  of  some  na- 
tion likely  to  be  friendly  to  us  in  the  pre- 
dictable future.  In  the  hands  of  an  "in- 
ternational authority"  they  will  be  used  as 
pawns — beyond  our  control — in  the  game 
of  strategy  which  gives  them  the  only  sig- 
nificance they  have. 


AFTER    CHRISTMAS 

A  Passage  from  a  Christmas  Oratorio 
W.    H.    AUDEN 


WELL,  SO  that  is  that.     Now  we  must  dismantle  the  tree, 
Putting  the  decorations  back  into  their  cardboard  boxes — 
Some  have  got  broken — and  carrying  them  up  to  the  attic. 
The  holly  and  the  mistletoe  must  be  taken  down  and  burnt, 
And  the  children  got  ready  for  school.     There  are  enough 
Leftovers  to  do,  warmed  up,  for  the  rest  of  the  week — 
Not  that  we  have  much  appetite,  having  drunk  such  a  lot. 
Stayed  up  so  late,  attempted — quite  unsuccessfully — 
To  love  all  of  our  relatives,  and  in  general 
Grossly  overestimated  our  powers.     Once  again 
As  in  previous  years  we  have  seen  the  actual  Vision  and  failed 
To  do  more  than  entertain  it  as  an  agreeable 
Possibility,  once  again  we  have  sent  Him  away, 
Begging  though  to  remain  His  disobedient  servant, 
The  promising  child  who  cannot  keep  His  word  for  long. 

The  Christmas  Feast  is  already  a  fading  memory,  /  ^ 

And  already  the  mind  begins  to  be  vaguely  aware 

Of  an  unpleasant  whiff  of  apprehension  at  the  thought 

Of  Lent  and  Good  Friday  which  cannot,  after  all,  now 

Be  very  far  off.     But,  for  the  time  being,  here  we  all  are, 

Back  in  the  moderate  Aristotelian  city 

Of  darning  and  the  Eight-Fifteen,  where  Euclid's  geometry 

And  Newton's  mechanics  would  account  for  our  experience, 

And  the  kitchen  table  exists  because  I  scrub  it. 

It  seems  to  have  shrunk  during  the  holidays.     The  streets 

Are  much  narrower  than  we  remembered;  we  had  forgotten 

The  office  was  as  depressing  as  this.     To  those  who  have  seen 


AFTER    CHRISTMAS  155 

The  Child,  however  dimly,  however  incredulously, 

The  Time  Being  is,  in  a  sense,  the  most  trying  time  of  all. 

For  the  innocent  children  who  whispered  so  excitedly 

Outside  the  locked  door  where  they  knew  the  presents  io  be 

Grew  up  when  it  opened.     Now,  recollecting  that  moment, 

We  can  repress  the  joy,  but  the  guilt  remains  conscious; 

Remembering  the  stable  where  for  once  in  our  lives 

Everything  became  a  You  and  nothing  was  an  It, 

And  craving  the  sensation  but  ignoring  the  cause, 

We  look  round  for  something,  no  matter  what,  to  inhibit 

Our  self-reflection,  and  the  obvious  thing  for  that  purpose 

Would  be  some  great  suffering.      So,  once  we  have  met  the  Son 

We  are  tempted  ever  after  to  pray  to  the  Father 

"Lead  us  into  temptation  and  evil  for  our  sake." 

They  will  come  all  right,  don't  worry;  probably  in  a  form 
That  we  do  not  expect,  and  certainly  with  a  force 
More  dreadful  than  we  can  imagine.      In  the  meantime 
There  are  bills  to  be  paid,  machines  to  keep  in  repair, 
Irregular  verbs  to  learn,  the  Time  Being  to  redeem 
From  insignificance.     The  happy  morning  is  over, 
The  night  of  agony  still  to  come;  the  time  is  noon: 
When  the  Spirit  must  practice  his  scales  of  rejoicing 
Without  even  a  hostile  audience,  and  the  Soul  endure 
A  silence  that  is  neither  for  nor  against  her  faith 
That  God's  Will  will  be  done,  that,  in  spite  of  her  prayers, 
God  will  cheat  no  one,  not  even  the  world  of  its  triumph. 


PREFACE    TO    A    SCHOOLMASTER'S 

^  BIOGRAPHY 

GEORGE    W.    MARTIN 


THERE  is  a  challenging  mystery  about 
the  career  of  Endicott  Peabody.  For 
more  than  fifty  years  he  was  Head 
Master  of  Groton,  and  during  this  period 
it  became  a  matter  of  great  and  increasing 
interest  how  he  did  it.  Intelligent  and 
expert  persons  repaired  to  the  School  and 
examined  the  process  and  made  reports. 
Mr.  Peabody  himself  wrote  a  piece,  which 
was  duly  published,  explaining  the  system: 
with  the  result  that  everyone  agreed  that 
he  himself  did  not  understand  his  own 
technique.  As  for  the  experts,  they  ex- 
hausted all  the  stock  phrases  about  "orien- 
tation, integration,  motivation,"  etc.,  and 
then  it  became  apparent  that  they  were 
like  the  three  blind  men  describing  the 
elephant — there  was  no  agreement  on  any- 
thing. They  differed  not  only  in  their 
conclusions  but  in  the  factual  reports  of 
what  they  found  going  on. 

Education  is  one  of  those  subjects,  like 
divorce  or  constitutional  law,  on  which 
everyone  has  an  opinion.  Some  think  it  is 
involved  with  vocational  instruction;  some 
think  it  is  to  "discipline  the  mind";  some 
hold  it  to  be  the  acquirement  of  media  of 
self-expression;  and  some  think  it  is  just  a 
formal  process  to  which  the  young  should 
be  exposed  for  a  certain  length  of  time. 

The  Rector  never  sold  out  to  any  one 
school    of   thought    in    this    connection. 


Sometimes  he  was  sure  education  ought  to 
be  connected  with  discipline;  sometimes  he 
thought  well  of  science,  but  more  often 
not;  and  as  the  world  changed  he  changed 
too. 

This  capacity  to  change  was  referred  to 
by  his  admirers  as  "growing."  His  de- 
tractors noted  the  changes  but  considered 
them  the  irrational  results  of  outside 
stimuli,  the  unconscious  response  of  intel- 
lectual inertia  to  current  pressures.  The 
conclusions  of  any  particular  person  in 
this  respect  are  observed  to  be  heavily  in- 
fluenced by  his  own  investment  of  time  and 
effort  in  any  particular  department  of  edu- 
cation. When  one  has  labored  long  years 
at  Latin  and  Greek  one  is  scornful  of  the 
educational  value  of  engineering.  And 
anyone  who  has  put  years  of  work  on  the 
study  of  chemistry  is  apt  to  prescribe  that 
subject  positively  as  the  way  to  the  good  life 
— although  chemists  make  a  rather  comic 
noise  in  the  ears  of  "educated  persons." 

When  the  Rector  supported  the  thesis  of 
the  advocates  of  science  they  considered 
him  intelligent;  when  he  opposed  the  em- 
phasis on  science  the  scientists  thought  him 
a  mossback.  As  an  actual  fact,  he  was 
not  profound;  but  he  was  alert  and  intel- 
ligent and  completely  devoid  of  any  shame 
about  changing  his  mind  when  he  thought 
he  was  wrong.  This  was  disconcerting. 
Indeed,  it  is  hardly  fair.     He  never  spent 


PREFACE    TO    A    SCHOOLMASTER'S    BIOGRAPHY 


157 


any  time  or  effort  proving  he  was  right 
yesterday;  he  simply  went  on  to  the  next 
thing.  He  never  tried  to  get  even  with 
anybody  or  bore  any  grudge.  Thus  he 
saved  so  much  time  that  life  appeared 
leisurely. 

II 

THE  Rector  had  a  great  talent  for  firing 
incompetents.  He  did  not  fire  boys 
often;  he  worked  over  them.  But  he  was 
entirely  aware  of  the  strong  and  weak 
points  of  the  masters;  and  those  who  did 
not  measure  up  to  the  requirements  he 
eliminated.  This  kept  the  School  from 
becoming  a  Home  for  Indigent  Incom- 
petents. 

He  did  this  himself.  He  hired  the  mas- 
ters. He  sat  in  their  classes.  He  listened 
to  their  suggestions.  When  they  returned 
from  a  trip  to  Boston  he  sat  up  and  cross- 
examined  them.  He  may  have  had  great 
faith  in  human  nature,  but  it  was  a  kind  of 
general,  impersonal  faith.  He  knew  what 
he  was  working  for,  and  there  was  nothing 
vague  or  half-hearted  in  his  contact  and 
control.  He  was  just  but  not  particularly 
sympathetic. 

It  was  sometimes  felt  that  a  clergyman 
should  have  cultivated  a  more  trustful  na- 
ture which  could  be  imposed  on.  Well — 
he  didn't. 

He  was  not  trustful,  but  he  was  com- 
pletely reliable.  When  he  was  on  duty  he 
was  always  the  same — always.  He  al- 
ways first  appeared  before  the  School  at 
Chapel  in  the  morning,  when  he  wore  the 
usual  priest's  robes. 

After  Chapel  the  boys  went  at  once  to 
the  schoolroom  at  the  School  House — all 
the  boys.  Every  desk  was  occupied.  A 
master  stood  at  the  desk  and  surveyed  the 
assemblage.  He  rang  the  bell  and  there 
was  silence. 

And  then  the  Rector  would  come  in. 
He  never  hurried.  He  never  sauntered. 
He  always  looked  the  School  right  in  the 
eye  as  though  he  were  looking  for  trouble. 
The  quick  cadence  of  his  step  was  always 
exactly  the  same.  His  black  shoes  were 
polished.  His  blue  suit,  starched  collar, 
white  bow-tie,  also  starched,  were  always 
exactly  and  precisely  as  expected. 

He  mounted  the  steps  to  the  dais.  He 
took  the  framed  schedule  of  events  from 


the  master.  He  turned  slightly  to  the 
right.  ''First  Form — History.  .  .  .  Sec- 
ond Form — Latin.  ..."  Under  his  eye 
the  School  filed  out  to  the  first  recitation  of 
the  day. 

Four  hours  later  he  dismissed  the  School 
from  the  same  platform.  He  did  it — no 
one  else.  He  read  the  detention,  sent  out 
the  mail,  and  made  what  announcements 
were  in  order. 

At  dinner  the  School  stood  at  their 
places  while  he  asked  a  blessing.  The 
blessing  never  varied.  It  was  short  and 
impersonal. 

His  next  official  appearance  was  at  sup- 
per. No  matter  what  he  had  been  doing 
during  the  afternoon,  at  supper  he  was 
back  in  the  blue  suit,  white  starched  tie, 
and  black  shoes.  He  asked  the  blessing. 
The  boys  went  from  the  dining  room  to  the 
schoolroom,  and  he  conducted  evening 
prayers.  He  stood  at  the  desk  and  read 
from  the  New  Testament — always.  Then 
he  knelt  down  on  the  floor  and  read  some 
familiar  prayers.  When  prayers  were 
concluded  he  went  out  in  the  hall;  and 
Brooks  House  filed  by  and  said  "Good- 
night, sir";  and  to  each  he  said,  "Good- 
night, my  boy,"  and  shook  his  hand. 

That  was  the  system.  So  far  as  a  casual 
observer  could  see,  that  was  all  there  was 
to  it.  The  experts  came  and  talked  about 
Freud  and  Jung  and  looked  for  hidden 
significances,  and  neurotic  parents  moaned 
and  chattered;  but  nothing  was  ever  done 
to  change  it. 

Long,  long  afterward,  boys  could  recall 
the  tones  of  his  voice  as  he  read  the  pray- 
ers: "Watch  over  our  School  as  its  years 
increase  .  .  .  until  we  come  to  thine  ever- 
lasting kingdom." 

He  taught  the  First  Form  Latin;  The 
boys  learned  no  Latin  to  speak  of  and 
picked  up  no  interesting  information  on 
the  side.  He  was  not  unkind,  but  the 
children  were  ill  at  ease.  The  class  never 
seemed  to  get  going.  There  were  no  in- 
terludes, no  nonsense — not  even  explo- 
sions. Whenever  the  Latin  suspended  for 
an  instant  there  was  a  kind  of  Peter  Parley 
talk  which  bored  the  boys. 

The  contrast  between  this  and  the 
Greek  classes  conducted  by  Amory  Gard- 
ner was  stupefying.  Mr.  Gardner  did  not 
actually  juggle  balls  and  Indian  clubs,  but 


158 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


only  because  it  did  not  occur  to  him  or  any 
of  the  boys.  He  did  not  actually  cut  him- 
self with  clamshells,  because  he  had  no 
clams  handy;  but  he  woyld  leap  up  in  the 
air,  and  beat  his  breast,  and  tear  his  hair, 
and  faint  with  fervor.  And,  withal,  a  lot 
of  boys  learned  a  lot  of  Greek;  while  the 
gossip  they  picked  up  about  Sanskrit, 
Egypt,  the  zoetrope  or  wheel-of-life.  Max 
Miiller,  Grimm's  Law,  and  the  private 
lives  of  the  denizens  of  Mt.  Olympus  was 
wholly  incredible. 

Amory  Gardner  was  always  wanting  to 
address  the  School,  and  the  Rector  was 
forever  thwarting  this  ambition.  The 
Rector  was  right. 

Besides  this  Latin  class,  Mr.  Peabody 
undertook  the  instruction  of  the  Fifth  and 
Sixth  Form  in  Sacred  Studies.  The  origin 
of  the  ensuing  difficulties  is  obscure. 
From  time  to  time  some  tough-minded  in-' 
tellectuals  turned  up  among  the  boys;  but 
the  Rector  knew  what  he  was  talking 
about — in  the  beginning  at  any  rate — and 
no  confusion  ought  to  have  occurred. 

But  confusion  there  was.  Somehow  the 
subject  would  get  turned  round;  and  it 
seemed  as  if  the  class  were  enamored  of 
Mohammed  and  on  the  verge  of  embrac- 
ing Islam.  And  this  of  course  was  quite 
all  right  if  only  these  exuberant  explorers 
were  open-minded  enough  to  see,  before 
the  end  of  the  hour,  that  Christianity  was 
best  after  all.  But  sometimes  it  was  just 
touch  and  go  whether  they  could  be 
brought  back  into  the  fold  and  the  gate 
safely  shut  before  the  clock  struck.  It  was 
nervous  work.  Buddha  was  disposed  of 
without  difficulty.  Apparently  Nirvana 
excited  no  interest,  and  Gautama  no  con- 
verts. But  when  Zoroaster  came  along 
there  were  ten  short  minutes  spent  on  him; 
and  for  the  other  fifty  minutes  the  faithful 
St.  Bernard  dogs  were  searching  the  Alps 
for  the  yodeling  Parsees  straying  far  from 
the  company  compound. 

Often  it  seemed  as  though  there  were 
something  almost  diabolical  in  the  way  the 
wrong  side  was  put  on  the  defense.  The 
spectacle  made  some  boys  nervous,  and 
the  stupider  a  boy  was  the  more  embar- 
rassed he  became.  But  there  were  volatile 
devils  who  enjoyed  it  and  the  range  of 
whose  speculations  never  failed  to  exceed 
all  reasonable  bounds. 


Ill 


CHAPEL  came  every  morning  in  the 
form  of  morning  prayers,  a  hymn, 
and  a  psalm.  One  became  familiar  with 
a  lot  of  psalms,  and  with  Cranmer's  Prayer 
Book.  On  Sunday  there  were  services 
morning  and  evening.  In  the  evening  the 
hot  tears  coursed  down  the  cheeks  of  the 
little  new  boys  during  the  Nunc  Dimittis — 
but  the  others  never  noticed  it,  having  been 
through  it  themselves.  At  the  morning 
service  the  Rector  would  alternate  with 
Mr.  Billings  in  preaching  the  sermon. 
Both  of  them  preached  without  dramatics 
in  the  strict  New  England  tradition. 

The  importance  of  sermons  is  under- 
estimated. At  an  evening  service  in  the 
Town  Hall  at  Groton,  in  May  one  year, 
Dr.  Rainsford  made  some  remarks  about 
the  Origin  of  Species  which  resulted  in  at 
least  thirty  boys  reading  that  book;  and  it 
was  a  topic  of  discussion  for  weeks. 

The  sermons  of  Mr.  Billings  were  excel- 
lent. The  Rector's  sermons  were  stuffy. 
For  some  reason  the  boys  did  not  seem  to 
believe  them.  Certain  phrases  recurred 
continually:  "The  dyer's  hand  is  subdued 
to  what  it  is  dipped  in.  .  .  .  Sanctify 
yourselves  for  their  sakes."  .  .  .  The 
boys  wanted  to  live  dangerously  and  see 
life.  The  Rector  wanted  them  to  be  pure 
in  heart  and  to  keep  unspotted  from  the 
world.  These  objectives  are  not  incon- 
sistent; but  you  cannot  capture  the  imagi- 
nation of  boys  by  talking  of  goodness  or 
self-sacrifice  or  strong  silent  heroism. 
What  the  beggars  wanted  was  to  excite  the 
admiration  and  astonishment  of  the  other 
monkeys:  in  short,  just  what  everyone 
wants  to-day,  and  always  has  wanted 
since  Cheops  built  the  pyramid. 

After  St.  George  killed  the  dragon  he 
was  very  popular;  and  it  is  obviously  up  to 
the  proprietor  of  a  large  stable  of  boys  to 
provide  dragons  right  along.  Now  there 
was  something  phony  about  Mr.  Pea- 
body's  dragons.  Instead  of  getting  into 
some  old  clothes,  and  sneaking  up  on  the 
dragon,  and  grabbing  him  by  the  neck, 
and  sinking  your  teeth  in  his  jugular  vein, 
while  he  roared  and  writhed  and  breathed 
out  clouds  of  smoke — but  you  hung  on:  it 
wasn't  like  that.  ...  In  the  first  place, 
you  had  to  go  in  training;  and  then  when 


PREFACE    TO    A    SCHOOLMASTER'S    BIOGRAPHY 


159 


ihc  dragon  was  brought  round  it  app>eared 
you  were  to  talk  him  to  death,  or  set  him  a 
good  example,  or  something:  more  like  St. 
Georgianna  than  St.  George. 

It  was  a  continuous  puzzlement  what 
kind  of  a  man  the  Rector  really  was.  The 
way  he  walked  was  incompatible  with  the 
way  he  talked;  and  the  boys  believed  their 
eyes  rather  than  their  ears.  He  was  hum- 
ble with  the  cortex  maximums — by  an  ef- 
fort of  will — and  he  was  "liberal''  the 
same  way.  He  was  determined  to  be 
liberal — if  it  killed  him.  And  so  of  course 
he  was  not  really  liberal;  he  was  only  de- 
termined, like  the  man  who  is  honest  be- 
cause honesty  is  the  best  policy:  such  a 
man  is  not  honest;  he  is  politic. 

It  was  his  true  essence  which  he  com- 
municated to  the  boys.  They  learned 
determinauon.  to  know  cricket  fi*om  non- 
cricket,  to  be  unafraid:  and  tliese  attri- 
butes carried  some  to  honor  and  glory,  and 
some  to  infamy  and  disgrace.  Lord  Rose- 
ben.'  is  reporied  to  have  said  as  a  young 
man  that  he  had  three  ambitions:  to 
marry  an  heiress,  to  o\s"n  a  Derby  winner, 
and  to  be  Prime  Minister.  He  achieved 
all  three,  but  he  \vas  not  generally  ad- 
mired. It  was  felt  ihai  he  paid  too  high  a 
price. 

Li\ing  is  com.plica:ed.  Exhortation  is 
useless.  Boys  scorn  precepts.,  but  they  will 
imitate  heroes. 

The  selection  of  heroes  to  introduce  to 
the  anention  of  boys  is  an  important 
maner.  Socrates.  Jesus.  Servettis..  Bruno. 
Galileo.  Cromwell.  Jolm  Hampden.  George 
Washington  were  all  lawbreakers.  Most 
of  them  were  tried  and  executed  according 
to  the  law  of  their  time. 

Prohibition  came  along.  It  proved 
completely  tinenforceable.  Practically  all 
the  graduates  of  the  School  became  crim- 
inals. Adniiuedly  the  noble  experiment 
operated  to  breed  coiTupnon,  to  teach 
girls  to  drink  gin,  to  flout  the  law.  to  create 
disoixier,  and  to  produce  a  host  of  ills. 
When  one  consulted  solemnly  with  oneself 
it  was  e\'ident  tiiat,  measured  by  any 
frame  of  reference  that  made  sense,  the 
situation  demanded  resistance  as  clearly  as 
the  imposition  of  Ship  Money  Taxes  by 
Chai'les  I.  To  comply  was  to  co-operate 
with  t^Tanny. 

The  srraduates.  from  the  first,  saw  this 


clearly  and  saw  it  whole,  and  contributed 
steadily  to  the  breakdown  of  enforcement. 
The  Rector  went  through  a  slow  mutation. 
He  first  fell  under  the  influence  of  Mr. 
Horace  Taft,  who  persuaded  him  that  to 
be  a  criminal  was  the  worst  thing  that 
could  happen  to  his  boys;  and  so  he  started 
out  to  urge  compliance. 

Then  someone  called  him  the  Vicar  of 
Bray  and  said  he  had  sold  out  his  real  con- 
victions for  a  mess  of  pottage  called  "law 
and  order.*'  All  the  criminal  graduates 
came  up  to  the  School,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  their  lives  felt  morally  superior. 
The  biographies  of  the  great,  mentioned 
above,  were  pointed  out  to  him.  The 
\vorst  of  it  was  everyone  was  kind  and 
solicitous  about  it;  and  the  amount  of  in- 
terest taken  in  the  Xew  Testament  was 
prodigious.  Even  the  stockbrokers  were 
reading  it. 

This  was  a  wonderful  and  chastening 
experience.  For  once  a  moral  question 
got  so  complicated  that  it  was  not  in- 
stantly apparent  what  the  proper  course 
was.  And  though  many  a  gi-aduate  had 
an  attack  of  the  dry  grins  on  observing  the 
Rector's  predicament,  not  one  had  any 
thought  that  he  ^\■as  co\vardly  or  taking 
the  easy  path.  And  \vhen  the  Cromwel- 
iians  finally  won  they  admired  him  for 
sticking  it  out  all  by  him.self:  and  they 
kne\v  he  never  did  really  think  any  less  of 
them  even  if  thev  were  criminals. 


IV 

THE  Rector  complained  a  good  deal 
about  the  vacations — especially  the 
short  vacations  at  Christmas  and  Easter. 
He  said  the  younger  boys  came  back  in- 
fected with  variotis  contagious  maladies, 
and  the  older  boys  lost  from  five  to  fifteen 
pounds  in  weight,  and  were  retmmed  ex- 
ceedingly demorahzed.  Said  they  spent 
tiieir  time  at  the  theater,  and  later  dis- 
cussed, not  the  merits  of  character  por- 
trayal, nor  the  problems  presented,  but 
''the  beaut\-  of  actresses.'*' 

He  just  had  not  thought  tliis  out.  Any 
boy  of  seventeen  who  \vas  more  interested 
in  die  technique  of  drama  than  in  feminine 
pulchi-itude  would  have  been  an  object  of 
suspicion  to  the  Rector  at  the  very  first 
contact.     But  he  was  right  in  complaining 


cnR!  \UnAM. 


160 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


about  the  vacations.  They  were  too  vio- 
lent. The  boys  reacted  from  the  ascetic, 
cloistered  existence  at  Groton  like  sailors 
getting  shore  liberty;  and  though  the 
damage  was  not  permrnent  it  was  un- 
necessary and  exasperating. 

The  role  of  the  parents  was  difficult.  If 
they  were  rich  they  took  their  boys  to 
Jekyll  Island,  and  thus  supplied  a  sterilized 
playground  from  which  there  was  no 
escape.  But  if  they  had  to  live  in  New 
York  or  Boston  the  boys  ran  themselves 
ragged.  The  Rector  exercised  a  kind  of 
remote  control  which  operated  to  involve 
the  parents  in  collusive  and  clandestine 
breaches  of  unenforceable  edicts.  The 
problem  continued  to  be  a  worry  for  many 
years;  but  the  attempted  control  became 
less,  and  more  responsibility  was  left  to  the 
parents.  No  satisfactory  solution  was 
ever  evolved.  The  young  continue  to  be 
interested  in  actresses. 


WHEN  one  reads  Tom  Brown's  School 
Days  one  does  not  get  the  impres- 
sion that  Dr.  Arnold  had  any  noticeable 
sense  of  humor.  Perhaps  the  best  people 
did  not  have  one  in  those  days.  Punch 
was  started  in  1841;  and  a  good  deal  of 
Aristophanes  is  more  modern  than  those 
early  copies. 

What  went  on  around  the  Rector  was 
not  funny.  Life  was  real  and  life  was 
earnest.  It  was  often  gay  and  cheerful 
and  friendly;  but  not  funny. 

All  the  same,  some  wonderful  things 
happened.  First  Amory  Gardner  built 
the  Chapel.  Then  he  built  the  Pleasure 
Dome.  A  visiting  fireman,  observing  Mr. 
Gardner  in  a  bath  wrapper  drinking 
whiskey  after  a  game  of  squash,  ap- 
proached him  curiously.  Thereupon  Gard- 
ner rose  and  dropped  him  an  elaborate 
curtsy.  The  visitor  (whose  collar  but- 
toned in  the  back)  concluded  he  was  in  the 
presence  of  extreme  depravity — in  which 
delusion  he  was  of  course  encouraged  by  a 
couple  of  irresponsible  graduates — and 
was  going  to  tell  the  Rector  about  it.  He 
had  to  be  personally  escorted  to  Ayer,  and 
sent  home  to  grow  up. 

The  Rector's  conception  of  what  was 
funny  was  Burnand's  Happy  Thoughts. 
This  book  was  published  in  1871,  having 


previously  come  out  piecemeal  in  Punch. 
It  is  funny  too — if  you  have  plenty  of 
time.  He  used  to  read  it  aloud  when  he 
and  Mrs.  Peabody  went  on  picnics  with 
the  Fifth  Form  in  the  springtime. 

He  was  born  in  1857;  and  the  decade 
from  1870  to  1880  he  spent  in  England  be- 
ing subjected  to  formal  education.  If  any- 
one will  look  through  the  bound  volumes 
of  Punch  for  those  ten  years  a  great  light 
will  break  on  him.  For  there  are  all  the 
jokes,  the  preoccupation  with  playing 
fields,  the  impatience  with  vulgarity,  the 
social  dilemmas  of  the  well-endowed  dow- 
agers, the  total  ignorance  of  life  on  any 
other  plane,  the  complete  confidence  in 
the  morality  of  property,  the  feminine 
women,  the  protective  and  possessive 
men,  the  swells  and  the  bounders  and  the 
snobs — in  short,  there  is  portrayed  the  be- 
nign complacency  of  a  ruling  class  which 
had  no  regrets  for  the  past  and  no  fears  for 
the  future.  The  remarkable  thing  is  not 
that,  brought  up  in  this  society,  the  Rector 
was  inscrutable  and  different  from  home- 
grown grass-root  Americans,  but  that 
when  he  finally  came  back  to  Boston  he 
was  endurable  at  all.  He  was  not  only 
endurable;  he  was  very  popular.  He  was 
also  indestructible. 

He  counted  himself  a  clergyman.  He 
had  loyal  labor-union  ties  with  clergymen. 
He  was  always  helping  worthless  ones. 
But  many  people  were  more  impressed 
with  his  executive  ability.  Julius  A.  At- 
wood.  Bishop  of  Arizona,  a  lifelong  in- 
timate of  the  Rector's  (he  used  to  preach 
sermons  at  School;  he  was  bald  as  a  bil- 
liard ball,  and  was  known  by  the  boys  as 
"the  Mexican  Hairless")  not  only  insisted 
that  Mr.  Peabody  was  a  great  executive, 
but  said  he  would  have  made  a  wonderful 
banker:  that  the  way  he  got  money  for  the 
School  was  little  short  of  miraculous. 
Others  said  he  was  a  great  leader,  a 
teacher,  a  noble  character,  a  guide,  philos- 
opher, and  friend.  They  agreed  only  on 
one  point:  he  did  not  remotely  resemble  a 
clergyman.  He  was  something  like  Coke 
of  Norfolk. 

VI 

SOPHISTICATED  pcrsons  know  that  it  is 
not  enough  to  be  right.     In  this  world 
it  is  necessary  to  be  successful  also.     This 


PREFACE    TO    A    SCHOOLMASTER'S    BIOGRAPHY 


161 


is  often  resented  by  closet  theorists — espe- 
cially women — but  wise  men  accept  the 
universe  and  get  on  with  their  knitting. 
Of  all  this  the  Rector  was  fully  aware. 
He  never  formulated  it  because  he  was  es- 
sentially inarticulate;  and  what  he  knew 
did  not  find  expression  in  words.  But  the 
boys  were  indoctrinated  with  this  philoso- 
phy; and  when  they  grew  up  they  wasted  no 
time  feeling  sorry  for  themselves  or  weep- 
ing over  past  mistakes. 

This  attitude  is  conducive  to  an  urgency 
which  tended  to  push  boys  a  little  farther 
along  the  road  to  success  than  they  would 
have  got  under  their  own  steam.  Unfor- 
tunately it  did  not  induce  any  increased 
discrimination  in  the  selection  of  occupa- 
tions, and  the  graduates  took  to  finance  as 
eagerly  as  to  medicine. 

The  Rector  saw  this  very  clearly;  but  his 
only  weapon  of  opposition  was  exhorta- 
tion. He  urged  the  boys  to  go  into  the 
professions  and  keep  away  from  Wall 
Street.  He  lectured  on  vocations  in 
Sacred  Studies:  and  they  asked  him  how 
an  Army  officer  could  possibly  send  his  son 
to  Groton.  He  had  not  thought  of  it. 
His  whole  School  project  required  a  large 
income  for  its  customers.  When  he  urged 
the  boys  to  be  true  to  themselves  and  drop 
out  of  their  parents'  income  class,  they 
simply  did  not  hear  him.  They  were  going 
to  make  money  enough  to  be  able  to  send 
their  sons  to  Groton.  That  was  the  first 
and  great  commandment. 

This  business  of  money  and  vocations 
was  fantastic,  and  the  Rector  got  no  help 
on  it.  Everybody  from  Jacob  Riis  to 
Booker  Washington  undertook  to  give  talks 
to  the  boys  and  advise  them.  In  the  very 
early  years  of  the  century  Gifford  Pinchot, 
who  was  then  a  forester,  came  up  to  lec- 
ture on  forestry.  The  lecture  is  long  for- 
gotten; but,  at  its  close,  he  looked  at  the 
boys  meaningly,  almost  menacingly,  and 
said:  "Fortunate  is  the  man  so  rich  he  does 
not  have  to  work;  but  twice  fortunate  is 
the  rich  man  who  works  hard  though  he 
does  not  have  to." 

He  might  have  saved  his  breath.  When 
the  annual  product  grew  up,  rich  and  poor 
alike  fell  to  the  task  of  making  money  and 
getting  power  with  a  fury  which  astounded 
their  classmates  in  college. 

T.  R.  came  up  when  he  was  President, 


and  he  too  made  a  few  remarks.  He 
urged  the  boys  not  to  take  champagne  or 
l)utl('rs  with  them  on  camping  trips  in  the 
Adirondacks — honestly,  that  is  what  he 
said.  It  sounded  awfully  pukka  at  the 
time;  but  long  afterward  many  wondered 
what  it  was  all  about. 

While  the  exhortations  were  complete 
duds,  the  civilizing  influences  organized  by 
the  Rector  were  at  work  all  the  time.  If  a 
boy  was  oversensitive  or  spastic  or  hysteri- 
cal the  School  was,  certainly  during  some 
periods,  a  cruel  place;  for  neither  wealth 
nor  prominence  availed  to  buy  peace. 
But  for  the  average  youngster  there  were 
interludes  which  almost  seemed  a  link 
with  the  great  world.  There  was  "parlor 
night"  twice  a  week  in  Mrs.  Peabody's 
house,  which  was  always  polite  and  often 
amusing;  and  Mrs.  Peabody  always  re- 
membered a  boy's  first  name — which 
restored  morale,  somehow.  Another  mo- 
rale-tonic was  the  requirement  that  shirts 
be  changed  for  supper  and  also  shoes.  And 
there  were  "sing-songs"  in  the  wintertime 
and  debates  and  the  choir  and  the  play — 
in  short,  various  arenas  where  excellence 
did  not  depend  on  physique  or  seniority; 
and  these  were  all  to  the  good. 


w: 


VII 

"HY  should  the  cat  lying  in  the 
sunshine  bother  its  head  about 
astrophysics?  And  why  should  one  try  to 
analyze  a  benign  influence,  and  label 
it  "Victorian,"  or  "Neo-Anglican,"  or 
"Muscular  Christianity"?  To  classify  the 
Rector  does  not  contribute  to  any  better 
understanding  of  him.  All  one  can  do  is 
to  tell  what  was  visible,  and  let  each  ap- 
praiser put  it  together  as  he  sees  it. 

That  he  was  inarticulate  was  evident. 
That  he  probably  was  quite  as  sensitive  as 
anybody  normally  is,  was  not  so  evident. 
He  was  exceedingly  polite,  but  there  is  no 
doubt  he  got  very  angry  on  occasion.  In 
being  polite  he  was  not  just  suave — he  was 
friendly  and  frank  and  controlled. 

He  forgave  a  lot  of  mean  things  that 
were  done  to  him — even  some  outrageous 
ones — and  thereby  disarmed  his  enemies. 
And  this  was  not  merely  a  pose.  He 
really  did  forgive  them.  This  was  one  of 
the  secrets  of  his  indestructibility. 


162 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


He  had  little  conception  of  the  strains 
men  are  subjected  to  in  the  modern  world; 
and  he  used  to  infuriate  fathers  of  sinful 
sons  by  summoning  them  to  come  to 
School  and  confer  about  their  brats.  At 
the  conference  it  usually  appeared  that  the 
son  was  white  as  snow  compared  with  the 
father  at  the  same  age.  This  unawareness 
of  the  world's  standards  was  the  princi- 
pal— perhaps  only — clergyman-attribute 
which  he  had.  He  said,  himself,  that  his 
greatest  regret  was  his  failure  to  inculcate  a 
livelier  moral  sense  in  boys;  but  he  was 
up  against  the  whole  world.  After  all, 
morals  are  customs;  but  he  thought  they 
were  absolutes.  If  he  had  been  attacked 
by  a  thug  he  would  have  observed  the 
Marquis  of  Queensberry  rules. 

His  real  occupation  at  the  School  was 
the  enforcement  of  civilization.     The  boys 


got  up  early  and  went  to  bed  tired.  There 
was  a  first-class  library,  and  there  were 
educated  men  on  the  faculty.  These 
were  the  ingredients;  and  he  kept  them  in 
balance.  H9  was  just,  according  to  his 
lights,  and  he  was  consistent;  and  he  dealt 
out  rewards  and  punishments  without 
hesitation  or  misgivings.  On  the  whole, 
he  was  rather  more  reliable  on  punish- 
ments than  on  rewards.  He  never  disap- 
pointed the  School  by  overlooking  infrac- 
tions of  decorum  or  virtue.  He  made  it 
quite  plain  to  boys  that  each  must  live  his 
own  life — that  no  one  else  could  do  this  for 
him — and  he  was  unsympathetic  when 
any  of  them  felt  sorry  for  themselves. 

He  was  the  pater  familias,  and  the  boys 
instinctively  trusted  him  even  when  they 
criticized  him.  And  he  just  walked  back 
and  forth  in  the  cool  of  the  day. 


The  Case  for  AMG 

THE  Administration  may  be  interested  in  the  following  statement,  by 
one  of  America's  greatest  military  leaders,  on  the  problems  of  mili- 
tary government  of  occupied  territory: 

''I  would  deem  it  very  unwise  at  this  time,  or  for  years  to  come,  to 
institute  in  this  quarter  any  civil  government  in  which  the  local  people 
have  much  to  say.  ...  A  civil  government  now  would  be  simply 
ridiculous.  The  people  would  not  regard  it,  and  even  the  military 
commanders  of  the  antagonistic  parties  would  treat  it  lightly.  Gov- 
ernors would  be  simply  petitioners  for  military  assistance,  to  protect 
supposed  friendly  interests,  and  military  commanders  would  refuse  to 
disperse  and  weaken  their  armies  for  military  reasons.  Jealousies  would 
arise  between  the  two  conflicting  powers,  and,  instead  of  contributing 
to  the  end  of  the  war,  would  actually  defer  it.  Therefore  I  contend 
that  the  interests  of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  real  parties  concerned, 
demand  the  continuance  of  the  simple  military  rule,  till  after  all  the 
organized  armies  [of  the  enemy]  are  dispersed,  conquered,  and 
subjugated.  .  .  . 

*'God  knows  I  deplore  this  fratricidal  war  as  much  as  any  man  living, 
but  it  is  upon  us,  a  physical  fact;  and  there  is  only  one  honorable  issue 
from  it.  We  must  fight  it  out,  army  against  army,  and  man  against 
man;  and  I  know,  and  you  know,  and  civilians  begin  to  realize  the  fact, 
that  reconciliation  and  reconstruction  will  be  easier  through  and  by 
means  of  strong,  well-equipped,  and  organized  armies  than  through 
any  species  of  conventions  that  can  be  framed." 

We  should  add  that  the  time  when  this  statement  was  made  was 
September,  1863,  and  that  the  writer  was  General  William  Tecumseh 
Sherman. 


HOW   TARIFFS    CAN    FREE    TRADE 


BERNARD    B.     SMITH 


T 


^HE  idea  that  backward  countries 
should  be  buih  up  industrially  after 
the  war  is  a  common  one  and  one 
that  is  rather  generally  approved.  But 
where  is  the  necessary  capital  to  come 
from?  There  are  some  serious  objections 
to  allowing  the  private  capital  of  any  na- 
tion to  get  a  strangle  hold  on  new  indus- 
try, and  equally  serious  objections  to  hav- 
ing the  necessary  money  given  away, 
directly  or  indirectly,  by  the  government 
of  the  United  States  (the  only  nation 
which  is  likely  to  have  it  to  give). 

Furthermore,  there  is  no  point  in  build- 
ing industrial  plant  in  undeveloped  coun- 
tries unless  there  is  some  way  of  making  a 
reality  out  of  the  Atlantic  Charter's  quali- 
fied promise  to  all  nations  of  "access,  on 
equal  terms,  to  the  trade  and  raw  mate- 
rials of  the  world."  If  this  is  not  done 
both  old  and  new  industrial  plant  either 
will  lie  largely  idle  or  will  be  forced  into 
producing  armaments  with  which  the 
nations  may  once  again  start  a  war  for 
markets  and  resources. 

Yet  "equal  access"  seems  to  require, 
among  other  things,  that  all  discrimina- 
tory tariffs  be  abandoned,  all  embargoes 
and  import  quotas  eliminated — a  course 
of  action  which  has  long  been  recognized 
as  desirable  in  terms  of  international  peace, 
but  which  for  the  past  few  decades  simply 
has  not  had  a  chance  in  the  domestic  poli- 
tics of  any  industrial  nation.  Following 
the  First  World  War,  nations  everywhere 


piled  up  autarchic  trade  barriers  in  re- 
taliatory efforts  to  preserve  their  own  eco- 
nomic systems.  Here  in  the  United  States 
we  have  had  protective  tariffs  for  years — 
the  classic  argument  being  that  they  pro- 
tect newly  organized  or  "infant"  Ameri- 
can industries,  and  hence  the  wages  of 
American  citizens.  Secretary  Hull,  with 
his  reciprocal  trade-treaty  program,  and 
others  fought  valiantly  to  free  trade  from 
tariff  barriers,  but  their  efforts  met  with 
only  minor  success.  The  "infant"  in- 
dustries never  seemed  to  reach  maturity 
and  the  protectionist  interest  continued  as 
a  powerful  political  force. 

Here,  then,  are  the  basic  obstacles  in  the 
way  of  healthy  international  trade  in  the 
postwar  world.  Up  to  now  they  have 
seemed  too  formidable  to  be  overcome. 
Every  proposal  for  international  economic 
collaboration  has  run  head  on  into  one  or 
another.  But  there  is  a  vulnerable  spot  in 
one  of  them  which  may  offer  a  way  out. 

Even  though  it  may  be  politically  im- 
possible to  legislate  tariffs  out  of  existence 
in  the  United  States  and  elsewhere,  it  is 
not  impossible  to  circumvent  their  damaging 
effect  on  world  trade. 

The  first  point  that  needs  to  be  stressed 
is  that  protective  tariffs  are  not  levied  for 
revenue  purposes.  If  revenue  were  the 
purpose  of  our  tariffs  we  should  obviously 
have  imposed  them  on  such  products  as 
coffee  and  raw  silk,  which  we  normally  im- 
port in  huge  quantities;  but  we  did  not  do 


164 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


so.  In  fact,  almost  two-thirds  of  all  our 
imports  enter  this  country  duty-free. 
Our  dealings  with  the^  Philippines  and 
Puerto  Rico  provide  ample  evidence  that 
it  is  protection,  not  revenue,  which  we  ex- 
pect from  tariffs.  During  the  transitional 
period  when  we  took  over  Puerto  Rico  we 
maintained  protective  tariffs  against  its 
products,  but  deposited  all  customs  re- 
ceipts from  those  tariffs  in  a  trust  fund  to 
be  used  exclusively  for  Puerto  Rican  re- 
development. Similarly,  when  to  ''pro- 
tect" American  producers  of  butter  and 
competitive  oils  we  placed  a  domestic  proc- 
essing tax  (seventeen  million  dollars  a  year) 
on  Philippine  coconut  oil  we  agreed  to  re- 
turn the  tax  collected  to  the  Philippine 
government  (or  condition  that  no  part  of 
it  be  paid  back  to  the  Philippine  planters). 
And  finally,  it  is  worth  noting,  the  revenue 
significance  of  tariff  receipts  has  steadily 
diminished  in  the  past  thirty  years.  As 
recently  as  1913  such  receipts  were  ap- 
proximately equal  to  all  the  rest  of  our 
national  revenue,  but  by  1939  they  repre- 
sented only  five  per  cent  of  the  total. 

Though  there  are  of  course  some  coun- 
tries that  derive  from  customs  duties  a 
larger  proportion  of  their  revenue  than 
does  the  United  States,  the  proportion  has 
been  diminishing  in  most  nations  as  more 
direct  and  aboveboard  forms  of  taxation 
(income  and  sales  taxes)  have  increased. 
Yet  the  sum  of  all  countries'  receipts  from 
tariffs  comes  to  a  sizable  figure;  even  in 
1935,  when  the  total  volume  of  world 
trade  was  very  low,  it  exceeded  four  and  a 
half  billion  dollars. 

It  is  upon  this  conception  of  the  dual  as- 
pect of  revenues  derived  from  tariffs  that 
the  following  plan  for  the  expansion  of 
world  trade  and  the  destruction  of  interna- 
tional trade  barriers  is  based. 


II 

WE  PROPOSE  that  an  international  or- 
ganization, or  World  Board  of 
Trade,  be  set  up,  to  which  each  nation  will 
annually  turn  over  its  entire  receipts  from 
tariffs.  This  ought  to  provide  a  fund  of 
perhaps  five  billion  dollars  a  year  during 
the  immediate  postwar  period  if  world 
trade  and  tariffs  continue  at  approxi- 
mately their  prewar  level.      (Even  if  tariffs 


are  reduced,  the  volume  of  world  trade 
will  promptly  expand  so  that  the  actual 
annual  fund  from  tariffs  is  not  likely  to 
decrease  for  some  time.) 

It  would  be  the  purpose  of  the  World 
Board  to  use  this  fund  to  stimulate  inter- 
national trade.  The  Board  could  make 
loans — and,  if  necessary,  outright  grants — 
for  industrial  development  of  backward 
nations,  for  stabilizing  currencies,  and  for 
cushioning  the  shocks  of  natural  disasters 
or  other  temporary  internal  crises  which 
might  otherwise  impel  a  country  to  re- 
vert to  nationalistic  trade  restrictions.  It 
could,  in  eflfect,  perform  all  the  desirable 
functions  of  the  postwar  international 
monetary  agencies  proposed  in  the  plans 
put  forward  by  Lord  Keynes  (for  Eng- 
land) and  Mr.  White  (for  the  United 
States  Treasury). 

The  advantage  of  such  a  proposal  as 
compared  with  the  Keynes  and  White 
plans  is  that  it  challenges  fewer  prejudices. 
In  the  first  place,  it  does  not  compromise 
national  sovereignty.  Each  member  na- 
tion of  the  World  Board  of  Trade  would  be 
free  to  determine  for  itself  how  much — if 
anything — it  would  contribute  to  the  in- 
ternational fund.  If  it  wanted  to  reduce 
its  contribution  it  could  either  reduce  its 
tariff  rates  or  increase  the  number  of  prod- 
ucts which  were  permitted  to  enter  duty- 
free. If  it  wanted  to  contribute  nothing 
it  could  simply  remove  all  tariflfs  and  adopt 
a  full  free-trade  policy. 

In  eflfect,  therefore,  the  nations  which, 
for  internal  political  reasons,  erected  tariff 
barriers  and  thereby  seriously  impeded 
world  trade  would  be  the  very  nations 
which  would  contribute  to  the  fund  set  up 
to  counteract  the  blighting  effects  of  such 
restrictions  upon  the  economic  prosperity 
of  other  countries. 

The  "infant  industries"  which  would 
fight  so  fiercely  against  tariff  reduction 
would  still  be  protected.  Yet  countries 
whose  exports  to  the  United  States  might  be 
curtailed  thereby  would  find  new  outlets  for 
their  products  in  the  once  backward  coun- 
tries now  industrially  developed  through 
the  World  Board's  use  of  its  tariff  funds. 

Eventually  of  course,  as  people  became 
increasingly  aware  of  the  direct  and  in- 
direct cost  of  protective  tariffs,  and  as  the 
standard  of  living  in  the  newly  industrial- 


now    TARIFFS    CAN    FREE    TRADE 


65 


izcd  nations  improved,  .ind  as  the  mutual 
advantages  of  uninhibited  international 
trade  became  clear,  protective  tarifTs  would 
l)e  progressively  lowered  and  the  functions 
and  resources  of  the  World  Board  of  Trade 
would  be  curtailed. 

In  order  to  prevent  the  purposes  of  this 
proposal  from  being  subverted  it  would  be 
necessary  for  all  member  nations  to  con- 
sent to  two  pre-conditions.  Each  nation 
would  have  to  agree,  first,  to  refrain  from 
imposing  trade  barriers  other  than  tariffs 
— such  as  import  quotas,  or  internal  ex- 
cise taxes  which  discriminate  against  im- 
ported, in  favor  of  domestic  products;  and, 
second,  to  refrain  from  imposing  any  tariff 
on  any  product  in  excess  of  the  highest  tariflf 
imposed  on  that  product  by  any  participat- 
ing nation  during  the  immediate  prewar 
period.  In  other  words,  trade  barriers 
would  have  to  be  restricted  to  tarifTs  the 
revenue  from  which  must  be  turned  over 
to  the  World  Board,  and  those  tariffs 
could  not  be  permitted  to  rise  so  high  as  to 
stop  all  trade.  If  the  Board's  income  is  to 
be  reduced  this  must  be  accompanied  by 
a  reduction,  not  an  increase,  of  trade 
barriers. 

Ill 

THIS  is  a  bare  outline  of  the  proposal, 
and  it  necessarily  passes  over  many 
problems  of  organization  and  operation 
which  would  have  to  be  settled  if  it  were 
to  be  put  into  effect.  But  for  the  purposes 
of  this  article  there  are  only  two  special  as- 
pects of  the  subject  which  need  be  en- 
larged. 

One  of  these  involves  the  fate  of  gold  as 
a  medium  of  exchange — a  question  which, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  is  of  major  political 
and  economic  importance  to  the  United 
States.  For  it  is  going  to  be  difBcult  to 
induce  this  country  to  enter  into  a  pro- 
gram of  international  economic  collabora- 
tion unless  all  participating  nations  con- 
sent to  permit  gold  to  become,  in  whole  or 
in  part,  the  basis — if  not  the  unit — of 
foreign  exchange.  Unless  this  is  done  the 
value  of  over  twenty-two  billion  dollars 
in  gold  ($22,174,968,279.02,  to  be  precise) 
now  in  the  vaults,  of  the  United  States  or 
in  the  hills  of  Kentucky  will  be  ruinously 
reduced;  for  it  is  upon  the  use  of  gold  as  an 
international  yardstick  of  foreign  exchange 


rather  than  upon  its  commodity  use  that 
its  principal  value  rests. 

It  is  of  course  true  that  if  the  United 
States  becomes  impcrialistically  belliger- 
ent it  may  be  able  to  force  the  world  to 
accept  gold.  But  we  should  not  forget 
that  we  acquired  much  of  this  gold  by 
fixing  artificially  high  prices  for  it — as 
part  of  our  national  recovery  program^ 
without  considering  the  effect  of  this 
acquisition  on  the  economic  relations  of 
other  countries.  Certainly  we  should  not 
now  force  the  reintroduction  of  gold  into 
world  commerce  as  the  basis  or  unit  of 
international  currency  unless  we  are  pre- 
pared to  do  it  in  a  manner  calculated  to 
help,  rather  than  injure,  the  economic  sys- 
tems of  other  countries. 

It  is  suggested  therefore  that  the  initial 
capital  fund  of  the  World  Board  of  Trade 
— perhaps  five  billion  dollars  in  gold  (the 
amount  of  International  Stabilization 
capital  proposed  by  Mr.  White  in  the 
United  States  Treasury's  plan) — be  loaned 
by  the  United  States,  to  be  amortized  with- 
out interest  at  the  rate  of  one  and  one-half 
per  cent  a  year.  Out  of  the  interest  which 
the  Board  will  charge  on  its  loans  and  out  of 
its  annual  income  from  tariff  revenues  the 
repayment  of  the  American  gold  loan  can 
readily  be  effected.  After  all,  the  hoard 
we  have  is  not  paying  us  any  interest  to- 
day, so  there  would  be  no  sacrifice  involved 
in  lending  a  fourth  of  it  without  interest 
to  set  in  motion  a  scheme  which  would 
maintain  the  monetary  value  of  the  re- 
mainder. 

The  other  aspect  of  the  proposal  which 
should  be  mentioned  here  is  the  role  the 
World  Board  might  play  in  overcoming  a 
barrier  to  "equal  access"  which  has  hither- 
to been  ignored,  although  it  is  in  certain 
respects  far  more  serious  in  its  effects  than 
many  tariff  restrictions.  This  is  the  bar- 
rier of  geographical  distance,  the  barrier 
which  prevents  the  Balkan  countries,  for 
example,  from  selling  their  products  to 
Ecuador  and  Mexico  as  effectively  as  to 
Germany  and  Russia,  and  which  handi- 
caps industrial  development  in  countries 
which  are  far  from  sources  of  raw  mate- 
rials. 

The  pattern  for  equalizing  these  inter- 
national discrepancies  already  exists  with- 
in the  domestic  business  structure  of  the 


166 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


United  States,  where  a  number  of  im- 
portant industries  have  adjusted  freight 
costs  so  as  to  neutraUze  the  factor  of  prox- 
imity to  source  as  a  competitive  advantage. 
Goods  are  deHvered  Pt  a  uniform  price 
anywhere  within  a  specific  section  or  zone 
of  the  country. 

The  same  principle  could  be  applied  to 
international  freight.  For  the  \Vorld 
Board  of  Trade  could  establish  interna- 
tional freight  rates  for  air  and  sea  trans- 
port based  on  a  standard  number  of  miles 
and  equally  applicable  to  all  transactions, 
regardless  of  the  actual  distances  traversed. 
These  standard  rates  would  of  course  have 
to  be  set  at  a  figure  below  any  average 
which  might  be  struck  between  short  and 
long  hauls  over  the  world;  otherwise  the 
countries  which  in  the  past  have  enjoyed 
proximity  to  markets  would  face  a  ruinous 
rise  in  freight  rates.  Losses  to  the  carriers 
which  were  not  made  up  by  the  extent  to 
which  rate  gains  on  short  hauls  would  offset 
losses  on  long  hauls  would  be  covered  by 
subsidies  paid  to  the  airlines  and  shipping 
companies  by  the  World  Board  of  Trade. 
In  addition,  the  Board  could  provide  re- 
mote countries  with  as  frequent  and  regu- 
lar air  and  ocean  freight  voyages  as  their 
economies  reasonably  require  rather  than 
leave  them  dependent  upon  the  infrequent 
voyages  which  their  relatively  small 
world  economic  importance  and  remote 


geographic  position  have  warranted  in  the 
past. 

If  this  is  done  we  shall  have  gone  far 
toward  solving  the  problem  of  what  to  do 
with  the  world's  enormously  expanded 
merchant  marine  and  air  transport. 
More  important,  we  shall  have  provided  a 
system  under  which  the  world's  goods  can 
flow  from  country  to  country  as  readily 
as  mail  normally  moves  under  interna- 
tional postal  agreements.  Such  a  sys- 
tem, furthermore,  would  help  to  free  small 
nations  which  cannot  be  economically 
self-sufiicient  from  economic — and  hence 
political — domination  by  their  powerful 
neighbors. 

Presuming  that  the  details  of  this  pro- 
posal can  be  worked  out  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  various  nations  (and  there  seems  to 
be  no  reason  to  suppose  that  they  cannot). 
the  World  Board  of  Trade  offers  a  prac- 
tical way  to  remove  trade  barriers,  to 
stabilize  currencies,  to  assist  the  indus- 
trialization of  undeveloped  countries,  and 
to  do  all  this  without  impairing  national 
sovereignties,  without  challenging  politi- 
cally powerful  protectionist  interests,  and 
without  either  rendering  sterile  Amer- 
ica's enormous  store  of  gold  or  insisting  on 
preserving  its  value  at  the  risk  of  ruining 
less  favored  nations. 

There  is  a  chance  that  American  voters 
would  support  such  a  scheme. 


THE    KNOWN    AND    THE    UNKNOWN 

A  Story 


CHRISTOPHER     LA    FAROE 


This  is  the  sixth  story  in  Air.  La  Farge^s  series^  ^^East  by  Southwest.''^  These  stories,  their 
characters,  and  their  happenings,  are  all  entirely  fictional.  They  grew  from  the  observations  and 
experiences  of  the  author  as  a  war  correspondent  in  the  southwest  Pacific.  If,  happily,  they  seem 
true,  it  must  be  in  the  sense  of  a  truth  that  illuminates  rather  than  reports,  for  here  there  is  no 
transcription  of  actual  events. — The  Editors 


VAL  DES  Naoulis  is  near  the  north 
end  of  the  island  of  Balade  and. 
because  that  name  is  not  easy  for 
American  mouths  to  pronounce,  it  is 
called  VDN.  I  had  to  wait  there  for 
three  days  on  my  way  home,  and  it  rained 
almost  continuously  during  that  time. 
Such  rain  is  not  uncommon  at  that  season 
and  it  turns  the  iron-red  soil  into  a  deep 
and  liquid  mud  that  is  very  slippery  and 
stains  your  clothes  beyond  remedy  of 
washing. 

Even  during  the  rain  it  is  hot — less  hot 
of  course  than  when  the  tropical  sun  pur- 
sues you,  but  of  a  damp,  enervating  heat 
that  penetrates  your  bones  and  makes  you 
feel  a  little  feverish  all  the  time,  until  you 
have  been  there  long  enough  to  have  your 
blood  thin  out  and  accept  it  as  the  normal. 
The  rain  seems  to  stimulate  the  mosqui- 
toes, though  they  are  a  mild  pest  there 
compared  to  some  other  places,  and  I 
remember  that  it  drove  the  huge  and  ugly 
spiders  indoors  and  that  they  got  very 
busy  in  the  little,  unscreened  shack  I  slept 
in.  I  used  to  leave  my  drab  mosquito  bar 
down   and   tucked   into   my  cot   to   keep 


them  out  of  that  at  least.  The  shack  had 
a  concrete  floor,  and  was  roofed  with 
Australian  corrugated  iron,  on  each  sec- 
tion of  which  was  thoughtfully  stenciled, 
'^  Unfit  for  Drinking  Water."  With  a 
roof  like  that  you  never  had  to  look  out  to 
see  if  it  was  raining:  you  merely  listened. 
There  were  only  two  other  men  in  the 
shack — a  Signal  Corps  captain,  from 
New  Guinea  and  on  his  way  to  Oahu,  and 
Major  Doriett,  of  the  Air  Transport 
Command  which  ran  the  encampment. 
VDN  is  a  place  you  stop  at  in  order  to  fly 
somewhere  else  as  soon  as  possible.  Nor- 
mally it  is  not  a  sociable  place. 

My  first  meal  there  was  lunch.  I  slid 
downhill,  waded  through  the  mud  of  the 
road,  and  scrambled  up  the  opposite  slope 
to  the  officers'  mess  shack.  It  was  a 
small  building,  also  with  a  concrete  floor, 
wooden  walls  up  to  three  feet,  then  open 
to  the  eaves  above,  though  well  screened. 
The  roof  was  of  a  coarse  thatch  that 
overhung  the  walls  far  enough  to  prevent 
all  but  the  most  persistent  gusts  of  wind 
from  driving  the  rain  into  the  room.  It 
was   furnished   with   two   wooden   tables 


168 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


which  had  benches  along  their  sides.  One 
table  was  for  transients.  The  other  was 
for  the  officers  of  this  command.  It  was 
obvious  quite  soon  that  the  food  served  at 
the  transient  table  was  considerably  less 
varied  than  that  served  at  the  perma- 
nent table.  But  I  noticed  that  an  equal 
amount  of  tomato  ketchup,  A-1,  and 
Worcestershire  sauce  was  used  at  both 
tables,  so  their  food  must  have  been  almost 
as  tasteless  as  ours.  It  made  me  realize 
all  over  again  how  well  the  Navy  feeds  you. 

At  lunch  there  were  six  officers  who, 
like  me,  were  waiting  for  a  plane  out. 
There  were  about  twelve  officers  at  the 
permanent  table.  Perhaps  because  of  the 
rain,  the  heat,  and  the  poor  food  we  didn't 
say  much.  I  talked  a  little  to  the  Signal 
Corps  officer,  but  he  was  hard  to  get 
going  then  and  seemed  immersed  in  his 
own  thoughts.  The  few  rather  feeble 
attempts  at  starting  conversation  with  the 
permanent  officers  fizzled  out.  I  think 
this  might  have  gone  on  during  supper 
also  if  it  hadn't  been  for  a  short  story  by 
James  Thurber. 

I  spent  the  afternoon  reading  on  my 
cot,  for  it  was  raining  hard  outside.  Cap- 
tain Lazard,  the  Signal  Corps  man,  slept 
most  of  the  time  and  wrote  notes  in  a 
large  bound  notebook  when  he  awoke. 
We  went  sliding  and  slipping  over  to  supper 
together.  The  same  lot  of  men  were  gath- 
ered for  the  meal  as  had  appeared  at  lunch. 
But  we  had  hardly  begun  to  eat  when  we 
had  six  new  arrivals.  They  were  all  Army 
pilots  and  very  young,  and  they  had  just 
got  in  with  three  new  Liberator  bombers 
that  they  were  flying  to  Australia.  They 
evidently  knew  one  another  well  and  came 
in  laughing  and  talking. 

"Ta-pocketa-pocketa,"  said  a  dark- 
haired  first  lieutenant  as  he  sat  down, 
and  the  others  all  laughed. 

"Full  strength  in  No.  3  turret,"  said 
another  in  a  stagy  voice.  "Commander 
Mitty  will  take  over." 

They  were  all  seated  now  and  asked  to 
have  the  platter  of  meat  passed  along. 

''Well,  Dr.  Pritchard-Mitford,"  said 
one,  spearing  an  unappetizing-looking 
piece  of  dark-brown,  overcooked  meat, 
"I'd  diagnose  this  as  streptothricosis,  and 
should  say  that  coreopsis  has  set  in." 

"You'll   need    the    new    machine    to 


breathe  life  into  that  one,"  said  a  young 
second  lieutenant.  "If  you  can  make  it 
work." 

"Dr.  Mitty  will  fix  it,"  said  another. 

"Ta-pocketa-pocketa-queep,"  said  the 
dark-haired  boy. 

"Walter  Mitty,  the  undefeated,  inscru- 
table to  the  last,"  said  another. 

They  all  laughed  again. 

"What  the  hell  sort  of  a  guy  can  think 
up  that  sort  of  story?"  said  one. 

"Yeah.  God,  it's  a  good  story.  What 
sort  of  a  bird  is  James  Thurber,  do  you 
suppose?" 

"God  only  knows." 

"He's  a  good  sort,"  I  said. 

"You  know  him?"  asked  the  Second 
Lieutenant. 

"You  know  Thurber?"  asked  another. 

"Very  slightly,"  I  said.  "I've  met  him 
several  times.  But  I've  heard  a  good  deal 
about  him." 

"How  the  hell  do  you  happen  to  know 
him?"  they  asked. 

I  told  them  and  they  asked  me  a  lot  of 
questions  about  Thurber.  They  had  all 
just  read  "The  Secret  Life  of  Walter 
Mitty,"  and  they  were  full  of  it.  They'd 
been  quoting  bits  of  it  to  one  another  over 
their  radio  telephones  on  the  flight  down 
from  He  d'Edouard,  which  is  a  long  hop 
from  Balade  over  a  lot  of  Pacific. 

But  the  point  of  all  this  is  not  what  they 
said  or  I  said.  It  is  that,  suddenly,  the 
ice  was  broken.  Instead  of  being  just 
another  transient  waiting  to  get  on  a 
plane,  I  was  someone  with  a  name  and  a 
job.  I  introduced  Captain  Lazard  to 
them,  and  he  brightened  up  and  joined  in, 
and  the  first  thing  you  knew  we  had  all 
introduced  ourselves  and  were  talking  and 
laughing,  and  it  got  to  be  contagious,  so 
that  the  permanent  stafi*  chipped  in  to 
our  talk.  I  don't  believe  they  had  meant 
to  be  exclusive.  They  had  simply  been 
there  so  long,  and  had  seen  so  many  people 
go  through  whom  they'd  probably  never 
see  again.  We  stayed  talking  till  quite 
late,  for  there  was  no  movie  that  night, 
and  even  if  there  had  been  it  would  have 
meant  going  over  a  mile  in  the  rain  and 
the  mud.  Then  Lazard  and  Doriett  and 
I  went  back  to  our  shack  and  the  rest  of 
them  went  to  a  bigger  one  nearby  that 
w^as  called  the  Hotel  Vanderbilt. 


THE    KNOWN    AND    Till-:     UNKNOWN 


169 


It  was  raining  much  less  hard  the  next 
morning  after  breakfast.  When  I  had 
discovered  ihat  there  would  be  no  trans- 
port plane  out  that  day  (though  the  three 
Liberators  took  off  for  Austraha),  I  got  my 
pad  and  pencil  and  sat  down  under  the 
wide  iron  eaves  of  the  Operations  Building 
and  started  to  make  a  drawing  of  the  cook 
shack.  It  sat  on  the  slope  opposite  me, 
among  young  naouli  trees  with  their 
twisted  white  hmbs,  and  a  few  scrubby 
pines  with  very  long,  soft  clumps  of  needles. 
Like  the  mess  shack,  it  was  thatched,  but 
it  was  open  to  the  ground  except  for  the 
inevitable  screening.  Over  part  of  the 
thatch  was  a  dull-orange  tarpaulin  and, 
with  the  deep  red  of  the  wet  soil,  it  would 
have  made  a  fine  painting. 

Inevitably  I  attracted  a  small  crowd. 
First  there  were  two  privates,  then  a  ser- 
geant joined  us,  and  later  on  a  couple 
more  privates  and  a  corporal  came  and 
stood  to  watch.  For  the  most  part  they 
merely  said  how  do  you  do  and  stood  silent 
afterward.  Finally  one  of  the  first  lieu- 
tenants of  that  command,  whose  name  was 
Phelan,  came  and  stood  beside  me.  He 
was  a  tall  and  attractive  young  man. 
The  seated  soldiers  all  rose. 

"Morning,"  he  said.     "Sit  down,  boys." 

"Good  morning,"  I  said. 

"Here,  Lieutenant,"  said  one  of  the 
privates  who  had  been  sitting  on  the  base 
of  the  building  next  to  me.     "Sit  here." 

"No,  no,"  said  Phelan.  "Keep  your 
seat." 

"No,  set  down,"  said  the  'Private. 

"Yeah,  set  down.  Lieutenant,"  the 
others  said. 

"O.K.,"  he  said.  "Thanks,  Buck." 
He  sat  down  then.  I  could  see  that  the 
men  liked  him  by  the  way  they  spoke  to 
him  and  smiled  at  him,  and  because  they 
were  all  very  easy  together. 

"Do  we  bother  you?"  Phelan  asked  me. 
"Not  a  bit,"  I  said.  "You  get  over  that. 
You  have  to." 

''Gosh,"  he  said.  "You  certainly 
wouldn't  ever  think  that  that  ugly  damn 
shack  would  look  so  good  in  a  drawing, 
would  you?" 

"No,  sir!"  said  the  Sergeant.  "When 
the  gent  shows  this  at  home  they'll  ail 
wish  they  was  here.'! 

They  laughed. 


"Yes,  sir,"  said  Phelan.  "The  roman- 
tic hfe  of  the  tropics.     Alone  at  last." 

"This  dump,"  said  the  Sergeant. 

"I  tell  you,  Lieutenant,"  the  Corporal 
said,  "when  you  been  here  as  long  as  I 
have  you'll  learn  to  love  it.  The  first  ten 
months  is  the  hardest." 

They  all  laughed  again. 

"I'll  have  to  get  hold  of  that  story  by 
Thurber,"  said  Phelan.     "Sounds  swell." 

"It  is,"  I  said. 

Just  then  a  soldier  came  out  (.F  Opera- 
tions Building.  "Lieutenant,"  he  said, 
"the  Colonel  wants  to  see  you." 

"O.K.,"  said  Phelan.  He  got  up. 
"So  long,"  he  said.  "Send  me  a  copy  of 
the  drawing,  will  you?" 

"I'll  try  to,"  I  said.  "If  it  isn't  a 
military  secret." 

"Could  be,"  he  said.  '^By  God,  con- 
sidering the  food  that  issues  out  of  it,  it 
should  be.  Well,  so  long.  I  hope  the 
old  man  doesn't  expect  me  to  fly  to-day." 
He  left  us  then. 

"Gosh,"  I  said.     "Fly  to-day?" 

"Oh,"  said  the  Sergeant,  "you  never 
know.  It's  been  worse  than  this.  He 
takes  that  damn  little  pocket-size  Cub  of 
his  up  in  all  weathers.     He's  a  fine  pilot." 

"He's  a  fine  officer,"  said  another  man. 

"We  got  a  lot  of  good  officers,"  said  the 
Corporal.  "If  we  didn't  we'd  go  nuts,  I'm 
telling  you." 

It  began  to  rain  pretty  hard  then  so  I 
left,  to  finish  the  drawing  from  memory  in 
my  little  shack.  Then  I  wrote  up  my 
notes  and  slept  till  lunchtime.  There 
didn't  seem  to  be  anything  else  to  do. 
During  wars  you  get  very  good  at  sleeping 
and  waiting. 

At  lunch  I  fell  into  conversation  with 
Major  Doriett  and  Captain  Lazard.  For 
the  most  part  they  were  talking  of  the  radio 
installations  at  Ouan,  on  the  northernmost 
tip  of  the  island,  some  sixty  miles  from  Val 
des  Naoulis.  They  were  good  about  an- 
swering my  questions.  It  was  all  very 
different  from  the  first  day.  After  lunch 
I  walked  back  to  Operations  Building  with 
Doriett  and  sat  on  a  bench  there  to  read, 
while  he  disappeared  into  his  partitioned 
office.  After  about  half  an  hour  he  came 
out  looking  rather  worried.  He  had  one 
of  those  sallow  complexions  that  never  take 


170 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


a  tan,  and  his  thin  oval  face  was  com- 
monly rather  sad  looking  and  rather  kindly. 
Now  it  was  drawn  into  longer  and  sadder 
lines. 

"Listen,  Glenn,"  he  said  to  the  Sergeant 
in  the  outer  office.  "Take  the  jeep  and  go 
down  to  the  construction  camp  and  see  if 
they've  heard  anything  of  Phelan,  will 
you?  He  may  have  gone  there  with  the 
rain  and  all.  Ask  them  to  check  on  the 
radio." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  Sergeant.  He  put 
on  his  waterproof  and  left  the  building. 

"Something  wrong?"  I  said. 

"Oh,  no,"  he  said.  "It's  just  that  I 
phoned  to  get  Phelan,  who  ought  to  be 
back,  and  they  don't  know  a  thing  about 
him  at  the  airfield.  Probably  nothing. 
They've  got  the  radio  at  the  camp.  Might 
as  well  make  sure." 

"Yes,"  I  said.     "Did  he  go  somewhere?" 

"He  had  to  go  up  to  Ouan,"  said 
Doriett.  "He  took  his  Cub  plane.  It 
wasn't  raining  too  hard  then.  We 
couldn't  get  Ouan  on  the  wire  or  by  short 
wave  this  morning.  The  Colonel  wanted 
to  check  up." 

"Rotten  weather  to  fly,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  well,"  he  said.  "The  road's 
worse  than  the  weather,  up  there.  The 
showers  are  heavy,  but  you  get  a  decent 
ceiling  in  between.  Sorry  it's  raining  so 
hard.  I'd  have  rigged  it  for  you  and  me 
to  go  fishing." 

"Fishing!"  I  said.     "Boy!     Where?" 

"In  the  lagoon,"  said  Doriett.  "With 
old  man  Fish  Fry." 

"Who's  he?" 

"Fish  Fry?  He's  a  black  Kanaka,  about 
a  hundred  years  old,  they  say,  and  he  has 
a  boat  there.  What  he  doesn't  know 
about  fishing  you  can  put  in  your  eye." 

"Sounds  wonderful,"  I  said. 

''Damn  good  fun,"  said  Doriett. 
"Maybe  to-morrow." 

I  heard  the  phone  ring  in  the  office  and 
Doriett  went  in  to  answer  it.  Presently 
he  came  out  shaking  his  head.  "No 
word,"  he  said.  "I  don't  like  it.  I  think 
I'll  go  up  the  island  and  look  for  the  guy." 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"Want  to  come  along?" 

"Very  much." 

"Get  your  coat  then.  It'll  be  a  tough 
ride  if  we  hit  the  heavy  rain  again." 


"Right,"  I  said,  and  I  sloshed  across  to 
the  shack  for  my  raincoat  and  returned. 
By  the  time  I  got  there  Glenn  was  back 
and  the  jeep  stood  in  front  of  Operations 
Building.  The  Major  was  standing  in  the 
doorway  talking  to  Glenn, 

"When  I  get  up  to  Pouneon,"  he  was 
saying,  "I'll  try  the  phone  from  the  Post 
Office  there.  It  may  be  the  line  is  O.K. 
from  there  to  Ouan." 

"Want  I  should  get  some  guys  to  check 
the  line  from  here?"  said  the  Sergeant. 

"Yes,"  said  Doriett.  "Might  as  well. 
It  may  be  a  small  break  somewhere  up 
toward  the  New  Zealand  camp.  Maybe 
they'll  know.  Get  Fiske  to  take  the  truck 
and  some  of  the  boys." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  Sergeant,  and  he 
saluted  Doriett  and  went  back  into  Opera- 
tions Building. 

Doriett  and  I  climbed  into  the  jeep  and 
we  drove  east.  For  a  while  the  road  was 
pretty  awful  and  he  had  to  keep  all  four 
wheels  driving  to  get  through  the  mud, 
but  after  about  two  miles  we  struck  north 
into  a  hard  road,  and  the  driving  wasn't 
so  bad,  though  even  with  the  top  up  a  lot 
of  rain  can  blow  into  a  jeep. 

The  visibility  was  good  enough  in  that 
light  rain  to  let  me  see  some  of  the  coun- 
try, which  was  very  beautiful.  It  was 
rolling  upland  we  went  through,  a  fine 
grazing  land  of  thick,  high  grass.  Along  the 
roadside  grew  wild  flowers  in  profusion, 
one  of  which  looked  in  its  lavender  ex- 
cellence like  an  oversize  vervain  that  had 
decided  to  bloom  all  the  way  up  its  stalk  at 
once,  and  another  shrub  was  covered  with 
little  round  blossoms  like  those  of  the 
daphne,  only  of  many  colors  from  white 
through  yellow  to  a  pale  red.  The  pas- 
tures on  our  right  ran  up  into  grassy  foot- 
hills of  the  mountains,  and  you  could  see 
the  base  of  the  red-rock  mountains  them- 
selves, heavily  timbered,  but  not  their 
tops,  which  were  lost  in  clouds.  There 
were  small  grassy  meadows  here  and  there 
high  up  on  the  mountains.  To  our  left 
lay  the  sea,  but  it  was  hard  to  get  a  good 
view  of  it.  At  one  point  the  road  rose 
onto  the  base  of  a  high  hill  near  the  water, 
and  looking  back  frora  there  one  could 
see  the  lagoon  and  the  nearby  coral  reefs, 
though  the  barrier  reef  that  parallels  the 
whole  shore  line  was  out  of  sight  in  the 


THE  KNOWN  AND  THE  UNKNOWN 


171 


rain.  On  the  south  slope  of  that  hill,  in  a 
grove  of  pines  and  naoulis  and  what 
looked  like  a  sort  of  acacia,  was  an  en- 
campment. On  a  fine  day  there  must 
have  been  a  wonderful  view  of  the  ocean. 

"That's  the  New  Zcalanders'  camp," 
said  Doriett. 

"Looks  like  a  good  spot,"  I  said. 

"Not  bad,"  he  said.  "They're  right 
near  the  lagoon.  Fish  Fry  keeps  his  boat 
in  a  cove  just  below  there.  His  huts  are 
there  too.  His  family  makes  a  whole 
damn  village  of  fishermen." 

"Nice  for  the  New  Zealanders,"  I  said. 

"Yes,  sir,"  he  said.  "They're  great 
fishermen." 

We  drove  on  north  for  about  thirty 
miles.  Presently  we  began  to  go  past  big 
groves  of  tall  and  thick-foliaged  trees 
planted  in  rows,  and  between  them  grew 
coffee  bushes,  four  or  five  feet  high,  with 
shiny  green  leaves  that  were  handsome  in 
color.  Beyond  the  coffee  groves  we  came 
into  an  area  of  truck  gardens,  neatly  laid 
out  and  large,  and  these  gave  way  to 
scattered  native  huts,  mostly  thatched,  and 
then  we  crossed  a  bridge  over  a  calm  and 
lovely  stream  that  was  deeply  overhung  by 
rank  vegetation  and  masses  of  pale-blue 
and  deep-purple  flowers,  and  we  climbed 
a  green,  grazed  hill  into  the  little  village  of 
Pouneon. 

It  was  a  pretty  village,  to  my  surprise. 
The  houses  were  very  French,  of  white 
and  gray  stucco,  with  hip  roofs  of  slate,  and 
the  walls  were  often  paneled  into  simple 
square  designs.  Some  of  the  houses  had 
corners  cut  off  at  a  forty-five-degree  angle 
and  the  cutoff,  carried  into  the  slope  of  the 
roof,  made  a  pleasing  pattern.  They  were 
all  one  storey  high  and  had  deep  porches 
on  one  or  two  sides.  Their  grounds  were 
neat  and  their  gardens  colorful  and  full  of 
roses. 

Doriett  stopped  the  car  at  the  Post 
Office  and  we  went  into  its  bare,  white- 
washed lobby.  He  disappeared  into  an 
inner  office  after  a  few  words  in  French 
with  a  native  soldier  on  duty  there,  and  I 
read  all  the  French  notices  on  the  bulletin 
board.  I  don't  know  why  it  is  that  taxes 
and  rationing  should  suddenly  seem  very 
odd  and  quite  amusing  when  you  read 
about  them  in  French  in  the  southwest 
Pacific.     I  suppose  it  is   partly   because 


at  that  point  none  of  it  affects  you,  but 
just  a  lot  of  other  people. 

Presently  Doriett  came  out.  He  looked 
puzzled. 

"I  got  Ouan  on  the  phone,"  he  said. 
"Phelan  was  there  this  morning,  had 
lunch,  and  started  back.  Up  there  it 
isn't  raining  at  all.  Their  radar  is  all 
O.K.  again,  and  so  is  their  radio.  It  was 
just  the  generator  that  went  a  litde  queer. 
Hell,  Ouan's  only  sixty  miles  from  VDN. 
He  ought  to  be  back  long  ago.  Hope  to 
gosh  he  hasn't  got  into  trouble." 

"It  hasn't  been  raining  hard  since 
lunch,"  I  said. 

"No,"  he  said.  "But  they  tell  me  it 
rained  like  hell  just  before  we  got  here. 
Well,  no  use  to  worry  about  it.  We'll 
start  back  and  ask  as  we  go."  He  spoke 
lightly,  but  I  could  see  that  he  was  really 
worried  and  upset. 

"He's  a  fine  pilot,  I  understand,"  I  said. 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "Jesus,  I've  known 
him  a  long  time.  We  fish  together  with 
Fish  Fry." 

We  went  out  and  got  in  the  jeep  and 
started  back  for  Val  des  Naoulis.  It 
began  to  rain  really  hard  after  we'd  gone 
about  five  miles,  and  twenty  miles  on  we 
picked  up  five  very  wet  New  Zealanders. 
They  said  they'd  seen  no  plane  and  were 
on  their  way  back  to  their  camp.  Seven 
men  in  one  jeep  is  a  lot  of  men,  and  these 
New  Zealanders  were  no  pygmies.  Dori- 
ett drove  in  the  side  road  to  their  camp 
and  let  them  off  at  their  gate. 

"Hope  you  find  your  pline  okye,"  they 
said.     "Much  obliged  for  the  ride." 

"You're  welcome,"  said  Doriett.  To 
the  guards  at  the  gate  he  said,  "Haven't 
heard  anything  of  our  Cub  plane  around 
here,  have  you?     Lieutenant  Phelan?" 

"Dunno  about  anyone  called  Phelan," 
said  one  of  the  guards.  *'But  there  was 
something  about  a  pline  down.  What 
was  that,  Alfred?" 

"Ah,"  said  Alfred,  the  other  guard. 
"You  know  that  black  old  nigger  has  the 
boat  at  Bouni  Cove?" 

"Yes,"  said  Doriett.  "The  one  they 
call  Fish  Fry?" 

"That's  right,"  said  Alfred.  "Fish  Fry. 
Older  than  God,  they  say.  He  was  up 
here  a  wile  back  and  reported  to  the 
Captain  that  a  small  pline  went  down  on 


172 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  outer  reef.     Hit  hard  and  blew  right 
up." 

"God!"  said  Doriett.  "What's  been 
done  about  it?" 

"We  sent  two  medicos  out  with  Fish 
Fry,"  said  the  guard.  "They  got  out  to 
it,  but  there  wasn't  nothing  left  of  it.  Not 
a  bloody  thing.  Only  bits  here  and  there. 
The  chap  was  gone.  They  looked. 
Found  a  life  jacket,  but  that  was  all.  I 
expect  the  barracudas  got  to  him  pretty 
bloody  quick.  Hope  it's  not  one  of  your 
boys." 

"Hope  so,"  said  Doriett. 

"It's  been  reported  to  VDN,"  said  Al- 
fred. "The  Captain  phoned  it  through. 
The  phone's  working  again  now.  A  cow 
fouled  with  the  wire  and  busted  it.  That 
was  all." 

"Well.  Thanks,"  said  Doriett.  "Could 
I  speak  to  the  Captain?" 

"Righto,"  said  Alfred.  "Come  right 
along." 

Doriett  got  out  and  followed  the  New 
Zealander  and  they  disappeared  into  a 
distant  hut.  I  sat  and  waited.  In  about 
fifteen  minutes  Doriett  came  back.  He 
looked  white  and  drawn. 

"Thanks,"  he  said  to  the  guard. 

"Okye,  Maijor,"  said  the  New  Zea- 
lander.    "Cheerio." 

"So  long,"  said  Doriett,  and  we  drove 
off  again.  "I  guess  that  was  Phelan,"  he 
said. 

The  rest  of  the  way  back  to  camp 
Doriett  didn't  say  one  more  word.  He 
just  drove  very  fast  on  that  bad  and 
slippery  road.  I  knew  it  was  silly  to 
drive  so  fast,  and  was  serving  no  possible 
good  purpose;  and  I  knew  exactly  why  he 
was  doing  it.  I  felt  oddly  uncomfortable 
being  with  him,  as  one  would  feel  at  finding 
oneself  in  a  stranger's  house  when  someone 
has  just  died  there.  Finally,  in  an  ab- 
solute downpour  of  rain,  we  stopped  at 
the  gate  to  VDN  camp.  The  guard  came 
out  of  his  hut  and  peered  at  us. 

"Major!"  he  said,  "They  been  trying  to 
get  a  hold  a  you." 

"Yes,  I  know,''  Doriett  said.  "Any- 
thing new?" 

"No,  sir,"  said  the  guard.  "They  all 
seem  to  think  that  was  a  Cub  that  went 
down  out  there.  Fish  Fry  he  came  down 
about  half  an  hour  ago  with  his  grandson, 


the  gray-haired  one,  and  said  he'd  been 
out  with  the  New  Zealand  doctors." 

"That's  right,"  said  Doriett.  "I  spoke 
to  Captain  Williams  up  there." 

"Did  they  find  him?"  the  guard  asked. 

"No,"  said  Doriett.  He  put  the  car 
into  gear  and  we  began  to  creep  through 
the  heavy  mud  toward  Operations 
Building. 

"Couldn't  it  have  been  someone  else?" 
I  asked. 

"No  other  Cub  around  here,"  he  said. 

At  Operations  Building  we  got  out  and 
went  inside.  The  Sergeant  and  about  a 
dozen  other  men  were  sitting  there,  look- 
ing glum. 

"The  New  Zealander  telephoned,"  said 
the  Sergeant.     "Anything  new,  sir?" 

"Only  what  you've  heard,"  said  Dorietti 
"Has  anyone  checked  with  Donbouha?" 

Donbouha  is  the  big  airfield  one  hun- 
dred miles  to  the  south. 

"No,  sir,"  said  the  Sergeant.  "The 
line's  out  there  too.  But  the  north  line  is 
O.K.  now." 

"I'll  go  down  to  the  camp  and  try  it  on 
the  short  wave,"  said  the  Major.  He 
started  to  leave. 

"Thanks  for  taking  me,"  I  said. 

"Oh,  come  along,"  he  said. 

"No,  I'll  just  be  in  the  way." 

"No,"  he  said.  "It's  more  cheerful." 
He  gave  me  a  small  and  rather  shy  smile, 
and  I  followed  him  out  again  to  the  jeep. 

While  we  were  crawling  and  skidding 
down  the  road  to  the  construction  camp 
I  remembered  that  only  this  morning 
Lieutenant  Phelan  had  sat  beside  me  and 
talked  cheerfully  to  me  while  I  was  draw- 
ing. It's  funny  I  shouldn't  have  thought 
of  it  before,  but  I  hadn't.  And  it  made 
all  this  seem  suddenly  very  close  and  real 
and  awful. 

"Everyone  seems  to  like  Phelan  a  lot," 
I  said,  almost  without  thinking. 

"They  sure  do,"  said  Doriett.  "Gawd 
Almighty!"  It  was  addressed  to  nothing 
but  the  air  and  his  thoughts. 

We  turned  in  at  the  construction  camp. 
Men  were  walking  round  in  the  deep  mud 
and  working  on  drains  (for  it  was  just 
built),  dressed  only  in  a  pair  of  trousers 
rolled  up  to  the  knees.  The  tents  were 
provided   with    raised    board    floors    and 


THE    KNOWN    AND     J  111:     UNRNCnVN 


173 


were  therefore  comparatively  dry,  but 
you  could  sec  that  the  floors  were  tracked 
up  with  the  red  mud.  We  finally  pulled 
up  at  a  large  tent  which  housed  the  radio. 
1 1  was  full  of  men,  and  they  all  looked  at 
Doriett  as  he  entered  and  then  looked 
away  again.  I've  rarely  seen  a  gloomier 
lot  of  faces.  Doriett  went  at  once  to  the 
Sergeant  who  sat  at  the  sending  apparatus. 

'^Can  you  get  through  to  Donbouha?" 
he  said. 

"I'm  trying  now,  sir,"  said  the  Sergeant. 
"But  every  damned  thing  seems  to  have 
gone  screwy  to-day,  and  I  can't  get  a  re- 
sponse yet.      I'm  trying  though." 

"Keep  at  it,"  said  Doriett. 

A  young  lieutenant  came  in  then.  He 
carried  his  boots  in  his  hand  and  he 
scraped  the  mud  off  his  bare  feet  at  the 
door. 

"Heard  anything,  Major?"  he  asked. 

"Nothing  definite,"  Doriett  said. 

"Sounds  like  it  was  Phelan,"  said  the 
Lieutenant.     "Did  you  see  Fish  Fry?" 

"No.     He  around  now?" 

"Yes.     He's  over  at  the  cook  shack." 

"Fetch  him  here,  will  you?  Take  my 
eep." 

"Sure  will,"  said  the  Lieutenant.  He 
went  out  again  and  got  into  the  jeep  and 
put  on  his  boots  and  drove  off,  looking 
quite  happy,  for  he  had  something  to  do. 

We  sat  there  for  a  while  in  absolute 
silence.  From  time  to  time  the  Sergeant, 
who  wore  earphones,  sent  messages  on  his 
telegraph  key.  Then  h6^d  listen.  Fi- 
nally he  spoke. 

"That's  them,"  he  said.  "Now  I  got 
them." 

"Good,"  said  Doriett,  and  he  got  up 
and  stood  beside  him.  For  a  long  time 
no  one  spoke,  but  they  all  watched  the 
Sergeant. 

While  we  were  waiting  a  very  wet  and 
bedraggled  young  man  walked  in,  his 
clothes  half  torn  off  him,  iiis  trousers 
tattered,  and  his  legs  bleeding  from  a  lot 
of  long,  deep  scratches.     It  was  Phelan. 

"Hello,"  he  said.     "Here  I  am  at  last." 

"Jesus  Christ!"  said  Doriett.  "Where 
in  hell  you  been?     You  all  right?" 

"I'm  damn  wet  and  tired.  Major,"  said 
Phelan.  "I'm  going  to  go  and  change 
my  duds  and  get  me  some  coffee.". 


"Damn  all."  said  Doriett,  and  he 
grinned  at  Phelan  and  at  me  and  at  the 
rest  of  (he  men.  They  were  all  grinning 
too.  It  was  beginning  to  get  dark  now,  but 
there  was  a  naked  electric  light  bulb  in  the 
tent  that  made  all  their  faces  look  very 
white    and    happy.      "What    happened, 


son:' 


"Oh,  hell,"  said  Phelan.  "I  ran  into 
a  fine  old  rainstorm  about  halfway  home 
and  I  guess  I  got  off  my  course,  and  by 
gosh!  I  looked  ahead  when  a  cloud 
opened  up  a  minute  and  there  was  old 
Mont  de  Gaiac  right  spang  ahead  of  me 
and  me  headed  for  her.  I  said  to  myself, 
'This  is  no  place  to  be,'  and  I  pulled  her 
round.  And  then  I  saw  one  of  those 
little  upland  meadows  just  before  the 
clouds  shut  in  again  and  I  set  my  baby 
down  in  that.  Boy,  I'm  telling  you, 
Major,  I  just  made  it.  But  she  never  got 
a  scratch." 

"Jeepers,"  said  Doriett. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Phelan.  "Then  I  beat 
my  Vv^ay  the  hell  out  of  there  on  foot  and 
through  all  those  briars  and  brambles  and 
I  tore  the  hell  out  of  my  clothes  and  my 
skin.  Look  at  me.  I  took  three  hours  to 
hit  the  damn  road.  Got  a  lift  in  and  here 
I  am — and  hungry!" 

"I'll  take  you  back,"  Doriett  said.  "The 
jeep'll  be  here  in  a  minute." 

"I  certainly  don't  want  to  walk  any 
farther  to-day,"  said  Phelan. 

Just  as  he  said  this  the  jeep  came  tearing 
through  the  mud  and  stopped  in  a  long 
skid  near  the  tent  and  out  hopped  the 
Lieutenant. 

"He's  here.  Major,"  he  shouted.  "He 
walked  home.  Phelan's  in  camp  and  he's 
O.K." 

"Yeah,  I'm  here  and  O.K.,"saidPhelan. 

"Holy  Crow!"  said  the  Lieutenant. 
"You  sure  scared  hell  out  of  us." 

"Scared  hell  out  of  myself,"  said  Phelan. 

"Come  on,"  said  Doriett,  and  he  started 
for  the  jeep.  I  followed  him  and  so  did 
Phelan  and  the  Lieutenant,  and  we  all 
got  in.  Doriett  started  the  engine.  As  he 
did  so  the  Sergeant  came  to  the  door. 

"I  got  Donbouha,"  he  said.  "Itv/asone 
of  their  Cubs." 

"Oh,"  said  Doriett.  "Oh,  yes.  Too 
bad.  Tell  'em  we'll  try  to  find  the  guy 
when  the  rain  lets  up." 

/^urlingTaT?' 


174 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  Sergeant: 

"What's  all  this?"  said  Phelan. 

"Oh,  some  plane  crashed  on  the  Barrier 
Reef  and  blew  up.  I  guess  the  poor  guy 
got  eaten  by  barracudas." 

"Oh,"  said  Phelan.     "Who?" 

"Dunno,"  said  the  Major.  "Some  poor 
bastard  from  Donbouha.  Boy,  I  sure  am 
glad  to  see  you  again !  The  boys  were 
worried  about  you." 

"You  going  right  to  the  Hotel  Vander- 
bilt  first?"  asked  the  Lieutenant. 

"Yeah.  I've  got  to  change  my  clothes," 
said  Phelan. 

"I've  got  some  whisky  there,"  said  the 
Lieutenant.     "I  got  it  off  those  Libera- 


tor boys  last  night.     We'll  have  a  slug." 

"No,"  said  Doriett.  "We'll  stop  by 
the  Operations  first.  The  boys'll  want  to 
see  Phelan.     Then  we'll  go  there." 

"O.K.,"  said  Phelan.  "My  God,  did 
you  think  it  was  me  on  the  reef?" 

"Yes,"  said  Doriett.  "Sure  had  us 
gloomy  for  a  while." 

"Well,  it's  O.K.  now,"  said  the  Lieuten- 
ant. "Say,  we  might  go  fishing  to- 
morrow if  we  have  to  look  for  that  guy." 

"That's  an  idea,"  said  the  Major. 

I  said  nothing.  I  remembered  it, 
though,  as  an  epitaph  for  the  unknown 
man  that  the  barracudas  had  got  to  so 
bloody  quick. 


SONG    OF    THE    CHANCES    OF    WAR 


JOHN    PUDNEY 


RINGING  glass 

And  drowning  sailor. 
Some  go  to  war 
With  words  on  paper. 
O  whistled  tune 
And  luckless  airman. 
Some  go  to  war 
Sheathed  in  a  sermon. 


Some  are  too  wise 
To  think  it  over 
Or  grudge  to  lose 
Sweet  life,  sweet  lover. 
And  lucky  ones 
Of  simple  stature 
Kill  not  to  kill 
But  serve  the  future. 


O  ringing  glass, 
O  luckless  whistle. 
The  weeds  grow  proud, 
Day  crowns  the  thistle. 
Ill-luck  and  lack 
Go  sickle-handed. 
Keen  is  the  blade. 
The  eye  most  candid. 


HE    RUNS    A    GARAGE 


JOHN    A.     KOUWENHOVEN 


This  article  is  the  second  in  a  series  by  various  authors  on  everyday  life  in  wartime  in  terms 
oj  the  experience  oj  actual  individuals  in  occupations  affected  by  the  war. — The  Editors 


P 


AUL  White  was  probing  with  his 
stout  index  finger  among  the  tire 
valves,  ball  bearings,  unsorted  bolts 
and  nuts,  and  cotter  pins  in  one  of  the 
grease-darkened  cigar  boxes  on  the  clut- 
tered workbench  along  the  side  wall  of 
his  garage.  In  his  other  hand  he  held 
an  inner  tube  which  had  been  ripped  at 
the  base  of  the  valve  stem. 

The  tall  lean-chinned  fellow  standing 
next  to  him  asked  without  interest,  "Can 
you  fix  itj  Paul?"     It  wasn't  his  tire. 

The  specially  rigged-  telephone  bell 
clanged  loudly  in  the  garage  office — a 
triangular  space  in  one  corner  of  the  floor, 
fenced  off  by  chicken  wire  stretched  on 
a  frame  of  unpainted  two-by-fours.  Paul 
bent  a  little  farther  over  the  box  in  order 
to  see  more  easily  past  the  cigar  stub 
clamped  between  his  lips.  "Good  as 
new,"  he  said. 

The  telephone  clanged  again.  Paul 
set  the  cigar  box  down  at  the  back  of  the 
bench.  It  was  tipped  from  a  wrench 
under  one  corner.  He  picked  it  up  again 
and  plowed  some  tools  aside  with  it  to 
clear  sufficient  space  to  set  it  flat.  Then, 
moving  with  the  slightly  rolling,  soft- 
shoed  walk  of  a  short,  heavy-set  man,  he 
crossed  the  garage  to  a  smaller  and  higher 
bench  which  straddles  the  air-compressor 
tank.     He  arranged  the  flabby  tube  over 


a  convenient  peg,  then  traveled  deliber- 
ately over  to  the  office  and  picked  up  the 
telephone. 

After  a  very  brief  conversation  with 
whoever  it  was — something  about  a  car 
that  wouldn't  start  and  all  right  he'd  be 
over^ — he  emerged  again.  "They're  all 
alike,"  he  said  as  he  moved  around  the 
garage  selecting  tools  to  drop  into  a  leather 
sack.  "She  knows  the  battery's  all  right, 
she  says."  He  dropped  the  last  of  the 
tools  into  the  sack  and  started  with  it  to 
the  door.  "And  she  don't  know  a  damn 
thing  about  it." 

The  other  fellow  and  I  hung  round  to 
see  who  would  drop  in,  but  nobody  did. 
It  wasn't  like  a  couple  of  years  ago,  when 
the  garage  was  a  center  of  the  town's 
activity.  Now  everything  was  quiet,  and 
the  quiet  reflected  a  change  in  the  entire 
community. 

Dorset,  Vermont,  is  both  a  farming 
town  and  a  summer  resort,  and  the  ga- 
rage serves  both  the  winter  and  summer 
people.  Before  the  war  cars  from  all 
over  the  Union  rolled  by,  and  many  of 
them  stopped  at  Paul's  for  gas  and  serv- 
Almost  everyone  in  town  depended 


ice. 


heavily  on  cars;  people  were  accustomed 
to  drive  forty  miles  to  a  picnic  or  fifteen 
miles  to  the  nearest  movie,  and  nobody 
hesitated   to  drive  seventy  miles  round- 


176 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


trip  to  shop  in  Bennington  or  Rutland. 
But  since  then  tire  rationing,  and  gas 
rationing,  and  the  further  discouragement 
of  pleasure  driving  have  come  in  turn 
until — in  this  part  of  the  country,  at 
least — the  strange  emptiness  of  the  high- 
ways and  the  boarded-up  windows  of 
tourist  camps  and  roadside  stands  are 
among  the  most  striking  visible  signs  of 
the  strain  of  war. 

The  quiet  of  the  garage  reflected  an- 
other wartime  dislocation  also — the  move- 
ment of  manpower.  Before  the  war 
there  was  always  someone  around  the 
place  working  on  something.  Paul  always 
had  a  mechanic  as  helper  then;  two  men 
in  the  summer  months,  when  all  the 
city  people  were  in  town.  But,  being 
a  farming  community  and  a  summer 
resort,  Dorset  is  one  of  the  places  the  war- 
time migration  of  workers  has  gone  from 
instead  of  to.  For  instance,  the  fellow 
who  was  Paul's  right-hand  man  for  years 
got  a  war  job  forty  miles  away  in  Spring- 
field, Vermont,  at  the  Fellowes  Gear 
Shaping  Co.,  and  comes  home  only  one 
day  a  week.  Another  man,  who  used  to 
work  summers  for  Paul,  now  has  a  job 
as  a  welder  in  a  shipyard  in  Portsmouth, 
New  Hampshire.  Scores  of  Dorset  men 
and  women  have  gone  to  work  in  war 
plants — some  nearby,  at  the  Mack  Mold- 
ing Co.  in  Arlington,  for  instance;  but 
others  in  almost  every  war-production 
center  from  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  to 
Los  Angeles,  California.  And  this  leaves 
out  of  account  the  more  than  eighty  men 
who  have  gone  to  serve  in  the  country's 
armed  forces. 

Before  the  war  it  used  to  be  easy  to 
find  someone  to  do  odd  jobs;  there  were 
always  men  and  boys  hanging  around  the 
I.G.A.  store,  or  somewhere,  with  nothing 
to  do.  But  now  there  are  none.  Farm- 
ers who  always  had  a  hired  man  cannot 
find  anyone  to  help.  There  are  unoc- 
cupied summer  homes  whose  owners  have 
been  unable  to  arrange  for  anyone  to  cut 
the  grass  or  keep  the  gardens  weeded; 
and  some  of  the  lawns  have  become  hay 
fields. 

But  even  if  Paul  could  find  a  mechanic 
to  help  him,  he  wouldn't  have  enough 
work  for  him  to  do.  On  the  day  Paul 
went  out  to  start  the  lady's  car,  for  in- 


stance, the  only  jobs  on  the  floor  were  a 
Chevrolet  pick-up  truck  which  was  wait- 
ing for  a  new  connecting  rod  to  be  sent 
down  from  Rutland  and  a  small  Mont- 
gomery Ward  family-size  washing  ma- 
chine, also  in  need  of  a  connecting  rod, 
which  had  been  sitting  there  for  six  weeks 
or  so  since  the  owner  left  it  and  said  he'd 
pick  up  the  new  part  himself  and  bring 
it  in  sometime. 

The  war  has  made  some  businesses 
prosperous;  others  have  been  hard  hit. 
Generally  speaking,  garages  and  service 
stations  seem  to  have  made  out  pretty 
well  in  most  parts  of  the  country.  The 
magazine  Motor  Age  reported  that  even 
in  the  East,  where  rationing  has  been 
severest,  more  than  half  of  the  shops  were 
busier  in  1943  than  in  1942.  But  those 
shops  must  have  been  in  war-production 
communities.  At  all  events,  Paul's  busi- 
ness has  fallen  off  to  about  a  third  of  what 
it  was  before  the  war,  in  terms  of  the 
quantity  of  work  done.  In  terms  of  prof- 
its, the  situation  is  even  worse  because 
the  most  profitable  parts  of  the  business 
have  been  hardest  hit  by  wartime  con- 
ditions. A  garage  like  Paul's  makes  most 
of  its  money  out  of  the  sale  of  tires,  chains, 
and  parts.  But  Paul  hasn't  sold  a  tire 
in  over  a  year,  and  as  for  parts,  well,  for 
one  thing  there  isn't  the  demand  and 
anyway  there  are  many  you  can't  get 
even  if  someone  needs  them. 

In  good  years  he  used  to  sell  as  much  as 
31,000  gallons  of  gas;  this  year  he's  selling 
less  than  8,000.  Of  course  the  sale  of  gas- 
oline is  always  the  least  profitable  part  of  a 
garage's  business.  You  make  four  cents  on 
each  gallon  you  sell,  which  may  seem  like 
pretty  good  profit,  but  isn't  when  you 
think  of  the  time  it  takes  to  check  the 
battery,  the  oil,  the  tires,  and  to  perform 
all  the  rest  of  the  special  services  you  have 
to  provide.  It's  all  right  if  there's  noth- 
ing else  to  do,  but  when  you  have  over- 
hauling or  repair  jobs  on  hand  and  have  to 
take  twenty  minutes  out  to  sell  five  gallons 
of  gas  (gi'oss  profit  twenty  cents),  it  doesn't 
pay.  "If  in  good  times  a  fellow  could 
have  the  same  business  in  repairs  and  serv- 
ice and  not  sell  gas,"  Paul  tells  me,  "he'd 
be  better  off*."  But  of  course  you  have  to 
sell  gas  or  people  don't  patronize  your 
place. 


UE    RUNS    A    GARAGE 


177 


II 


s  A  matter  of  fact  you  would  be  amazed 
at  the  amount  of  labor  and  money 
which  go  into  setting  up  and  maintaining 
a  garage  like  Paul's.  Suppose  you  had 
driven  through  Dorset  last  fall  and  de- 
cided to  get  five  gallons  of  gasoline,  and 
have  some  air  put  in  your  tires,  and — while 
you  were  about  it — get  a  change  of  oil. 

The  white  clapboard  garage  faces  its 
gable  end  to  the  road,  and  sits  a  hundred 
yards  or  so  back  from  and  somewhat 
below  it  (they  banked  the  road  up  a  few 
years  ago  when  they  hard-surfaced  it); 
so  you  might  not  have  seen  it  till  you  were 
almost  by.  Then  you  would  have  had  to 
back  up  a  little  and  drive  down  the  gravel 
slope  to  where  the  gas  pumps  stand  on 
their  beveled  concrete  island.  Before  the 
war  there  would  have  been  a  small  rubber 
hose  lying  in  a  wide  loop  across  the  yard 
which  you  would  have  had  to  run  over  in 
order  to  approach  the  pumps;  and  when 
your  front  wheels  pressed  it,  and  then 
again  when  your  rear  wheels  went  over  it, 
a  bell  would  have  rung  in  the  dark  of  the 
garage,  and  pretty  soon  someone  would 
have  paid  attention  to  it  and  come  out  to 
look  after  you.  But  so  few  cars  come  in 
now  that  it's  not  worth  while  to  let  the 
rubber  hose  weather  out  there  in  the  dust 
and  mud;  Paul  has  stored  it  away  till  after. 

He  probably  saw  or  heard  you  drive 
in  anyway,  though  he  probably  did  not 
come  at  once.  He  might  have  been  out 
behind  the  garage  working  in  the  vege- 
table garden  (twice  as  large  this  year  as 
last).  Or  he  might  have  been  next  door 
in  the  small,  elongated  white  clapboard 
house  which  noses  up  against  the  bank 
that  lifts  onto  the  highway — that's  where 
he  and  Mrs.  White  live.  But  if  the  big 
sliding  garage  door  was  open  Paul  wasn't 
far  away;  he  always  shuts  the  door  and 
padlocks  it  (first  having  thrown  the 
switches  which  cut  off  the  current  for 
the  gas  pumps  and  the  air  compressor) 
when  he  has  to  go  out  on  an  emergency 
call  or  for  some  other  reason  must  leave 
the  garage  untended. 

When  he  came  out  Paul  probably  did 
not  speak  until  you  spoke  to  him,  and 
even  then  it's  doubtful  if  he  said  much. 
Certainly   he   did   not  remove   the   half- 


smoked  unlightcd  cigar  from  his  mouth. 
The  cigar  and  his  heavy  build  would  at 
first  have  made  you  think  he  was  older 
than  he  is;  then  a  closer  look  at  his  clear, 
smooth-shaven  face  might  have  made  you 
change  your  mind  and  imagine  he  was 
only  in  his  mid-forties,  which  he  is  not. 
He  is  almost  fifty-five. 

He  pumped  your  five  gallons  without 
spilling  any  by  letting  the  pump  work  too 
fast.  That  cost  you  SI. 10,  of  which  20 
cents  was  Paul's  profit.  Then,  to  have 
your  tires  checked  you  had  to  drive  down 
to  the  garage  door  where  the  air  hose  is. 
Air  is  free,  though  the  air  compressor 
cost  Paul  $298  when  he  bought  it. 
(That's  more  than  most  such  machines 
cost.  The  average  small  garage  is  equipped 
with  a  smaller  model  that  pumps  only 
three  or  four  feet  a  minute.  Paul's 
pumps  nine.)  Then,  since  you  wanted 
an  oil  change,  you  had  to  shift  your  car 
again  so  you  could  run  it  alongside  the 
garage  onto  the  tracks  of  the  electric  lift 
which  Paul  bought  for  $365  in  1937 
and  installed,  concrete  base  and  all,  him- 
self. Your  oil  cost  you  about  $1.50,  of 
which  approximately  50  cents  went  to 
Paul. 

There's  no  need  to  go  into  too  much 
detail  on  this  transaction.  You  can  see 
what  it  means.  For  twenty  minutes  of 
his  time  (the  time  of  an  expert  mechanic) 
and  for  the  use  of  equipment  which  cost 
almost  $700  installed,  Paul  got  70  cents. 
And  that  doesn't  reckon  with  general 
overhead.     You  don't  get  rich  that  way. 

Not  that  Paul  wants  to  be  rich.  It's 
my  guess  that  he  doesn't.  He  wants 
enough  to  pay  his  expenses  and  keep  his 
home  and  his  garage  going.  He  wants 
to  hold  on. 

In  the  fall  of  1942  it  looked  as  if  he 
couldn't  swing  it  and  would  have  to  close 
up  the  garage  and  go  take  a  war  job  some- 
where. There  were  plenty  of  high-paying 
jobs  open  to  men  with  his  experience. 
The  summer  season  in  Dorset  had  been 
slow  and  prospects  for  the  winter  were 
bleak.  But  after  all,  Dorset  was  home, 
and  the  garage  was  the  thing  he  had 
worked  for  years  to  build  up.  Unex- 
pectedly he  found  that  there  were  a  half- 
dozen  summer  people  who  wanted  some- 
one to  look  over  their  houses  once  a  week 


178 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


or  so  during  the  winter  and  make  sure 
everything  was  all  right.  The  pay  would 
be  small,  but  it  might  be  enough  to  keep 
things  going  through  the"*  lean  months. 
He  talked  it  over  with  Mrs.  White,  and 
they  decided  to  take  a  chance. 

Not  long  afterward  a  fellow  came  over 
from  a  war  plant  in  Bellows  Falls  to  try 
to  buy  the  South  Bend  metal-working 
lathe  which  Paul  had  picked  up  second- 
hand several  years  before.  The  fellow 
had  heard  about  it  from  a  drummer  who 
goes  through  Dorset  regularly,  and  good 
lathes  were  scarce.  He  offered  a  good 
price.  Paul  wouldn't  sell.  It  wasn't  that 
he  had  very  much  use  for  the  lathe  himself, 
but  it  probably  seemed  to  him  that  if  he 
let  the  lathe  go  he  would  be  losing  a  part 
of  what  he  wanted  most  to  hang  on  to. 
Besides  he  had  already  made  a  tentative 
deal  with  a  fellow  who  runs  a  small  ma- 
chine shop  in  New  Jersey  to  turn  out 
some  small  pieces  during  the  winter  as  a 
sort  of  subcontracting  job  on  a  war  order. 
As  it  worked  out,  the  cost  of  freighting  the 
pieces  from  Jersey  to  Vermont  and  back 
would  have  been  so  high  that  the  arrange- 
ment was  abandoned.  But  Paul  hung 
on  to  the  lathe  even  then  and  refused 
offers  from  three  other  machine-tool  scouts 
who  came  later. 

Maybe  he  should  have  let  it  go;  maybe 
at  first  glance  it  will  seem  that  America's 
part  in  total  war  requires  everything  we 
have — even  Paul's  lathe.  But  there  is 
something  about  his  unwillingness  to  part 
with  it,  just  as  there  is  about  the  way  he 
has  taken  a  body  blow  to  his  business 
without  a  whimper  and  has  faithfully 
done  every  job  that  the  war  has  put  before 
him,  which  in  a  way  typifies  the  role  of 
the  majority  of  Americans  in  this  conflict. 
For  most  of  us  there  is  a  point  beyond 
which  it  does  not  make  sense  to  carry  the 
concept  of  total  war. 

Ill 

PAUL  has  always  liked  machines.  So  did 
his  father,  who  was  a  machinist  with 
the  H.  C.  White  Stereopticon  Co.  in 
North  Bennington  when  Paul  was  a  boy. 
It  was  natural  therefore  that  Paul's  first 
job  after  he  quit  high  school  at  the  end 
of  die  third  year  was  as  helper  to  a  me- 


chanic who  maintained  the  machinery  at 
the  local  collar-manufacturing  shop.  Soon 
after  he  got  the  job  he  and  his  boss  had  a 
chance  to  overhaul  two  Pope-Hartford 
cars  which  belonged  to  the  shop's  owners. 
The  two  men  worked  on  the  cars  at  night, 
and  in  the  process  Paul  got  his  first  real 
knowledge  of  gasoline  engines. 

Then  one  day,  after  Paul  had  worked 
as  mechanic's  helper  for  several  months, 
the  engineer  of  the  collar  shop  got  drunk 
and,  as  Paul  puts  it,  "They  showed  me 
what  to  do  till  they  could  get  a  new  man. 
I  did  it  for  two  years,  and  they  still  hadn't 
got  the  new  man.  So  I  resigned  and  they 
had  to  get  one." 

Meanwhile  he  had  learned  how  to  drive 
a  car.  No  one  ever  taught  him.  He 
knew  how  from  having  helped  take  those 
cars  apart  and  put  them  together  again. 
When  he  had  to  get  some  pipe  fittings  in 
a  hurry  one  day  he  just  got  into  one  of  the 
Pope-Hartfords  and  drove  it.  He  liked 
cars  and  they  came  natural  to  him;  so 
when  he  left  the  collar  shop  he  went  to 
work  at  the  Bennington  Garage. 

That  was  in  1910,  when  only  doctors 
and  people  of  means  owned  cars.  Most 
people  still  did  their  business  at  the  livery 
stables,  but  even  so  there  were  enough  cars 
in  town  so  that  the  garage  employed  two 
other  mechanics  besides  Paul.  For  the 
next  two  years,  except  for  a  few  months 
one  summer  when  he  went  to  chauff curing 
for  a  family  there  in  Bennington,  Paul 
worked  on  the  Fords,  Stevens-Duryeas, 
Maxwells,  E.-M.-F.'s,  Interstates,  Pope- 
Hartfords,  and  Buicks  which  were  the 
popular  automobiles  of  the  time. 

Early  in  1912  Paul  was  ofi*ered  a  job 
as  chauffeur  for  a  well-to-do  New  York 
family  who  had  bought  a  big  farm  thirty 
miles  upstate  in  Dorset  Hollow  where 
they  spent  their  summers.  They  wanted 
Paul  because  he  had  put  a  patch  on  a 
timing  case  which  everyone  else  had  said 
couldn't  be  fixed.  After  considerable 
dickering  he  hired  out  to  them,  and  from 
that  time  on  Dorset  has  been  his  home. 

In  October,  1917,  shortly  after  he  had 
gone  to  work  chauffeuring  for  another 
summer  family,  Paul  was  inducted  by  the 
Army.  He  was  soon  sorted  out  as  a 
mechanic  and  sent  to  Augusta,  Georgia, 
where  he  became  a  sergeant  in  a  regiment 


HE    RUNS    A    GARAGE 


179 


of  air-service  mechanics — made  up  of 
canvas  men,  instrument  makers,  automo- 
bile mechanics,  and  others.  When  they 
got  to  France  the  regiment  v^as  assigned 
to  a  French  airfield  at  Sommesous,  east 
of  Paris,  where  the  Americans  did  all  the 
mechanical  work  for  the  French  air  squad- 
ron. In  those  days  the  air  force's  chief 
job  was  making  daily  flights  over  the 
enemy  lines  to  take  photographs,  getting 
into  occasional  dogfights  with  the  German 
planes.  Paul  got  along  all  right  with  the 
French  aviators  but  he  remembers  them 
as  the  damnedest  handshakers  you  ever 
knew.  "They'd  shake  hands  with  you 
when  they  came  on  in  the  morning,  then 
again  when  they  went  off  at  noon,  then 
again  when  they  came  on  after  lunch, 
and  again  when  they  left  for  the  night. 
Every  day  like  that.  Shaking  hands  all 
the  time." 

Finally  one  night  the  Germans  bombed 
the  airfield  all  to  hell,  and  Paul's  company 
was  broken  up.  He  was  assigned  there- 
after as  a  mechanic  with  the  motor-dis- 
patch division  of  the  A.E.F.  Postal  Ex- 
press Service,  with  which  he  was  serving 
at  Bourges  when  the  Armistice  was  signed. 
When  the  American  army  of  occupation 
moved  into  the  Rhineland  he  was  sta- 
tioned at  Coblenz  for  a  while,  keeping 
mail  trucks  in  shape  and  seeing  that  they 
went  out  on  time.  He  remembers  the 
Germans  as  friendly  people  who  didn't 
seem  to  mind  the  Americans. 

Paul  came  back  to  the  States  in  August, 
1919,  and  went  right  back  to  his  old 
chauff curing  job  in  Dorset,  which  he  kept 
for  several  years.  Then  in  1 928  he  opened 
a  garage  in  a  rented  building  just  a  little 
way  down  the  road  from  where  his  present 
place  stands.  In  1931  he  built  the  new 
place,  doing  a  good  deal  of  the  work  him- 
self. And  in  1936  he  married  "an  old 
sweetheart"  he  had  met  when  he  lived  in 
Bennington  and  she  had  visited  there. 

IV 

SITTING  in  his  office  at  the  walnut  roll- 
top  desk  on  which  the  radio  stands 
with  its  dial  always  set  at  1050  (the  station 
that  carries  the  big-league  ball  games), 
Paul  has  to  spend  a  lot  of  time  these  days 
filling    out    tire-    and    gasoline-rationing 


forms  and  doing  the  rest  of  the  paper 
work  wliich  wartime  lias  multiplied.  Mrs. 
Whit(!  helps  with  much  of  this,  but  even 
so  Paul  says  there  have  been  wastcbaskets 
full  of  mail  from  OPA.  He  does  his  best 
to  keep  up  with  all  the  important  rules 
and  regulations  of  course,  and  he  tries  to 
keep  his  customers  posted  about  rulings 
that  affect  them.  For  example,  he  has 
tacked  on  the  garage  door  a  typewritten 
copy  of  the  tire-inspection  regulations. 
But  the  regulations  and  rulings  change 
so  often  and  are  so  complex  that  it  is  some- 
times impossible  to  keep  up  with  them. 

There  are  altogether  six  different  kinds 
of  gasoline-ration  coupons  which  Paul's 
customers  may  hold.  Each  of  these  kinds 
of  coupons  has  its  value  in  gallons  (subject 
to  change),  the  A  coupons  being  worth 
3  gallons,  the  B  coupons  2>^  gallons,  and 
so  forth.  Each  sheet  of  coupons  in  each 
of  the  six  different  kinds  of  ration  books  is 
good  for  a  limited  period,  and  Paul  must 
of  course  know  when  these  periods  begin 
and  end. 

Every  time  that  a  customer  buys  gaso- 
line he  surrenders  the  appropriate  number 
of  coupons  and  Paul  writes  on  the  face  of 
each  the  license  number  of  the  car.  (The 
purchaser  should  do  this,  but  seldom  does.) 
Paul  then  takes  the  stamp-size  coupons 
into  his  office  and  deposits  them  in  his 
own  coupon-filing  device:  six  glass  jars, 
with  slits  cut  in  their  metal  screw-on  caps, 
out  of  a  large  rackful  which  used  to  con- 
tain a  complete  stock  of  replacement 
parts  for  starting,  lighting,  and  ignition 
systems.  Paul  has  replaced  the  original 
"Standard  Motor  Products"  labels  with 
hand-lettered  Dennison  labels:  A,  B,  C, 
D,  R,  and  S  (the  present  TT  coupons  used 
to  be  S  coupons,  and  Paul  hasn't  got  round 
to  changing  the  label). 

Once  a  week  the  Texaco  distributor  in 
Granville,  N.  Y.,  who  supplies  forty-two 
retail  dealers  in  the  region,  delivers  100 
gallons  to  Paul's  tanks.  (Incidentally, 
in  the  summer  of  1 942  Paul  was  still  able 
to  get  300  or  400  gallons  a  week,  and 
before  the  war  he  got  as  much  as  800  or 
1,000.)  The  day  before  the  gas  truck 
is  due  Paul,  having  taken  sufficient  coupons 
out  of  the  glass  jars  to  cover  the  100  gal- 
lons he  expects  to  get,  pastes  them  on 
gummed  sheets  about  8"  by  12"  which 


180 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  OPA  provides.  There  has  to  be  a  sep- 
arate sheet  for  each  type  of  coupon,  and 
the  total  value  of  the  coupons  attached  to 
each  sheet  has  to  be  marked  in  the  upper 
right  corner.  Then  duplicate  copies  of 
an  OPA  form  giving  a  summary  record  of 
these  coupon  sheets  have  to  be  filled  out 
and  signed.  One  copy  of  this  summary 
record  and  all  the  gummed  sheets  have 
to  be  surrendered  to  the  driver  of  the 
gasoline  truck  when  the  gas  is  delivered. 
The  other  copy  of  the  summary  has  to  be 
kept  for  three  years  in  Paul's  files. 

A  hundred  gallons  of  gas  won't  keep 
Paul's  customers  supplied  for  a  week, 
even  with  pleasure  driving  curtailed. 
The  pumps  go  dry  after  a  few  days.  Of 
course  there  are  other  places  in  town 
which  have  gasoline  pumps,  but  their 
quotas  are  cut  too.  Yet  in  spite  of  the 
scarcity,  and  in  spite  of  people's  real  de- 
pendence on  gasoline  in  a  rural  town 
which  spreads  over  a  large  area,  there  is 
scarcely  any  evidence  of  violation  or  at- 
tempted violation  of  the  rationing  laws. 
You  hear  tales  of  course  about  stations  not 
too  far  away  which  sell  black-market  gas, 
but  Paul  isn't  impressed  by  the  stories. 
He  has  run  across  only  one  person  who 
tried  to  get  him  to  sell  gas  illegally — a 
fellow  with  a  Jersey  license  plate  who 
stopped  on  his  way  through  town  and 
asked  him  to  name  his  price  for  five  gallons. 

Nevertheless  there  are  people  in  town 
who  circumvent  rationing  one  way  or 
another,  and  Paul  as  a  member  of  the 
Ration  Board  must  be  aware  of  it  even 
if  he  doesn't  talk  about  it.  There  are  a 
few  oil  drums  in  town  which  still  contain 
gas  which  was  stored  up  early  in  the  war. 
This  last  summer  there  was  considerable 
ill-feeling  in  the  village  because,  although 
most  of  the  local  people  had  dififtculty 
getting  enough  gas  to  carry  on  their  regu- 
lar business,  several  wealthy  outsiders 
maintained  three  or  four  cars,  each  of 
which  had  a  technical  right  to  at  least  an 
A  ration  without  any  special  favors  from 
the  Ration  Board,  and  were  therefore  able 
to  do  three  or  four  times  as  much  driving 
as  the  people  who  could  afford  only  one. 
And  when  a  few  summer  visitors  bragged 
publicly  of  using  their  influence  with  city 
Boards  to  get  B  and  C  rations  the  local 
people  resented  it  bitterly. 


The  familiar  tensions  between  summer 
and  winter  people,  which  have  always 
existed  and  are  merely  accentuated  by 
such  incidents  as  these,  have  apparently 
never  troubled  Paul.  In  the  old  days  he 
drove  for  summer  people,  and  got  to  know 
them  well.  His  garage  serves  both  sum- 
mer and  winter  people,  and  he  gets  along 
equally  well  with  both  groups.  There 
are  some  who  don't  like  him  of  course. 
A  few  of  the  summer  people  buy  gas  else- 
where because  they  think  Paul's  uncom- 
municative manner  is  a  sign  that  he  is 
grouchy  and  unfriendly.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  of  the  townspeople  (especially 
those  who  have  run  up  big  unpaid  ac- 
counts for  gasoline  and  repairs)  say  Paul 
thinks  too  highly  of  himself.  For  instance, 
one  of  them  has  a  sour  slant  on  Paul's 
jobs  looking  after  summer  homes  during 
the  winter.  "Trust  Paul,"  he  kept  saying, 
''to  get  him  a  job  where  he  wouldn't  have 
to  do  any  work";  and  he  wouldn't  listen 
when  someone  else  pointed  out  that  if  Paul 
hadn't  had  those  jobs  he  would  have  had 
to  close  up  the  garage  and  move  out  of 
town  a  year  ago,  leaving  no  one  in  the 
village  to  get  the  doctor's  car  going  in 
below-zero  weather,  and  no  one  to  keep 
all  the  town's  other  winter-punished  cars 
on  the  road. 

But  Paul  need  not  worry  about  such 
misapprehensions  and  grouches.  He  does 
a  good  job  and  deals  honorably,  and  the 
town  as  a  whole  knows  it.  He  was  elected 
Selectman  of  the  village  eight  years  ago, 
to  fill  out  the  unexpired  term  of  a  man 
who  died  in  office,  and  he  has  been  re- 
elected twice  since  then.  He  doesn't 
know  why  he  was  elected  and  he  never 
lifted  a  finger  to  get  votes.  But  none  of 
the  rival  candidates  has  ever  come  any- 
where near  beating  him. 

He  is  also  chairman  of  the  Prudential 
Committee  of  the  Fire  District,  and  as 
such  has  charge  of  the  village  water  supply, 
street  lights,  and  sidewalks.  It  is  on  ac- 
count of  this  job  that  he  has  rigged  up  the 
water-pressure  gage  from  an  old  Amer- 
ican-La France  fire  engine  on  the  water 
pipe  that  feeds  the  garage  sink.  If  the 
pointer  on  the  gage  drops  below  one 
hundred  pounds  he  knows  there  is  a  leak 
in  the  reservoir  or  in  the  water  mains,  and 
he  can  get  right  after  it. 


HE    RUNS    A    GARAGE 


181 


But  tlie  lionor  which  pleases  him  most 
is  probably  his  long  tenure  as  Commander 
of  the  local  American  Legion  post.  The 
Legion  has  its  headquarters  on  the  second 
floor  over  Paul's  garage,  in  a  hall  which 
has  its  own  outside  staircase  for  an  en- 
trance. Here  the  Legion  meets  and  has 
its  parties.  (Paul  picked  up  a  steel  I- 
beam,  from  a  factory  that  was  being  dis- 
mantled upstate  several  years  ago,  to  run 
lengthwise  down  the  center  of  the  garage 
ceiling  and  brace  the  floor  joists  of  the 
hall.  It  wasn't  quite  long  enough  to  reach 
the  whole  length  of  the  building,  but 
Paul  pieced  it  out  with  a  heavy  timber, 
and  the  floor  doesn't  shake  now  as  it  used 
to  when  a  crowd  was  having  a  good  time 
upstairs.) 

The  wartime  job  which  takes  the  largest 
share  of  Paul's  time  is  his  service  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Ration  Board,  but  there  are 
many  other  community  and  Legion  ac- 
tivities of  which  his  garage  has  inevitably 
become  the  center.  The  Memorial  Day 
parade  forms  out  in  front  of  the  garage 
and  the  Home  Guard  sometimes  assembles 
there.  In  the  evenings  last  summer  the 
boys  of  the  village  met  in  front  of  the 
garage  to  drill.  During  the  aluminum- 
scrap  drive  it  was  in  front  of  the  garage 
that  the  pots  and  pans  were  piled.  And 
in  Paul's  office  last  fall  there  were  four  or 
five  big  cardboard  cartons  full  of  old  and 
broken  phonograph  records  collected  by 
the  Legion  to  turn  in  so  that  new  ones 
could  be  sent  to  service  men.' 

Paul  is  naturally  pleased  by  the  fact 
that  he  has  been  elected  to  so  many 
offices,  but  he  is  amused  at  the  idea  of 
himself  as  a  prominent  citizen.  He 
doesn't  mind  being  kidded  and  he  can 
kid  himself.  A  few  years  ago,  when  he 
was  Assistant  Fire  Chief,  a  big  brush  fire 
got  started  near  one  of  the  homes  up  on 
Barrows  Hill — a  steep  slope  that  rises  out 
of  the  valley  not  far  from  the  garage.  The 
sirens  went  off,  and  the  volunteer  fire 
department  got  the  engine  out  of  the  shed 
by  the  town  hall  and  w^ent  roaring  up  to 
the  fire.  Meanwhile  Paul,  who  is  heavy 
now  but  was  considerably  heavier  then, 
started  out  across  lots  from  the  garage 
with  a  shovel.  When  he  had  climbed 
about  halfway  up  to  the  fire  he  sat  down 
on     a    stump,     breathing    heavily,     and 


shouted:  "If  you  want  that  fire  fought  by 
the  Assistant  Chief,  you'll  have  to  bring 
it  down  here." 

V 

SUNDAY  morning  of  Labor  Day  week- 
end this  year  there  were  four  or  five 
people  around  the  garage.  A  young  fel- 
low who  was  week-ending  at  his  mother- 
in-law's  summer  place  was  at  the  work- 
bench repairing  a  broken  door-handle 
with  Paul's  tools.  A  big,  loose-jointed 
growling  man  in  hip  boots  was  trying  to 
persuade  anyone  present  to  go  fishing 
with  him  up  to  the  lake;  he  didn't  want 
to  go  alone.  Paul  was  affectionately 
tightening  the  bands  on  a  Model  T  tour- 
ing car,  reaching  in  under  the  floor  boards 
in  the  front  seat  where  the  keystone- 
shaped  cover  had  been  removed  from  the 
oil-splashed  transmission  case,  alternately 
taking  a  quarter-turn  on  one  of  the  take- 
up  nuts  with  a  small  wrench  in  his  right 
hand  and  testing  one  of  the  foot  pedals 
with  his  left  hand,  and  all  the  while  cramp- 
ing his  head  back  to  keep  his  dead  cigar 
from  getting  in  the  way  of  w^hat  he  was 
looking  at. 

Several  cars  drove  in  to  the  gas  pumps 
at  various  times,  and  Paul  had  to  quit 
work  and  go  out  to  tell  the  people  that  the 
pumps  were  dry  and  there  wouldn't  be 
any  gas  till  next  Tuesday  or  Wednesday. 
Someone  drove  in  to  get  a  spare  tire  he  had 
left  to  be  fixed.  Someone  else  drove  up  to 
the  garage  door,  got  out  to  collect  one  of 
the  New  York  Sunday  papers  which  are 
left  at  the  garage  each  week  by  special  ar- 
rangement with  a  dealer  in  nearby  Man- 
chester. Someone  else  drove  in  to  check 
his  tires  and  pick  up  the  battery  he  had 
left  to  be  recharged.  (There  are  lots  of 
battery  failures  now  that  people  can  drive 
so  little.) 

Gradually  as  noon  approached  people 
left.  Paul  was  putting  the  Model  T's 
transmission  cover  on  again,  and  there 
was  the  homesick  sound  of  screws  turning 
in  oil-soaked  grit  as  he  tightened  it  down. 

He  was  talking  about  the  garage  and 
about  business.  The  season  had  been 
w^ay  off  from  last  year,  though  it  hadn't 
been  as  bad  as  he  had  thought  it  might  be. 
But  you  could  see  that  that  wasn't  what  he 
really   wanted    to    talk    about.     He    was 


182 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


more  interested  in  telling  about  the  tools 
and  machines  and  equipment  he  had,  and 
what  he  hopes  to  do  with  them  if  he  can 
hang  on  at  the  garage  till  the  war  is  over. 

He  talked  about  the  set  of  spring  spread- 
ers for  Fords,  for  example,  a  S28  set  of  spe- 
cial tools  for  spreading  the  springs  so  you 
can  put  new  shackle  bolts  on  them.  There 
are  eight  different  sizes  of  springs  on  differ- 
ent Ford  models,  and  each  one  of  the  eight 
requires  a  special  spreader. 

This  duplication  of  tools  is  a  major  item 
of  expense  in  outfitting  a  garage,  and 
Paul  thinks  a  lot  of  it  is  stupid.  ''Automo- 
bile people  could  save  a  garage  man  a  lot 
of  money  if  they'd  standardize  sizes,"  he 
argues.  For  example,  he  can't  see  any 
reason  why  there  are  seven  different  sizes 
of  spark  plugs  used  in  different  cars, 
making  it  necessary  for  a  garage  to  have 
seven  different  spark-plug  wrenches.  But 
that's  the  way  it  is  all  down  the  line. 

It  would  be  more  sensible  to  stand- 
ardize parts  of  course.     But  the  fact  nev- 


ertheless remains  that  Paul  gets  a  tre- 
mendous amount  of  pleasure  out  of  having 
those  eight  different-sized  spring  spreaders 
— a  kind  of  pleasure  which  reveals  a  good 
deal  about  Paul  and  many  other  Ameri- 
cans who,  like  him,  have  an  innate  sense 
of  the  value  of  what  is  at  hand  to  work 
with. 

It  is  that  sense,  in  its  broader  implica- 
tions, which  underlies  Paul's  devotion  to 
his  garage  and  which  enables  him  to  take 
in  his  stride  all  the  extra  duties  and  diffi- 
culties of  civilian  life  in  wartime.  And  it 
is  the  same  quality,  essentially,  which  ties 
him  so  closely  to  his  community.  At  one 
time  or  another  he  has  traveled  through 
many  parts  of  the  country,  but  he  has 
always  claimed  that  there  is  no  place  so 
beautiful  as  the  part  of  Verm.ont  where 
he  lives  and  works.  Not  long  ago,  when 
he  came  home  from  a  trip  to  Virginia,  he 
told  his  wife  once  again  that  what  he  wants 
more  than  anything  is  "to  keep  the  garage 
going  and  to  live  here  always." 


ONE     DESTROYER 


FLETCHER    PRATT 


THREE  or  four  of  them  had  located 
a  really  good  restaurant  the  evening 
before — a  restaurant  run  by  an  old 
Frenchman  on  one  of  the  back  streets  of 
Manila — and  had  proclaimed  the  glad 
tidings  aboard  through  breaths  no  little 
perfumed  by  Gallic  vintages.  The  news 
produced  an  energetic  babble  of  con- 
versation, and  after  the  usual  kidding 
("But  will  Harmon  be  able  to  get  away 
from  his  girls  long  enough  to  eat  any- 
where?") it  was  agreed  that  all  but  the 
duty  officer  should  meet  there  of  a  Satur- 
day night  to  give  the  place  a  workout. 

Ensign  Darrah,  the  dark,  stocky  Ten- 
nessean,  was  the  duty  officer^  Fifth  wheel 
on  the  ship  he  used  to  call  himself,  and  it 
was  a  not  inaccurate  description  of  the 
latest  man  to  join  the  wardroom  mess, 
whose  duties  as  assistant  communications 
officer  consisted  mainly  in  looking  over 
Slaughter's  shoulder  as  the  latter  ma- 
neuvered the  strings  of  letters  on  the  big 
board.  Darrah  remembers  standing  in 
the  wings  of  the  bridge  at  2:30  in  the 
morning,  watching  the  lights  of  Manila 
flicker  across  the  black  ripples  like  some 
rapidly  moving  constellation  in  a  plane- 
tarium; thinking  how  often  he  would  be 
able  to  visit  that  restaurant  while  the  ship 
was  in  for  her  overhaul.  Chow  in  the 
city  was  pretty  bad  when  you  had  to  live 
on  an  ensign's  salary. 

The  door  of  the  radio  shack  opened 
wdth  a  bang  and  the  sound  of  feet  in  haste 


was  audible,  one  set  going  down  the 
companion  toward  the  skipper's  cabin, 
the  other  across  the  deck  to  where  Darrah 
heard  knuckles  at  the  division  officer's 
door.  '^Commander  Talbot!  Com- 
mander Talbot!"  he  heard  the  boy  say  ur- 
gently, and  he  frowned  over  the  reflection 
that,  no  matter  how  important  the  message, 
both  the  watch  should  not  have  left  the 
shack  together,  and  in  any  case  they 
should  have  reported  to  him  as  OD  before 
calling  the  captain.  That's  what  it  was 
to  be  a  new  and  junior  officer. 

Commander  Cooper  reached  the  deck, 
still  buttoning,  the  hair  at  the  edge  of  his 
uniform  cap  a  little  fuzzy  where  he  had 
missed  it  with  the  comb.  "Call  all  hands 
and  clear  out  the  paint  locker,"  he  said. 
"The  Japs  have  attacked  Pearl  Harbor 
and  we're  at  war." 

That  was  how  it  began  for  the  destroyer 
John  D.  Ford,  No.  228  and  flag  of  the  59th 
Destroyer  Division.  She  was  one  of  the 
type  not  too  aff'ectionately  known  as  four- 
pipers;  an  1,190-ton  ship  contracted  for 
at  the  height  of  the  1917  submarine 
campaign,  but  not  actually  laid  down  till 
exactly  one  year  after  the  Armistice,  and 
therefore  built  more  slowly  and  with 
greater  care  than  some  of  her  sisters.  She 
was  named  after  an  engineer  whose  active 
service  had  covered  both  the  battle  of 
Mobile  Bay  and  that  of  Manila  and  who 
had  died  as  a  retired  admiral  at  an  im- 
mense age.     She  was  a  Cramp  ship  and 


184 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


therefore  a  good  one,  soundly  constructed, 
but  with  the  somewhat  primitive  accommo- 
dations of  her  date,  including  double-deck 
bunks  in  the  cabins  and-*  washbasins  that 
discharged  into  slop  jars.  Now  she  was 
something  more  than  six  years  over  age  by 
the  naval  treaties  and  due  for  the  scrap 
heap;  besides  this,  her  arthritic  joints  were 
two  years  away  from  her  last  overhaul. 

"Damn  that  goddam  Congress  that 
spent  all  their  time  building  petunia- 
covered  privies  down  South  instead  of 
giving  us  some  new  ships  and  decent 
equipment,"  her  skipper  used  to  say  when 
the  chief  engineer,  Lieutenant  Sam  Spen- 
cer, came  up  to  report  the  feed  lines 
clogged  again.  The  skipper  was  a  South- 
erner himself,  a  Georgian,  who  had  never 
lost  the  slow  precise  drawl  of  his  native 
State.  To  hear  him  one  might  have 
judged  him  subject  to  quainting  spells,  but 
the  impression  would  last  only  till  one 
saw  his  face — made  out  of  cast  iron,  the 
kind  of  front  one  expects  to  see  behind 
ropes  and  under  lights  at  Madison  Square 
Garden.  Actually  Commander  Cooper's 
sport  was  baseball,  but  he  lived  up  to  the 
implications  of  his  countenance  and  kept 
so  taut  a  ship  that  junior  officers  often 
thought  him  downright  tyrannical. 

This  was  to  be  expected.  Ensign  Johnny 
Cross  was  a  V-7,  an  Oregon  lumberman 
(on  coming  aboard  he  had  promptly  been 
assigned  to  the  care  and  feeding  of  the 
foremast,  the  only  timber  in  the  ship);  but 
the  rest  had  come  from  the  Academy  or 
from  more  easygoing  destroyers  to  the  gilt- 
edged  atmosphere  of  a  tropical  colony, 
where  only  mad  dogs  exert  themselves 
unnecessarily.  Oh,  of  course  baseball 
.  .  .  but  that  was  a  sport  and  not  subject 
to  the  tabu  against  effort.  Besides,  Com- 
mander Cooper  himself  was  interested  in 
baseball ;  he  offered  advice  out  of  consid- 
erable experience  to  the  gunnery  officer, 
who  coached  the  Ford's  team,  and  man- 
aged assignments  so  as  not  to  lose  Faber, 
the  gigantic  and  somewhat  dim-witted 
electrician,  because  he  was  a  good  man  at 
the  plate. 

With  the  men  it  was  different.  For  the 
most  part  they  were  Old  China  Hands, 
thoroughly  habituated  to  the  routine  of 
summer  at  Chefoo  and  winter  in  Manila. 
Some  of  them  were  already  in  their  third 


enlistment  on  the  station,  like  all  expa- 
triates, grumbling  about  the  lousy  climate 
and  terrible  food,  but  always  finding  some 
urgent  reason  why  they  had  to  stay  for 
just  two  or  three  more  months  whenever  a 
draft  to  go  back  to  the  States  was  made  up. 
Such  men  have  learned  that  there  are  one 
or  two  sundowners  in  the  wardroom  of 
every  ship.  They  bear  it  aboard  and  find 
their  escapes  outside  the  service,  usually  at 
the  edge  of  town,  where  one  of  those  neat 
native  girls  called  "Bamboos"  keeps  a 
little  house  without  benefit  of  clergy  for 
the  mariner  home  from  voyage. 

For  these  men  and  their  Bamboos  it  was 
a  whole  system  of  life  that  rolled  up  like  a 
garment  that  night  when  the  radio  shacks 
became  excited  and  blinker  lights  began  to 
go  aboard  the  fleet  flag. 

11 

U.S.S.  John  D,  Ford  sailed  at  dawn 
"to  take  a  convoy  to  the  south,"  says 
the  only  statement  we  have  of  her  ac- 
tivities on  the  first  day  of  war,  but  it  could 
not  have  been  very  much  of  a  convoy  and 
could  not  have  gone  very  far,  to  judge 
from  the  fact  that  she  was  back  in  Manila 
Bay  in  time  for  the  first  big  bombing  raid 
against  the  city  on  December  10th.  The 
orders  were  to  put  her  into  dock  at  Cavite 
and  give  her  in  a  hurry  the  overhaul  of 
which  she  stood  in  need.  While  she  was 
waiting  for  the  tide  to  get  over  the  dock- 
sill  the  Japs  came  with  27  bombers,  up 
above  20,000  feet.  They  circled  the  city 
three  times,  blandly  ignoring  the  one  or 
two  still-serviceable  planes  that  went  up 
from  Nichols  Field;  they  picked  their 
targets  and  began  to  drop  bombs  deliber- 
ately as  they  were  joined  by  a  second 
formation  of  the  same  size.  The  first  stick 
fell  in  the  water  some  distance  from  the 
Ford^  which  had  got  under  way  and  was 
steaming  slowly  around  the  bay,  stepping 
carefully  to  avoid  our  submarines  un- 
derneath. Someone  on  the  bridge  said 
"They'll  have  to  do  better  than  that," 
and  Chief  Engineer  Spencer  back  on  the 
fantail  opened  up  with  his  little  3-inch  25, 
the  only  A  A  weapon  aboard.  His  shooting 
was  very  good;  he  could  see  the  bursts 
right  on  line  every  time  and  those  from 
some  other  3-inch. 


ONE    DRSl  ROVER 


185 


But  that  was  llic  only  defense  Clavite  or 
Manila  had,  and  after  a  few  rounds  liic 
skipper  bitterly  ordered  thcni  to  stop; 
they  weren't  doing  any  good,  the  bursts 
were  only  about  two-thirds  of  the  way  up. 
Bitterly  -  for  he  could  see  and  they  all 
could  see  the  flames  and  fragments  rise  as 
the  bombs  hit  in  the  Navy  Yard  and 
among  the  ships  tied  up  at  dock,  even  if  he 
didn't  know  then  that  the  very  first  hit  had 
knocked  off  the  mess  hall  with  everyone  in 
it,  including  a  lot  of  his  friends.  Petunia- 
covered  privies! 

That  was  the  Ford^s  introduction  to  the 
actualities  of  war  and  no  one  aboard  ever 
forgot  it. 

As  they  steamed  away  from  the  sham- 
bles that  night,  south  for  Java  where 
the  nearest  repair  docks  lay,  an  old  cox- 
swain named  Griffin  with  three  hash 
marks  on  his  sleeve  said  wildly,  "Just 
leave  me  here  with  a  rowboat  and  a  ma- 
chine gun,  will  you,  so  I  can  kill  some 
of  those  bastards."  The  wardroom  was 
glum,  the  usual  bridge  game  forgotten. 
Officers  would  sit  silent  for  a  long  time  and 
then  apropos  of  nothing  burst  out,  "I  just 
hope  I  can  be  there  when  Tokyo  gets  it." 

Matters  were  not  helped  either  by  the 
heat  and  the  general  atiTiosphere  of  tension 
in  a  vacuum.  Nobody  knew  what  forces 
the  Japs  had  down  among  the  island  seas, 
at  what  moment  dawn  or  a  squall 
would  lift  to  show  along  the  horizon  the 
fantastic  silhouettes  of  enemy  warships, 
or  when  a  squadron  of  hpmbers  would 
come  out  of  the  skies  as  they  did  on  to  the 
poor  old  Peary  navigating  that  same  route 
with  all  her  fire-control  equipment 
smashed. 

The  ship  was  on  a  routine  of  watch  and 
watch,  four  hours  on  and  four  hours  off, 
with  housekeeping  details  and  the  living 
necessities  of  food  and  sleep  coming  out  of 
the  four  hours  off.  It  was  on  that  trip 
that  everyone  really  noticed  how  admi- 
rably a  Cramp  four-piper  is  designed  to 
hold  heat,  a  commodity  only  valuable  in 
the  North  Atlantic  above  the  35th  paral- 
lel. There  was  no  ventilation  to  speak  of, 
the  Ford's  awnings  had  gone  up  in  flames 
at  Cavite,  the  temperature  was  constantly 
above  100°  on  deck  and  (since  the  port- 
holes were  sealed)  so  much  above  that  in 
wardroom  and  cabins  that  one  of  the  lieu- 


tenants thix'w  the  thennometer  overboard 
Nobody  knew  what  the  engine-room  fig- 


ures were. 


Somehow  the  custom  grew  up  of  keep- 
ing a  bucket  of  water  with  soap  in  it  in 
one's  cabin.  When  a  man  came  off  duty 
with  perspiration  splotches  mottling  his 
uniform  like  the  outline  of  some  implausi- 
ble map,  he  stripped  and  tossed  his  clothes 
in,  hanging  them  up  at  the  beginning  of 
the  next  watch  in  place  of  the  semi-dry 
garments  he  took  down  U)  put  on.  One 
day  there  was  a  venture  into  pure  fantasy 
under  the  bright  clear  tropic  sky.  The 
lookout  reported  an  approaching  plane; 
everyone  could  see  it,  and  general  quar- 
ters was  called.  Soon  the  report  came 
that  it  was  diving.  They  waited  but  noth- 
ing happened,  and  it  was  several  minutes 
before  they  realized  that  it  was  the  planet 
Venus.  They  didn't  feel  better  till  they 
learned  some  of  the  other  ships  had  ac- 
tually opened  fire. 

The  convoy  was  slow.  Food  ran  down 
to  corned  beef,  canned  salmon,  and  Vi- 
enna sausage,  a  diet  not  improved  by  the 
fact  that  the  Ford  had  run  out  of  bread, 
which  destroyers  always  have  to  beg  from 
bigger  ships,  having  no  ovens  of  their  own. 
There  were  no  Japs;  and  they  came  to 
Surabaya  on  Christmas  Day  with  everyone 
feeling  slightly  lower  than  the  hind  leg  of  a 
worm.  The  trip  had  taken  them  across 
that  equatorial  line  where  pollywogs  be- 
come shellbacks;  but  what  with  the  heat, 
tension,  and  constant  radio  reports  of 
new  Japanese  successes,  there  was  no 
ceremony,  and  the  subject  had  hardly 
been  mentioned. 

The  ship  went  in  there  to  get  at  least  the 
most  necessary  repairs,  with  everyone 
aboard  pitching  in  to  help  out  the  local 
dockyard  staff.  The  language  difficulty 
was  not  too  serious,  since  most  of  the  Dutch 
spoke  at  least  a  kind  of  English  and  all 
were  boundlessly  polite.  That  was  the 
trouble — they  were  too  polite,  too  deter- 
mined to  talk  without  warmth  about  the 
weather  and  other  indifferent  subjects 
when  the  exigencies  of  intercourse  de- 
manded remark.  In  the  Ford's  wardroom 
it  was  perfectly  clear  what  our  new  allies 
were  keeping  themselves  from  saying.  It 
was  put  into  words,  at  first  in  banter  and 
then  seriously,  to  our  enlisted  men  when 


186 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


they  stepped  into  the  taverns  to  get  some 
of  the  excellent  Dutch  beer.  "The  Amer- 
icans have  run  away  and  left  their  people 
to  shift  for  themselves."-*  There  were  a 
few  rows  and  the  partiripants  had  to  be 
brought  to  captain's  mast  in  the  morning, 
in  itself  an  embarrassing  situation  on  ac- 
tive service.  How  can  you  throw  a  man 
in  the  brig  when  all  hands  are  needed  to 
handle  weapons? 

In  the  background  the  combined  fleets 
were  being  organized  and  everybody 
aboard  was  glad  when  the  commodore  got 
orders  just  after  New  Year's  Day  of  which 
he  made  no  secret — orders  to  put  to  sea 
and  "prepare  for  offensive  action.'! 

Ill 

THE  John  D.  Ford's  division  was  working 
with  one  of  the  light  squadrons  into 
which  ABDAFLOAT  had  been  split  up — a 
force  intended  to  strike  hard  and  quick  at 
anything  Japanese  that  came  down  past 
the  barrier  of  the  two  big  Malay  islands, 
Borneo  and  Celebes.  Admiral  Glassford 
had  his  flag  in  the  Boise,  the  best  ship  in 
those  seas  with  her  great  speed,  stout 
armor,  and  fifteen  guns.  The  Marble- 
head  was  the  only  other  cruiser  that  could 
be  spared  to  go  with  him;  all  the  others  at 
that  date  were  running  convoys,  mostly  to 
Singapore. 

The  offensive  action  remained  a  dream 
through  three  weeks  of  January.  There 
was  nothing  but  bad  news  on  the  radio  and 
trotting  back  and  forth  across  the  Malay 
barrier,  refueling  frequently  so  there  would 
be  plenty  of  fuel  aboard  in  case  of  action. 
The  food  was  better,  thanks  to  frequent 
visits  to  port,  but  the  heat  remained. 
Lieutenant  Mack  thought  he  was  seeing 
spots  before  the  eyes  one  day  and  dis- 
covered it  was  the  composition  visor  of  his 
cap  melting  in  the  sun  to  run  down  in 
large  sable  tears.  Cribbage  set  in  in  the 
wardroom  (there  were  never  four  officers 
off  duty  at  once  to  play  bridge)  and 
lasted  till  heat  stuck  the  cards  together  so 
they  came  off  on  one  another.  Then 
someone  had  to  borrow  an  acey-deucey 
board  from  the  enlisted. 

The  change  came  on  January  23rd. 
Two  days  before  (though  on  the  John  D, 
Ford  they  did  not  know  this)  one  of  our 


scouting  submarines  had  reported  a  big 
enemy  convoy  bound  south  for  Macassar 
Strait.  That  meant  a  thrust  at  Borneo 
and,  sure  enough,  Dutch  planes  picked  up 
the  Japs  on  the  23rd,  heading  for  the  oil 
port  of  Balikpapan:  22  transports  and 
cargo  carriers,  sumptuously  escorted  by 
cruisers  and  destroyers  with  a  balloon 
barrage  overhead.  The  Dutch  bombed 
them  during  the  day;  at  the  same  time 
orders  went  out  to  the  Ford's  division,  then 
patrolling  just  north  of  Komodo  where  the 
dragon  lizards  live,  that  the  cruisers  would 
join  them  for  a  night  surface  attack. 

Everyone  felt  better;  Engineer  Spencer 
checked  his  feed  lines  for  speed  and  a 
marked  note  of  cheerfulness  ran  through 
the  ship.  It  lasted  till  the  Marblehead 
came  over  the  horizon  alone  and  in  an 
exchange  of  signals  reported  that  bad  luck 
was  still  with  the  fleet.  The  Boise  had 
torn  her  bottom  on  a  reef  in  Sapeh  Strait 
and  would  not  accompany  them.  There 
was  some  sourish  comment  on  this  turn, 
but  not  from  Lieutenant  Slaughter;  he 
was  torpedo  officer  and  remarked  that 
with  the  big  gunnery  ship  out  of  action  it 
would  have  to  be  altogether  a  torpedo 
affair  and  destroyers  would  have  to  be  the 
whole  show.  "That's  right,"  said  Mack. 
"They  have  so  many  ships  in  there  that  at 
night  they'll  never  notice  us  till  we  hit 
them." 

It  worked  out  as  Slaughter  had  pre- 
dicted. As  the  four  destroyers  slid  up 
Macassar  Strait  well  over  to  the  Celebes 
side  under  dark  clouds  across  a  rough 
rolling  sea,  the  Marblehead  flung  out  a 
hoist  of  signal  flags,  then  turned  away 
from  them  westward.  She  was  not  to  be 
risked  in  a  night  torpedo  action,  but  would 
pick  them  up  in  the  morning  if  all  went 
well. 

The  John  D.  Ford  was  a  flagship  now, 
leading  her  division  into  a  sea  that  broke 
monstrously  across  the  bows  as  she 
rounded  Cape  Laikang  into  the  full  fury 
of  a  gale  sweeping  down  the  straits.  The 
clouds  and  heavy  weather  were  doubtless 
a  protection  against  Japanese  aircraft  but 
they  did  not  add  to  the  comfort  of  en- 
gineers trying  to  drive  the  ancient  can  at 
27  knots,  or  to  that  of  the  gunnery  officer, 
who  moaned  every  time  she  took  it  green 
over  number  one  gun  that  the  piece  would 


ONE    DESTROYER 


187 


never  shoot.  Far  in  the  haze  and  clouds 
a  plane  was  sighted,  whose,  nobody  knew 
till  radio  picked  up  a  broadcast  from  an 
American  patrol  saying  that  four  enemy 
cruisers  had  been  sighted,  headed  north, 
with  the  position  of  the  Ford  and  her 
division.  "That  made  us  feel  good,  that 
we  could  be  mistaken  for  cruisers  even  by 
one  of  our  own  planes." 

During  the  afternoon  everyone  made 
preparations  according  to  character.  One 
of  the  ensigns  remembers  writing  a  let- 
ter. Lieutenant  Mack  filled  a  little 
box  with  fishhooks,  twine,  razor  blades, 
quinine  pills,  and  Dutch  money  and  sewed 
it  inside  his  life  jacket,  then  went  to  sleep, 
wedging  himself  as  best  he  could  against 
the  pitching  of  the  ship.  The  executive 
and  navigator.  Lieutenant  Norman  Smith, 
did  not  sleep.  He  was  a  thin  dark  man, 
niggardly  of  words,  who  kept  a  set  of 
jeweler's  tools  in  his  cabin  and  was  in  the 
habit  of  repairing  the  ship's  precision 
instruments  when  he  had  nothing  better 
to  do.  Now  his  job  was  to  find  the  way 
for  the  Ford  and  the  other  destroyers 
toward  the  pinpoint  north  of  Balikpapan 
where  the  Jap  convoy  would  be,  just 
avoiding  the  Dutch  mine  fields — the  whole 
thing  to  be  done  under  those  black  clouds 
without  a  chance  for  a  sun  sight  and  with 
unknown  currents  shaking  her. 

General  Quarters  was  sounded  at  11 :00, 
and  those  who  had  been  sleeping  came 
topside  to  find  the  gale  moderated,  the 
ship  running  through  long  after-storm 
swells.  Harmon  bounced  out  with  the 
remark  that  they  were  going  into  the  first 
American  naval  battle  since  Santiago, 
but  Smith  merely  looked  up  and  said 
quietly,  "The  average  life  of  a  destroyer 
in  action  is  fifteen  minutes." 

Now  it  was  "the  last-minute  wait  fa- 
miliar to  any  athlete,"  as  Lieutenant  Mack 
has  put  it.  Just  before  midnight,  mast- 
head hailed  to  say  there  was  a  light  off  the 
starboard  bow,  a  red  flasher.  Navigator 
Smith  started  for  his  charts  with  the  feeling 
something  must  be  wildly  wrong,  for  his 
reckoning  placed  them  in  the  middle  of 
Macassar  Strait  fifty  miles  from  any 
light,  but  then  masthead  hailed  again 
and  reported  it  was  a  ship  burning,  one 
of  those  hit  by  the  Dutch  bombers  that 
morning. 


At  two  o'clock  dim  light  loomed  out  of 
the  darkness  ahead  and  a  moment  later 
everyone  aboard  caught  the  smell  of  burn- 
ing oil.  Smith  had  hit  his  pinpoint;  that 
was  Balikpapan  all  right,  with  the  Dutch 
scorching  it  as  they  had  promised.  It 
was  something  over  half  an  hour  later 
when  they  ran  past  the  first  Japanese 
ship,  blacked  out,  apparently  at  anchor 
and  so  close  aboard  that  there  was  no 
chance  of  swinging  a  torpedo  tube  on  her. 
They  had  to  let  her  go,  as  Commander 
Talbot's  orders  were  not  to  use  the  guns 
till  all  the  torpedoes  had  gone. 

A  few  minutes  later  a  whole  division  of 
Jap  destroyers  burst  through  the  drifting 
oil  smoke  across  the  port  bow  and  swept 
past  at  a  speed  too  high  for  the  Ford  to  try 
a  shot.  "One  to  three,  four,"  said  Com- 
mander Talbot  in  the  voice  radio,  "de- 
stroyers close  aboard.    They  went  past  us." 

"All  right,"  came  the  voice  of  the  Par- 
rotfs  commander,  "We'll  get  him."  But 
he  did  not;  his  tubes  also  would  not  train 
in  time,  and  the  next  moment  half  a 
dozen  men  aboard  the  Ford  shouted  to- 
gether that  there  were  Japanese  ships  all 
around  them. 

"Action  port,  action  port,"  said  Com- 
mander Cooper;  "let's  pitch  a  few  fast  ones 
now."  Said  Lieutenant  Slaughter:  "Fire 
one;  fire  two." 

All  of  them  had  had  some  experience 
with  torpedoes,  but  none  had  expected 
quite  so  deafening  a  crash,  with  the  con- 
cussion wave  following  that  almost 
knocked  you  off  the  bridge  as  the  Jap  ship 
went  up.  Then  torpedoes  began  hitting 
all  round  and  Commander  Talbot  was 
ordering  course  reversed  for  another  run 
through  the  convoy.  Off  on  the  distant 
beach  a  searchlight  began  to  work,  point- 
ing upward ;  off  on  the  other  side  an  anti- 
aircraft gun  let  go.  The  Japs  thought 
they  were  being  bombed ! 

Four  times  the  Ford  ran  through  the  con- 
voy. Everyone  was  so  busy  that  there  were 
only  fragments  of  observation.  Lieuten- 
ant Mack's  is  that  at  one  time  he  saw  five 
Jap  ships  up-ended  and  sinking  in  the  light 
of  the  flames,  with  the  whole  sea  dotted  by 
swimming  heads  and  a  lifeboat  overturn- 
ing in  the  destroyer's  wash.  Ensign  Dar- 
rah  saw  a  tremendous  faraway  explosion, 
heard   someone  say,   "That's  on  land,'' 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  someone  else  correcting  that  it  was  a 
ship  blowing  up  near  the  beach.  Har- 
mon, on  lookout,  remembers  the  conning 
tower  of  a  submarine  jhey  almost  ran 
down.  (She  turned  out  to  be  Dutch,  in 
there  for  a  little  torpeJoing  of  her  own.) 
Someone  else  remembers  Commander  Tal- 
bot shouting  in  wild  excitement,  **Get 
that  yellow  bastard!"  as  a  big  Jap  ship 
loomed  up  ahead. 

Then  the  torpedoes  were  all  gone  and 
word  was  passed  to  open  up  with  the  guns. 
Almost  at  the  same  time  the  Japs  began  to 
shoot  back.  From  the  Ford  they  saw  three 
of  their  o\v'n  salvos  go  right  into  a  big 
transport  and  marveled  at  the  accuracy 
with  which  gun-pointer  McKean  was 
shooting  in  spite  of  the  flash  that  was 
blinding  everyone  else.  (He  was  the 
pitcher  on  the  baseball  team.)  But  the 
transport  fired  back  and  hit  too,  so  that  a 
burst  of  flame  spread  across  the  ForcTs 
stern.  It  was  Faber,  the  not-too-bright 
electrician,  who  saved  the  situation,  con- 
trary to  orders.  He  had  been  told  at 
least  a  thousand  times  that  one  uses  a  COo 
extinguisher  on  gasoline  fires  because  wa- 
ter spreads  the  blaze,  but  in  his  excitement 
he  broke  out  the  big  hose,  washing  fire  and 
burning  materials  all  overboard  together. 

IV 

'*A  FTER  that  they  couldn't  do  enough  for 
/2l  us."  On  the  way  down  to  Surabaya 
the  crew  had  eaten  and  slept  in  shifts, 
mostly  on  deck  with  a  pipe  union  or  any 
other  convenient  metal  object  for  a  pillow, 
refusing  to  get  far  from  the  guns,  for  they 
were  pugnacious  now  and  full  of  spirit 
after  all  the  misery  and  disappointment. 
They  counted  on  getting  some  rest  in  port 
and  ultimately  they  did,  but  not  right 
away.  For  the  Dutch  submarine  skipper 
had  radioed  ahead  of  them  his  own  ac- 
count of  the  action,  with  the  statement 
that  he  had  seen  nine  Jap  ships  go  down, 
and  the  Ford/s  men  were  received  as 
conquering  heroes. 

Admxiral  Hart  came  aboard,  followed  by 
a  parade  of  Dutch  officers  resplendent  in 
fourrageres,  an  unheard-of  honor  for  a 
four-piper.  Everybody  was  invited  to 
Dutch  homes,  with  dinners  that  lasted  for 
hours  and  ?in  out  of  stone  bottles,  while 


the  good-looking  Harmon  began  to  be  seen 
on  the  street  with  the  prettiest  Dutch  girls 
in  town.  So  much  free  beer  was  lavished 
on  the  enlisted  that  Commander  Cooper 
had  to  institute  a  special  beer  inspection 
to  extract  it  from  the  lockers.  He  found 
one  locker  full  of  it — bottles  of  every  brand 
made  in  Java,  with  a  lot  from  the  Philip- 
pines, and  a  few  odd  items  that  had  come 
a  long  way  from  Singapore  and  the  China 
coast.  The  guilty  sailor's  excuse  was  that 
he  had  not  intended  drinking  it  aboard 
but  only  wanted  to  take  it  home  to  his 
family,  who  were  connoisseurs  of  rare 
beer.  Also  they  got  coffee,  of  the  con- 
centrated Dutch  kind,  designed  for  con- 
sumption by  the  thimbleful.  *'Our  men 
achieved  some  peculiar  results  by  drinking 
it  in  the  same  quantities  they  would  the 
American  brew." 

But  the  action  in  the  Macassar  Strait 
did  not  stop  the  Japs.  They  made  good 
their  Balikpapan  losses,  held  the  place 
because  there  was  not  enough  Allied 
strength  in  the  south  to  win  it  back,  and 
came  on.  The  Ford  was  still  in  Surabaya 
being  repaired  when  on  February  3rd  a 
big  force  of  Jap  bombers  caught  the  newly 
formed  American-Dutch  striking  force  ai 
sea,  smashed  the  hea\y  cruiser  Houston  s 
after  turret,  and  so  crippled  the  Marble- 
head  that  only  after  the  most  heroic  efforts 
was  she  got  to  Tjilitjap,  thence  to  Co- 
lombo, and  round  Good  Hope  back  to 
America.  She  was  out  of  the  campaign. 
That  same  day  came  the  first  air  raid  on 
Surabaya.  The  Ford: s  men  were  unani- 
mous in  their  contempt  of  its  effect,  but 
it  did  whittle  down  the  slender  defending 
force  of  aircraft  and  drive  a  good  many 
people,  mostly  natives,  from  the  cit\'. 
This  was  an  inconvenience;  it  stopped 
normal  trade  and  made  it  hard  to  get 
provisions. 

Otherwise  the  gathering  shadows  were 
mostly  in  the  news,  something  told;  not 
visible  in  their  effect  on  the  minor  de- 
cencies of  life,  which  continued  as  before, 
but  working  major  changes  underneath. 
''There  was  one  Dutch  officer  I  used  to 
know,"  said  one  of  the  Ford' s  lieutenants 
long  later.  "He  had  a  wife  and  daughter. 
I  was  invited  to  their  house  for  dinner  one 
night  and  he  apologized  for  having  the 
place  so  torn  up.     He  had  drawTi  his  life 


Ox\t    DESTROVLR 


189 


savings  out  of  the  bank  and  was  sending 
his  family  up  into  the  mountains,  where 
all  the  money  had  been  spent  on  a  bomb- 
proof shelter.  He  was  going  to  sea  the 
next  day  and  didn't  expect  to  come  back. 
.  .  .  He  was  right;  I  don't  know  what 
happened  to  the  family." 

That  was  the  background  against  which 
the  John  D.  Ford  put  to  sea  again,  now 
as  flagship  of  a  reconstituted  destroyer 
division  58  with  Commander  Thomas  H. 
Binford  moving  into  the  commodore's 
cabin  under  the  bridge  to  take  the  place 
of  Talbot,  who  had  suffered  a  heart  attack 
and  had  had  to  go  home.  In  the  fore- 
ground was  the  fact  that  the  Japs  were  now 
solidly  established  on  Celebes  island  and 
in  south  Borneo,  dominating  the  whole 
area  of  the  Java  Sea  with  their  land-based 
aircraft.  Admiral  Doorman,  in  command 
of  the  combined  Allied  squadrons,  was 
forced  to  use  the  long  line  clear  south  of 
the  island  when  he  wanted  to  send  a  ship 
from  one  end  of  Java  to  the  other.  Sura- 
baya was  still  technically  the  main  base; 
but  the  actual  operational  center  was  at 
Tjilitjap  on  the  south  coast,  and  it  was 
from  there  that  the  John  D,  Ford  sailed  for 
her  next  adventure  after  another  routine  of 
exhausting  patrols  and  blistering  heat. 

That  was  the  night  after  the  enemy  hit 
Bali  with  a  big  convoy  and  were  landing 
there.  Singapore  had  already  gone;  it 
was  evident  that  the  Japs  were  closing 
pincers  on  Java.  But  all  hope  was  not 
dead  yet;  American  fighter  planes  were 
coming  up  from  Australia,  Flying  For- 
tresses were  trickling  in.  Battle  at  Bali 
was  therefore  worth  w^hile. 

Admiral  Doorman  planned  to  catch  the 
Japs  close  to  the  beaches  and  cut  them  to 
pieces  as  Talbot  had  done  at  Balikpapan. 
They  would  be  in  narrow  Lombok  Strait 
east  of  Bali;  he  would  run  his  ships  through 
in  three  waves  by  night,  each  wave  coming 
on  just  as  things  had  quieted  down  after 
the  one  before. 

The  Ford  was  to  be  part  of  the  first  wave. 
The  Dutch  light  cruisers  Java  and  De 
Ruyter  were  leading,  to  fire  guns  and  tor- 
pedoes. That  ought  to  stir  up  the  enemy, 
maybe  start  a  few  fires  on  his  ships,  at  any 
rate  get  him  shooting  and  so  reveal  his 
position  to  the  low-slung  destroyers  three 
miles    behind,    which    would    then    have 


good  targets  for  the  torpedoes.  The  Dutch 
destroyer  Piet  Hein  was  to  lead  that  part  of 
the  wave,  with  the  Ford  and  her  sister  ship 
Pope  following  and  copying  her  moves — 
an  arrangement  made  necessary  by  the 
fact  that  the  American  ships  had  no  one 
who  could  understand  Dutch  code. 

This  time  there  was  no  before-battle 
feeling  or  letter-writing;  they  were  vet- 
erans on  the  Ford  now,  confident  of  them- 
selves and  their  instrument.  Comman- 
der Cooper  on  the  bridge  was  discussing 
with  the  gunnery  officer  the  outrageous 
brand  of  baseball  played  in  the  Philip- 
pines; Slaughter  was  talking  music  with 
Xorman  Smith.  Back  round  the  galley 
deckhouse  a  group  was  laughing  over  the 
unorthodox  methods  of  Chief  Torpedo- 
man  Canaday,  who  had  tried  to  make  an 
obstinate  war  head  seat  itself  on  a  torp>edo 
by  banging  it  with  a  sledge  hammer. 
"Jeez  Christ,"  someone  had  said,  "that's 
got  TXT  in  it."  "I  never  thought  of 
that,"  said  Canaday. 

Up  ahead  in  the  dark  the  Dutch  cruisers 
were  out  of  sight,  the  Piet  Hein  visible  only 
by  the  tiny  blue  light  under  her  stern. 
It  was  calm  but  a  black  night  with  the 
moon  down;  and  the  darkness  was  sud- 
denly split  by  level  lightning  on  the 
horizon  ahead.  Something  was  hit  and 
began  to  burn,  but  that  was  all  they  could 
tell  from  the  Ford.  For  perhaps  five  more 
minutes  they  drove  toward  that  beacon; 
then  the  lookout  cried  there  was  something 
in  the  darkness  ahead.  Two  ships.  They 
saw  the  Piet  Hein  veer  sharply  left  across 
their  bows,  firing  from  all  her  guns. 

It  was  gallant  but  not  war,  for  the  two 
ships  were  Japanese  cruisers.  A  long  pen- 
cil of  light  caught  the  Dutch  destroyer; 
there  was  a  shock  of  salvos,  every  shell  of 
which  seemed  to  go  right  into  her.  For 
a  moment  the  Piet  Hein  was  brilliandy 
visible  as  though  ever/  plate  and  stanchion 
had  been  coated  ^vith  a  luminous  red 
paint,  then  she  crumpled  together  like  an 
accordion  and  disappeared. 

"Make  smoke."  said  Commander  Coo- 
per. The  Ford  and  her  companion  rushed 
ahead  at  thirty  knots,  firing  spreads  of 
torpedoes.  As  they  did  so  "all  hell  broke 
loose"  with  sharp  stabs  of  flame  from 
every  point  on  the  semicircle  of  the  hori- 
zon, and  a  searchlight  causrhi  ihe  Ford  full 


190 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


on  the  bridge.  The  first  Jap  salvo  hit 
just  off  her  stern  and  the  destroyer  pitched 
sharply  under  the  weight  of  water  thrown 
aboard.  A  cruiser  oo  the  opposite  side 
fired;  the  Ford  rolled  as  a  huge  waterspout 
towered  over  her,  and  Lieutenant  Mack 
noted  how  the  tracer  shot  past  overhead 
"like  a  flock  of  wild  geese." 

The  weight  of  water  knocked  one  end  of 
the  motor  whaler  loose  from  its  falls  and 
the  boat  dragged  alongside  slamming  the 
plates.  Somebody  cut  it  loose  to  get  rid 
of  the  obstruction — an  act  for  which  the 
Ford  later  received  undeserved  credit;  for 
the  survivors  of  the  Piet  Hein  found  the 
craft  and  reached  Java  in  it  to  thank  their 
rescuers. 

The  Ford  was  firing  too;  the  search- 
light veered  wildly  and  went  out,  hit  some- 
where beneath.  Now  there  were  only  the 
flashes,  but  the  waterspouts  kept  coming 
up,  one  of  them  so  close  and  big  that  it 
knocked  flat  everyone  on  the  control  plat- 
form as  the  destroyer  spun  on  her  heel  and 
ran  back  behind  the  curtain  of  her  own 
smoke,  firing  another  spread  of  torpedoes. 
At  least  one  of  them  hit;  there  was  the 
unmistakable  heavy  boom  and  the  flash  of 
light  from  an  exploding  ship.  But  it  was 
impossible  now  to  run  through  Lombok 
Strait  with  the  Japs  so  thoroughly  awake, 
so  Commander  Cooper  turned  back  to 
Tjilitjap. 

When  he  examined  the  chart  on  which 
the  ship's  course  is  pricked  off  he  found  the 
quartermaster  who  kept  it  had  not  only 
recorded  every  turn  with  meticulous  ex- 
actitude, but  had  also  made  a  neat  nota- 
tion in  red  ink  at  the  point  where  the 
searchlights  and  salvos  caught  them — 
''John  D.  Ford  sunk,  2/19/42;  10:46  pm." 
It  was  written  in  a  steady  hand. 


V 

THE  John  D.  Ford  was  a  better  ship  when 
she  sailed  out  of  Surabaya  to  the  last 
tragic  act  of  the  campaign  with  Admiral 
Doorman's  fleet — a  better  ship  by  two 
.50  caliber  machine  guns,  salvaged  from 
the  wrecked  Stewart  and  provided  with 
makeshift  mounts  botched  together  out  of 
bits  of  pipe  and  metal  scrap.  A  better 
ship  internally,  with  a  crew  who  noncha- 
lantly got  their  cups  of  colTee  and  came  up 


on  deck  to  watch  the  night  bombings  of 
Surabaya,  commenting  feelingly  on  how 
poor  was  the  work  of  the  Jap  bombardiers. 

But  it  was  not  a  particularly  happy 
crew  at  this  time.  Down  to  the  beginning 
of  February  all  conversation  had  been 
colored  by  the  same  basic  assumption  that 
so  long  sustained  the  men  of  Bataan. 
They  were  fighting  for  time,  for  just  a 
little  time;  long  enough  for  the  Pacific 
fleet  to  gather  its  strength  and  come  rush- 
ing along  the  island  barrier  to  put  the 
yellow  dogs  to  rout.  It  is  a  long  voyage 
from  Pearl  Harbor  to  Surabaya,  perhaps 
a  month  with  supply  ships  in  convoy,  and 
time  would  have  to  be  allowed  for  loading. 
Japanese  broadcasts  about  the  Pearl  Har- 
bor damage,  the  grapevine,  or  just  rumor 
and  a  little  thought  on  the  over-all  strategic 
problem  by  men  trained  to  think  in  such 
terms  had  somehow  convinced  everyone, 
as  January  wore  away,  that  the  vision  of  a 
rescuing  line  of  American  battleships  was  a 
pipe  dream.  But  the  thought  of  a  cruiser 
and  carrier  force  that  would  give  them  a 
chance  against  the  enemy  persisted.  After 
all,  the  Japs  were  using  nothing  but  light 
forces  and  land-based  air  forces  among  the 
islands.  Their  planes  went  home  every 
afternoon  at  three  o'clock  because  they 
lacked  the  facilities  and  perhaps  the  ex- 
perience for  night  flying.  Their  bombing 
was  poor.  We  could  beat  them  if  only 
the  ships  were  sent. 

Scuttlebutt  had  them  being  sent  half  a 
dozen  times,  but  that  was  before  the  first 
of  February  with  the  news  it  brought  of 
the  big  raid  on  the  Gilbert  and  Marshall 
Islands.  It  took  time  for  the  implications 
of  that  raid  to  sink  in — that  the  cruiser- 
carrier  forces  were  operating  as  part  of  a 
strategic  plan  in  which  the  little  fleet  of 
the  Java  Sea  had  no  part.  In  fact  there 
were  even  those  aboard  who  saw  the  raid 
as  a  happy  augury,  a  movement  into  a 
region  from  which  the  Java  Sea  would  be 
only  a  step.  (Actually  it  was  more  than 
an  Atlantic  away.) 

But  after  the  night  in  Lombok  Strait 
there  could  no  longer  be  a  question. 
There  had  been  more  carrier  raids  on 
Japanese  islands,  but  far  to  the  north  and 
away;  here  at  the  edge  of  Java  Sea  the 
enemy  were  now  firmly  on  Bali  and,  with 
the  use  of  its  airfield,  had  choked  off  even 


ONE    DESTROYER 


191 


the  thin  trickle  of  planes  that  were  being 
ferried  in.  In  all  Java  there  were  no 
longer  any  Allied  fighter  planes  to  speak  of. 
All  that  the  fleet  could  expect  was  to 
achieve  another  Macassar,  to  delay  things 
long  enough  for  the  old  carrier  Langley  to 
arrive  at  Tjilitjap  with  a  cargo  of  fighter 
planes  and  gain  one  more  slight  reprieve. 

This  was  the  background  against  which 
the  John  D.  Ford  put  to  sea  under  Admiral 
Doorman's  flag  on  February  24th.  She 
made  her  departure  in  an  air  raid,  the 
last  ship  away,  and  the  native  dock- 
workers  decamped  as  the  bombers  came 
over,  so  that  a  seaman  named  H.  G.  Fox 
had  to  jump  overside  and  run  naked  down 
the  dock,  casting  loose  lines  while  build- 
ings were  shattering  near.  She  was 
one  of  four  four-pipers  remaining  from 
the  Asiatic  fleet;  all  the  others  had  been 
destroyed  or  become  so  broken  down  they 
had  to  go  to  Australia  for  major  repairs. 
There  were  three  big  new  and  fast  Brit- 
ish destroyers  and  two  or  three  Dutch. 
There  were  the  two  Dutch  cruisers,  Java 
and  De  Ruyler,  the  British  Exeter,  the  Aus- 
tralian Perth,  and  our  own  Houston,  nearly 
all  of  them  damaged  or  in  need  of  repair, 
with  their  shipboard  planes  gone — oh, 
decidedly  a  fleet  of  desperation.  The 
situation  was  desperate  too;  our  subma- 
rines and  planes  were  constantly  report- 
ing Japanese  concentrations  moving  down 
Macassar  Strait  and  were  reporting  Jap- 
anese bombers  overhead  through  the  day- 
light hours. 

The  little  fleet  did  a  kind  of  sentry  run 
to  and  fro  along  Java's  north  coast,  mostly 
at  night  to  prevent  surprise  attacks,  com- 
ing in  with  the  dawn  to  refuel  and  to  make 
what  repairs  could  be  made.  Nobody 
slept  at  all  very  much.  The  night  watches 
had  to  be  on  Condition  A — all  hands  at 
the  guns  for  a  contact  that  might  come  at 
any  moment,  and  during  the  day  there 
was  repair  work  and  refueling.  Every- 
one was  moving  in  a  fog  of  exhaustion 
when  the  Japs  were  reported  surely  at  sea, 
just  as  Doorman  was  steaming  into  Sura- 
baya on  the  morning  of  February  27th. 
They  turned  round  and  put  to  sea  again, 
though  many  of  the  fuel  bunkers  were  low 
and  the  Ford  at  least  had  been  on  short 
commons  for  three  days,  with  food  now 
-almost  unobtainable  in  the  port. 


There  was  no  excitement  and  no  thrill 
in  the  approach  to  that  battle;  only  a  sort 
of  mild  surprised  interest  at  the  formation 
Doorman  had  adopted — with  his  heavy 
destroyers  spread  far  ahead  of  the  cruisers, 
a  light  cruiser  leading  the  line,  and  his  two 
heavies  in  the  center.  It  was  bad,  insisted 
one  of  the  lieutenants,  quoting  Mahan  on 
the  necessity  of  having  strong  ships  at  the 
ends  of  your  line;  bad,  said  another,  be- 
cause he  could  not  choose  the  range  favor- 
able for  8-inch-  or  6-inch-gun  ships  without 
breaking  formation. 

No  matter;  Doorman  was  admiral  and 
chose  his  disposition  for  reasons  of  his  own, 
doubtless  good  ones.  At  4:15  they  were 
shooting  at  the  Japs.  The  enemy  had 
overwhelming  superiority:  seven  light 
cruisers  and  at  least  two  heavies.  Har- 
mon in  the  spotter's  top  insisted  there 
were  battleships  too,  over  behind  the 
enemy  line;  but  of  that  there  is  no  proof. 
The  range  was  long,  but  from  the  Ford^s 
station  astern  and  slightly  on  the  off  side 
of  the  battle-line  they  could  count  every 
salvo.  Lieutenant  Mack  has  told  how 
they  admired  the  Houston's  shooting,  get- 
ting off^  two  for  every  one  of  the  other  ships, 
and  straddling  every  time  with  the  electric 
flashes  of  hits  among  the  waterspouts. 

One  of  the  Japanese  heavies  began  to 
burn  and  1^11  out  of  line;  then  Exeter  was 
hit  in  the  boiler  room  and  swung  away, 
followed  by  the  rest  of  the  Allied  cruisers. 
In  the  smoke  and  gathering  dust,  the 
Ford  and  the  other  American  destroyers 
closed  across  the  retreat  and  fired  all  their 
torpedoes  at  the  onrushing  Japs.  It  was 
six  months  later  when  the  men  of  the  Ford 
learned  from  a  Dutch  survivor  that  at 
least  two  of  those  torpedoes  had  found 
marks  in  Japanese  destroyers  that  blew  up 
without  any  other  ships  on  the  horizon. 

So  Doorman's  last  try  had  failed  and 
now  the  only  possibility  was  to  salvage  as 
many  ships  as  might  be  from  the  cam- 
paign. The  rendezvous  was  Tanjong 
Priok  in  western  Java,  but  the  four-pipers 
had  not  enough  fuel  to  make  it,  so  they 
requested  and  received  permission  to  go  to 
Surabaya  instead.  There  the  tired  men, 
now  three  nights  without  sleep,  dragged 
heavy  fuel  hoses  across  the  deck.  In  the 
midst  of  it  a  Dutch  government  truck 
drove  up  on  the  dock  and  began  to  unload 


192 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


life  preservers;  then  came  a  Ford  sedan, 
its  whole  back  seat  packed  with  expensive 
stationery.  "For  you,"  said  the  driver. 
"No  pay;  you  take  it."  The  world  was 
coming  to  an  end. 

But  the  world  was  r  ot  coming  to  an  end 
for  the  John  D.  Ford  and  her  sisters,  lucky 
ships  with  a  lucky  commander.  They 
were  to  have  gone  out  through  Sunda 
Strait  to  the  west,  where  the  Houston  tried 
it  and  went  down,  but  that  involved  run- 
ning almost  the  length  of  Java,  and  Bin- 
ford,  the  division  commander,  sought  per- 
mission to  try  Bali  Strait  to  the  east. 
They  thought  he  was  not  going  to  get  it 
and  complained  they  would  be  sunk  in 
harbor  till  the  radio  shack  picked  up  a 
message  to  all  American  submarines  say- 
ing that  four  of  our  destroyers  would  be 
running  through  Bali  Strait  and  that  the 
submarines  were  to  let  them  alone. 

At  dark  then  on  February  28th  the  four 
cast  loose  their  lines  and  sailed,  leaving 
behind  the  kindly  Dutch  and  their  beer. 
They  had  no  more  torpedoes,  ammunition 
was  low,  the  men  had  only  snatched  cat- 
naps during  the  day,  but  all  hands  were 
on  watch.  A  voice  drifted  up  to  the 
bridge:  "Jeez,  that  moon  makes  you  feel 
naked." 

The  question  was  whether  the  enemy 
would  have  the  Strait  closed,  and  appar- 


ently they  intended  to,  for  fifteen  minutes 
after  the  Ford  turned  south  there  was  a 
shape  along  the  Bali  shore,  then  a  signal 
light  challenging  them  and  the  flash  of  a 
gun.  It  was  one  of  the  big  new  Jap 
destroyers,  and  presently  a  second  came 
out  of  the  shadows  to  join  her. 

"Get  up  there  to  the  plate  and  knock  out 
a  few,"  said  Commander  Cooper  to  the 
gunnery  lieutenant,  and  the  Ford^s  guns 
flashed  back  reply. 

Just  as  this  point  in  the  Strait  there  is  a 
shoal.  The  American  destroyers  turned 
to  avoid  it;  the  move  brought  them  toward 
the  enemy — one,  two,  three,  four  ships 
against  two,  all  shooting  and  pretty  ac- 
curately. The  Jap  leader  may  have  had 
something  heavier  in  the  background  he 
wished  to  bring  into  action;  he  may  have 
been  just  a  little  thick  about  the  implica- 
tions of  the  situation.  For  whatever  rea- 
son he  turned  away;  the  John  D.  Ford 
rushed  on  into  the  night  toward  Australia 
and  the  beginnings  of  victory,  the  only 
ship  that  had  seen  every  action  of  the 
campaign. 

As  Bali  faded  into  the  night  astern  one 
of  her  lieutenants  remarked  musingly: 
"That's  the  twelfth  time  I've  passed  that 
island  and  never  been  ashore  on  it.  Next 
time  I'm  going  to  find  out  whether  those 
dollies  wear  brassieres  or  not." 


&^} 


For  information  concerning  the  contributors  to  this  issue, 
see  Personal  and  Otherwise  among  the  following  pages. 


Westinjihouse  and  your  private  life .•• 


One  of  our  peacetime  goals  is  to  be  as  big  a  part  of  your  life  as  possible.  Before  we  went 
100%  into  war  production,  there  were  Westinghouse  products  which  would  heat  your 
water,  cook  your  meals,  preserve  your  food,  light  and  clean  your  house,  help  keep  you 
warm  in  winter  and  cool  in  summer,  wash  your  clothes,  help  take  you  to  work  and  bring 
you  home.  Each  time  you  did  any  one  of  a  hundred  simple  things  such  as  snapping  on 
the  radio  or  going  to  a  movie — we  helped  with  that,  too. 


Westinghouse  and  your  home  town  #  • . 

Another  of  our  peacetime  aims  is  to  help  make 
your  town  a  better  place  to  live  in.  Well-lighted 
streets,  plenty  of  steady  power  for  homes  and 
stores  and  factories,  better,  transportation — 
these  are  a  few  of  the  dozens  of  ways  in  which 
electricity  and  Westinghouse  can  help  a  city. 


Fsrmm^mm 


Westinghouse  and  your  Country . . , 

By  combining  thousands  of  skills  that  in  the 
past  have  let  us  contribute  to  your  comfort 
and  your  town's  progress,  we  have  been  able 
to  develop  many  new  weapons  that  are  mak- 
ing a  major  contribution  to  our  country  in 
war.  We  have  increased  our  production  of 
vital  war  materials  month  by  month  until 
thousands  of  Westinghouse  products  now  are 
fighting  in  every  battle  and  on  every  front. 
Westinghouse  Electric  &  Manufacturing  Co., 
Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania.  Plants  in  25  cities, 
offices  everywhere. 


PERSONAL  AND  Orfiervvisc 


NOW   LISTEN! 

THE  Canadian  Author  and  Bookman  for  Sep- 
tember, 1943,  under  the  heading  "Wanted, 
Short  Stories!"  identifies  us  in  a  list  of  peri- 
odicals: 

Harper's:   49  East  33rd   St.,  New  York  City; 
about  4000;  good  rates;  nothing  too  commonplace. 

THE   AIR1VAYS    CONFLICT 

JUST  as  we  go  to  press  with  Blair  Bolles^ 
"The  Future  of  International  Airways,"  in 
comes  the  Congressional  Record  for  Novem- 
ber 24th  with  some  remarks  by  Congressman 
Coffee  of  the  State  of  Washington.  Mr. 
Coffee  makes  acid  comments  about  the  fact 
that  Northwest  Airlines  can't  make  arrange- 
ments for  direct  flight  between  Seattle-Ta- 
coma  and  New  York  City  because  "it  has 
been  told  that  owing  to  the  exigencies  of 
war,  facilities  are  not  available."  Mean- 
while Trans-Canada  Air  Lines  are  busily 
drumming  up  trade  in  Seattle,  offering  local 
business  men  direct  flights  from  Vancouver  to 
New  York.  What  you  do,  apparently,  is 
catch  an  air  local  at  Seattle  for  Vancouver, 
a  flight  of  a  little  over  an  hour.  At  Van- 
couver you  step  into  a  Canadian  plane  that 
flies  you  across  the  continent  and  deposits 
you  with  efficiency  and  dispatch  in  New  York 
City.  "How  and  why  Canadian  air  lines 
are  allotted  priorities  for  such  a  route  and  for 
sufficient  planes  while  an  American  line  is 
denied  the  same  faciUties  is  beyond  my  com- 
prehension," says  Congressman  Coffee. 

Mr.  Bolles  is  on  the  staff  of  the  Washington 
Star.     He  was  born  in  St.   Louis  and  was 


educated  at  Exeter  and  Yale.  In  1933  he 
went  to  work  for  the  now  defunct  Washing- 
ton Sun,  then  for  the  Washington  Herald. 
For  a  year  he  was  with  Universal  Service,  then 
for  another  year  he  was  a  rewrite  man  on  the 
New  York  American.  After  that  he  went  to 
the  Star.  Last  spring  Mr.  Bolles  went  to  \ 
Sweden  as  one  of  the  four  American  news- 
papermen invited  by  the  Swedish  government 
to  come  and  see  how  the  land  of  the  Middle 
Way  operates.  He  has  written  articles  for  us 
about  "The  Great  Defense  Migration"  and 
"The  Stew  in  the  Melting  Pot."  The  latter 
piece  was  concerned  with  the  activities  in  this 
country  of  various  exiled  European  politicians. 

OIL   IN   THE    COLD 

Wallace   E,    Pratt,  the  author  of  "Oil 
Fields  in  the  Arctic,"  is  a  well-known 
geologist  and,  in  addition,  is  a  director  and  ^ 
member  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  •] 
Standard  Oil  Company  of  New  Jersey.     Born   i 
in  Kansas  and  educated  at  the  state  university, 
he  practiced  his  profession  in  various  places 
in  the  years  from  1908  to  1915.     His  most 
active  work  as  an  oil  geologist  dates  from  1916.  * 
In  that  year  he  was  employed  by  the  Texas   i 
Company.     In  1918  he  was  appointed  chief 
geologist  for  the   Humble   Oil   &    Refining   I 
Company;  in  1923  he  was  made  a  director 
and  in  1 933  a  vice-president  of  this  corporation. 
In  that  same  year   (1933)  he  came  to  the  f 
Standard  Oil  Company. 

For  many  years  Mr.  Pratt  has  been  con- 
cerned with  questions  of  oil  geology  in  various 
parts  of  the  world.     He  has  dealt  with  them 


THE  ENGINE  THAT  IS 
ALWAYS  THERE 

AUison-powcrcd  planes  have  been  called  upon 

in  every  major  engagement  in  which  our 

Army  has  taken  part.  *  They  have 

had  a  hand  in  every  great  land 

victory   to    our  credit.   * 

Allison  engines  always 

—  for  dependability 

and  brilliant  per- 

ormancel 


Every  Sunday  Afternoon 

GENERAL  MOTORS  SYMPHONY 

OF  THE  AlK-NBC  Network 


LIQUID-COOLED    AIRCRAFT     ENGINES 


DIVISION    OF 


POWERED  BY  ALUSON: 

^•3^— Lightning    •    P-^p—Airacobra    •    P-40  —  Warhawk    •    A-36  and  P-^i  — Mustang 


rill 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


AREAS 
rN  WHICW  OIL 
HAS  BGEN  SEEN 


Oil  Fields  in  the  Arctic 


not  only  as  a  matter  of  business;  he  has 
written  about  them  as  well.  Most  of  this 
writing  consists  of  papers  about  petroleum, 
volcanism,  and  geology  which  have  appeared 
in  technical  and  scientific  journals.  Many 
of  the  earlier  papers  deal  with  the  Philippines, 
where  Mr.  Pratt  was  in  search  of  gold  and  iron 
deposits.  This  article — Mr.  Pratt  wishes  to 
acknowledge  the  help  of  his  associates,  Eugene 
Stebinger  and  Winthrop  P.  Haynes,  in  com- 
piling the  data,  and  the  assistance  of  Vilhjal- 
mur  Stefansson  for  various  notes  bearing  on 
the  occurrence  of  petroleum  in  the  Far  North 
— will  appear  sometime  during  the  spring  of 
1944  in  a  volume  called  Compass  oj  the  World, 
a  symposium  of  essays  on  various  aspects  of 
political  geography,  edited  by  Mr.  Stefansson 
and   Professor   Hans    Weigert  of  Pittsburgh 


University.  Mr.  Pratt  wrote  a  little  volume 
called  Oil  in  the  Earth,  which  appeared  last 
year  as  the  first  publication  of  the  University 
of  Kansas  Press.  The  book  (it  consisted  of 
four  lectures  given  to  the  geology  students 
of  the  University  of  Kansas)  attracted  wide 
attention  in  view  of  the  much-discussed  pos- 
sibility of  oil  exhaustion  in  the  United  States. 
Mr.  Pratt  is  a  hardy  individualist  and  the 
thesis  of  his  book  cheered  the  hearts  of  many 
Americans.  The  thesis  was  that  oil  is  to  be 
found  almost  everywhere  and  that  only  Amer- 
icans have  the  peculiar  psychology  that  it 
takes  to  find  lots  of  it.  From  one  point  of 
view  the  book  was  a  geologist's  hymn  to  the 
wildcatter.  Mr.  Pratt  is  an  amateur  pilot 
and  since  1934  has  put  in  some  1,200  hours 
surveying  the   United  States  from  coast  to 


with 
good 

Oi 

OUtl] 

onlj 
to  I 

of  8 

T 

sch 
Th( 
enc 


{Continued  on  second  page  following) 


i 


Iheir 


ears  have  heard 


DURING  this  holiday  season  the  high  school 
pupils  in  a  little  Illinois  city  are  having  an 
unforgettable  experience. 

They  are  hearing  the  richest  voice  bom  of 
the  new  science  of  electronics,  singing  carols 
with  the  age-old  promise  .  . .  "On  earth  peace, 
good  will  towards  men.  '* 

Only  one  such  voice  sings  today.  For,  at  war's 
outbreak,  research  had  just  been  completed  on 
only  one  Meissner  radio-phonograph,  designed 
to  revolutionize  all  standards  for  reproduction 
of  sound  in  the  home. 

That  laboratory  model  is  on  loan  to  the  high 
school  of  Meissner's  home  town,  Mt.  Carmel,  111. 
There  the  pupils  are  enjoying  a  musical  experi- 
ence you  also  may  share  when  this  instrument 


is  marketed  after  victory.  When  that  day  comes 
these  are  advantages  you  may  expect: 

FREQUENCY  MODULATION— plus  advanced  electronic  fidel- 
ity and  tonal  range  greatly  surpassing  that  found  in  any 
home  radio-phonographs  now  in  use. 

AUTOMATIC  RECORD  CHANGER  — selects  and  plays  any 
record,  anywhere  in  the  stack. .  .plays  both  sides  in  sequence, 
one  side  only,  or  repeats . . .  avoids  record  breakage. 

A  COMPLETE  HOME  RECORDER... DISTINGUISHED  CABINETS 
...NEW  IDEAS  already  being  engineered  into  Meissner  elec- 
tronic equipment  for  our  armed  forces  around  the  world. 


^ 


-0? 


^^0PiWU>^ 


A  NEW   WORLD    OP  SO^'ND 
AT   rOi/H    FINGER    TIPS 


TO  ARMY  AND  NAVY  EXPERTS  in  electronics,  the 
Meissner  name  plate  is  as  familiar  as  it  has  been  for 
years  to  advanced  amateurs  and  professional  radio  en- 
gineers. For  excellence  in  the  production  of  electronic  equipment, 
Meissner  has  been  awarded  the  Army-Navy  "E"  with  additional  star. 


MEISSNER 

MANUFACTURING    COMPAN  Y  •  MT.   C  ARME  L,   ILL. 

r  ADVANCED  ELECTROmC  RESEARCH  AND  MANUFACTURE 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


coast  from  the  air.  "The  face  of  the  earth  is 
the  geologist's  paramount  concern  and  it  is 
only  from  an  airplane  that  he  gets  a  really 
comprehensive  display  of  earth  features." 

As  we  go  to  press  Washington  is  reverberat- 
ing with  the  Truman  Committee  investiga- 
tion of  the  so-called  Canol  project.  This 
project  involved  the  construction  of  a  pipe 
line  from  the  oil  wells  at  Fort  Norman  on  the 
Mackenzie  River  in  Canada  to  White  Horse. 
At  White  Horse  our  War  Department  is  set- 
ting up  a  refinery.  From  White  Horse  to  the 
Alaskan  port  of  Skagway  Mr.  Ickes,  as  Pe- 
troleum Administrator  for  War,  built  a  pipe 
line.  This  whole  cost  is  to  be  met  by  the 
United  States  government  and  the  big  argu- 
ment is  whether  the  job  should  ever  have  been 
done  at  all.  The  project  was  undertaken  by 
the  War  Department  in  secrecy  (Mr.  Ickes 
claims  that  he  was  never  given  details)  for 
strategic  reasons.  The  Japs  were  in  the  Aleu- 
tians and  who  could  tell  whether  the  far 
Northwest  and  Alaska  would  be  cut  off  from 
gasoline?  Mr.  Stefansson  had  been  advocat- 
ing development  of  this  oil  field  all  along  but 
wanted  the  oil  delivered  to  Fairbanks.  And 
so  on.  But  now  it  appears  that  this  purely 
war  project  may  be  abandoned — the  war 
necessity  subsiding — and  the  Canadian  gov- 
ernment will  be  in  a  position  to  exercise  its 
option  to  buy  the  refinery  and  the  big  pipe 
line  at  its  commercial  value.  Mr.  Ickes  be- 
lieves that  the  commercial  value  will  be  nil. 
Others  describe  the  project  as  simply  one  of 
the  inevitable  blunders  in  the  war  emergency. 
The  Standard  Oil  came  into  the  argument 
through  the  fact  that  the  Canadian  subsidiary 
of  Standard  Oil  of  New  Jersey,  the  Imperial 
Oil  Company,  Ltd.,  had  been  producing  oil 
at  Fort  Norman  for  several  years  to  supply 
the  local  demand  and  was  called  on  to  manage 
the  new  enterprise.  Since  the  Canadian 
government  is  not  in  the  oil  business,  the 
abandonment  of  the  project  might  enable  the 
Standard  subsidiary  to  acquire  the  line  and 
the  refinery  with  the  greatest  of  ease.  In  other 
words,  what  our  government  undertook  for 
strategic  reasons  and  at  great  cost,  might  turn 
out  to  be  of  great  advantage  to  the  Standard. 
Needless  to  say,  numerous  persons  specu- 
lated on  the  possibility  that  Standard  had  en- 
couraged the  project,  foreseeing  just  such  an 
ending  to  the  story.  This  Standard  vehe- 
mently denies  and  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  they  weren't  enthusiastic  about  the 
scheme  from  the  start. 


EPISTLE    TO    THE    CHURCHES 

THE  author  of  "Before  the  Men  March 
Home,"  Dr.  Bernard  Iddings  Bell,  is 

a  priest  of  the  Episcopal  Church  who  has 
devoted  most  of  his  ministry  of  thirty-three 
years  to  study  of  the  educational  and  political 
implications  of  Christianity,  in  terms  of  the 
contemporary  scene.  Before  the  First  World 
War  he  was  dean  and  pastor  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  Church,  Fond  du  Lac.  During 
that  war  he  was  a  chaplain  at  Great  Lakes 
Naval  Station.  His  service  there,  he  says, 
"revealed  to  me  how  utterly  ignorant  the 
ordinary  young  American  is,  both  of  the 
Christian  religion  and  of  its  social  impacts; 
and  this  determined  my  ministry  on  other 
than  pastoral  lines." 

After  the  war  he  became  President  of  St. 
Stephen's  College  (which  later  became  affili- 
ated with  Columbia  University)  and  Professor 
of  Religion  in  that  University,  during  which 
time  constant  research  studies  in  his  chosen 
field  went  on.  In  1 933  the  college  was  forced, 
for  lack  of  funds,  to  close.  He  now  lives  in 
Providence,  Rhode  Island.  He  has  written 
eighteen  books,  of  which  the  best  known  are 
Beyond  Agnosticism,  Preface  to  Christianity,  Reli- 
gion for  Living,  and  The  Church  in  Disrepute. 

ENGLAI^D    IX    IVARTIME 

THE  British  Ministry  of  Information  re- 
cently invited  a  number  of  American 
editors  to  visit  England  and  see  conditions 
there  for  themselves.  As  Editor  of  this  Mag- 
azine, Frederick  Lewis  Allen  received  one 
of  the  invitations  and  accepted  it;  he  went 
over  by  plane  early  in  October  and  returned 
by  ship  in  November.  (He  says  the  Ministry 
was  an  impeccable  host;  it  did  not  lead  him 
round  by  the  nose  but  left  him  quite  free  to  go 
where  he  pleased  and  see  what  he  pleased, 
merely  providing  guides  and  hospitality  for 
him  on  his  journeys  away  from  London.) 
Finding  the  return  voyage  not  wholly  relaxing 
— all  passengers  had  to  carry  their  life-jackets 
wherever  they  went — Mr.  Allen  busied  him- 
self writing  a  series  of  impressions  of  what  he 
had  seen:  the  "Notes  on  an  English  Visit" 
which  we  publish  this  month.  This  is  his 
third  contribution  to  the  magazine  in  the  past 
year;  his  survey  of  the  first  year  and  a  half  of 
American  participation  in  the  war,  "Up  to 
Now,"  was  printed  in  the  July  issue,  and  the 
fruit  of  another  expedition,  "Bermuda  Base," 
in  September. 


{Continued  on  second  page  following) 


" Double- hciic/l tiff  on  old 
Vetct  Pass  in  iHHi. "  Get- 
ting d  train  of  four  or 
fire  cars  over  this  Rocky 
Mountain  pass  was 
work  for  two  of  the  best 
locomotives  of  the  time. 


THE  CURTAIN 
LIFTS  ON 
TOMORROWS 


Today,  long  trains  carrying  thou- 
sands  of  tons  of  freight  are  hauled 
swiftly  over  the  Rockies  by  the  modern 
GM  Diesel  Locomotives  of  the  Den- 
ver &  Rio  Grande  Western  Railroad. 


W 


KEEP 
AMERICA 

STRONG 
BUY 

MORE 

WAR 
BONDS 


HEN  you  think  of  the  Diesel  locomotive, 
don't  picture  only  the  sleek,  streamlined  pas- 
senger trains  which  shorten  distance  and  race 
the  clock.  Think  too  of  the  mainline  Diesel 
freight  locomotives  which  General  Motors 
builds.  These  swift,  dependable  giants  of  power 
are  contributing  heavily  to  the  astonishing  war 
record  of  the  railroads.  They  are  raising  the  cur- 
tain on  new  standards  of  transportation  keyed 
to  the  era  which  lies  ahead. 


DIESEL 
POWER 


LOCOMOTIVES EliCTRO-MOriVi  DIVISION,  La  Grange,  tfi 

ENGINES ISO  to  2000  h.p.  Cleveland  diesel  engine  division,  c/evefand,  owo 

ENGINES 15  fo  250  HP.  DETROIT  DIESEL  ENGINE  DIVISION,  Detroit,  Mich. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


YOUR    HOXOR 

THONL\s  A.  AuRELio,  bv  Virtue  of  the  votes 
of  the  so\-ereign  people  of  New  York  Cirs-, 
was  named  a  Justice  of  J;he  Supreme  Court  of 
New  York  on  November  2,  1943.  Never 
before  \\-as  a  man  elected  to  the  bench  in 
such  circumstances  as  he.  As  Ferdinand 
Lundherg  says  in  "AureUo:  The  People's 
Choice.'"'  the  people  kne\v  the  whole  score 
before  they  went  to  the  polls.  They  had 
been  shown  in  a  series  of  remarkable  demon- 
strations how  judicial  nominations  can  be 
made  and  they  had  the  exhortations — deaf- 
ening they  were,  too — of  organized  \irtue 
ringing  in  their  ears.  Nevertheless,  vox  pop- 
uli,  vox  dei. 

\Ir.  Lundberg  is  an  old  contributor.  Read- 
ers may  recall  his  articles  about  various 
new  r^pes  of  journalism — "'News  Letters'' 
and  ''P.\/ — the  Wall-Street-Popular-Front 
Tabloid.''  He  also  wrote  for  us  a  series  of 
articles  about  lawyers — ''The  Legal  Profes- 
sion." *'The  Priesthood  of  the  Law."  and  "The 
Law  Factories."  For  ten  years  Mr.  Lund- 
berg was  a  newspaperman  in  Chicago  and 
New  York,  spending  the  last  seven  of  those 
years  as  Wall  Street  reporter  for  the  Ne\s^ 
York  Herald  Tribune.  Then  he  quit  to  give 
his  rime  to  writing.  He  is  the  author  of  a 
biography  of  Imperial  Hearst  and  of  a  book 
about  America' s  Sixty  Families  which  became 
a  national  best  seller.  For  the  past  r^vo 
years  he  has  been  writing  for  various  organi- 
zations connected  with  the  war  effort. 


s^&^ 


COLLISION 


Thomas  Sancton,  the  author  of  "Race 
Clash."  is  a  native  of  New  Orleans  and 
now  works  in  New  York  ^\-here  he  is  manag- 
ing editor  of  The  \ew  Republic.  He  got  his 
schooling  at  Tulane  and  then  became  a  re- 
porter for  the  Times-Picayune.  Later  he  came 
to  the  Associated  Press  in  Ne\v  York.  In 
1941  he  \vas  awarded  a  Nieman  Fellowship 
and.  during  his  tenure  of  the  Fellowship, 
lived  in  Cambridge.  He  has  written  articles 
and  stories  for  various  periodicals,  Harpers 
included.  He  edited  and  contributed  to  a 
book  of  essays  on  journalism  by  Nieman  Fel- 
lows which  was  published  in  1942  under  the 
tide  of  Sewsmen' s  Holiday.  Now  he  is  at  work 
on  a  book  about  the  South,  largely  autobi- 
ographical. "Race  Clash"  will  probably  be- 
come a  chapter  of  it;  another  article  intended 


for  a  place  in  the  book  \W11  appear  shordy  ii 
Harper  s. 

THOSE    MA3fDATES 

AFTER    reading     C.    Hartley     Grattan' 

/^  "Those  Japanese  Mandates"  the  reade. 
may  speculate  on  ^vhat  will  happen  in  th 
islands  after  they  are  taken  from  the  Japanese 
In  October,  1935,  we  printed  a  piece  by  Wil 
lard  Price  called  "Japan's  New  Outposts.* 
Mr.  Price  had  \isited  some  of  the  islands  anc 
had  some  figures  on  population  changes.  H( 
said:  "For  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  nativ' 
population  has  stood  still  at  about  50,00'' 
But  during  the  past  four  years  the  Japanes( 
population  has  doubled.  It  has  climbed  frorr 
19,835  to  40,215.  In  1934  alone  the  increase 
was  8,000.  It  seems  likely  that  the  total  foi 
1935  will  be  higher."  Mr.  Price  then  did  J 
some  more  investigating. 


"Do  you  like  Japanese  rule?"  I  put  the  questior 
to  natives  on  islands  far  enough  removed  from  gov 
emment  offices  to  be  fairly  sure  of  getting  an  im 
official  reply. 

Not  a  man  would  say,  'T  like  it." 

Doubtless  that  is  human  nature.  Who  will  say 
that  he  wishes  to  be  ruled  by  anyone  else? 

''Would  you  prefer  to  have  the  Germans  back?' 
I  asked. 

"No.     We  prefer  the  Japanese." 

"Why?" 

"Because  they  belong  in  the  Orient.  They  un 
derstand  us  better.  We  are  not  afraid  of  them. 
They  are  more  like  us."' 

.  .  .  .\n  old  chief  ^vho  loved  his  toddy  raised  his 
cocoanut  shell  to  his  lips  and  gave  what  he  consid- 
ered a  conclusive  argument: 

"The  Germans  used  to  fine  us  twenty-five  yen 
for  getting  drunk.  The  Japanese  charge  us  only 
five  yen.'* 

"Then  if  you  don't  want  the  Germans,  how  about 
the  Spaniards?" 

This  question  was  usually  met  with  a  horrified 
silence.  The  brutalities  of  Spain  in  the  South 
Seas  will  never  be  forgotten. 

"Ho\v  about  American  rule?"  I  would  ask,  i 
assuming  that  they  would  give  me  the  courtesy  of 
a  favorable  reply.  But  the  Americans  they  I 
best  remembered  ^\-ere  whalers  who  had  brought 
plagues,  kidnapped  their  women,  and  raised  hob 
generally.  No,  they  would  not  care  to  be  ruled 
by  Americans. 

"Then  how  would  you  like  to  rule  yourselves?" 

A  Ponape  chief  said:  "That  would  never  do. 
When  we  ruled  ourselves  every  chief  was  at  war 
with  every  other.  It  is  better  to  have  some  higher 
authority." 


(jContinued  on  fourth  page  following) 


FALSE  TEETH  WEARERS 


WHY  RISK  THESE  TWO 

niilprpQ  Denture  Breath 
UAIIuLIiO  and  Loose  Plates 
by  brushing  with  Makeshift  Cleaners  ? 


BRUSHING  your  plates  with  tooth  pastes, 
tooth  powders  or  soap,  may  scratch 
the  denture  material  which  is  60  times 
softer  than  natural  teeth.  These  scratches 
cause  odorous  film,  food  particles,  and 
stains  to  collect  faster  and  cling  tighter  .  .  . 
resulting  in  Denture  Breath.  Remember, 
you  may  not  know  you  have  it,  but  others  do! 
Besides,  brushing  with  makeshift  cleaners 
often  wears  down  the  fitting  ridges  designed 
to  hold  your  plate  in  place.  With  worn- 
down  ridges,  of  course,  your  plate  loosens. 


PLAY  SAFE. ..SOAK  YOUR 
PLATES  IN  POLIDENT 

A  safe,  modern  way  to  keep  dental  plates, 
partial  plates  and  removable  bridges 
clean  is  to  soak  them  in  Polident  every 
day.  No  brushing,  no  danger,  yet  the  daily 
Polident  bath  works  into  the  corners  and 
crevices  no  amount  of  brushing  seems 
to  reach;  keeps  your  denture  sparkling 
clean,  odor-free. 


DO  THIS 
EVERY  DAY 

Place  denture 
in  Polident  so- 
lution for  15 
minutes,  or 
longer  if  con- 
venient. Rinse— 
and  it's  ready 
to  use. 

No  Brushing 


"NOW  I'M  REALLY  LIVING  ...  Go 

everywhere  .  .  .  have  fun."  Millions  call 
Polident  a  blessing.  No  fear  of  Denture 
Breath— no  risk  of  wearing  down  and  loosen- 
ing the  plate  due  to  brushing.  Polident  used 
daily  helps  maintain  the  original,  natural 
appearance  of  your  dental  plate  for  less 
than  a  penny  a  day.  Today— get  Polident  at 
any  drug,  department  or  variety  store.  3  oz. 
size— 30^;  7  oz.  size  — 60^.  FREE— Booklet 
on  Care  of  Dentures.  Write:  Hudson  Prod- 
ucts, Inc.,  Dept.  N-14,  8  High  St.,  Jersey 
City  6,  N.  J. 

The  Safe,  Modern  Way  fo 
Clean  Plates  and  Bridges 

poLiDcnr 

FOOD  fights  for  FREEDOM 
produce  and  conserve— 
share  and  play  square  1 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


(c^V  im^Rwm 


i(mmUJ)mf  h^mjci 


RONR-ICO; 


The  Rum  Connoisseur  contains  over  100 
tested  drink  and  food  recipes.  Send  for  your 
Free  copy.  Ronrico  Corporation,  Dept.  (J) 
Miami,  Florida.  Ronrico  Rum  86,  90  and  151 
Proof.  U.  S.  Representative:  Import  Division, 
McKesson  6-  Robbins,  Inc.,  New  Yorb  City. 

Copyright  1943         'Trademarks 


"Now,  if  we 

were  only 

staying  at 
THE  ROOSEVELT" 


When  you  stop  at  The  Roosevelt  you  don't 
risk  getting  marooned  like  this.  For  you'll  be 
within  walking  range  of  Manhattan's  MIdtown 
activities.  Direct  passageway  from  Grand 
Central  Terminal  to  hotel  lobby.  A  reserva- 
tion at  The  Roosevelt  liquidates  a  lot  of  bother. 
Rooms  wifh  bath  from  $4,50, 


THE 

Robert  P.  Williford,  General  Manager 

MADISON  AVE.  AT  45th  ST..  NEW  YORK 
—A  Hilton  Hotel- 

OTHER  HILTON  HOTELS  FROM  COAST  TO  COAST: 

TEXAS,    Abilene,    El   Paso,    Longview,    Lubbock,    Plainview;    NEW 

MEXICO,  Albuquerque;   CALIFORNIA,    Long    Beach,    Los   Angeles, 

The  Town  House;  MEXICO,  Chihuahua,  The  Palacio  HiHon. 

Hilton  Hotels,  C.  N.  Hilton,  President. 


Well,  then,  who  gets  the  job? 

Mr.  Grattan  is  an  old  contributor.  We 
published  a  piece  of  his  last  month  called 
"Postwar  Migration:  A  Mirage."  Other 
Harper  articles  by  him  concerned  with  prob- 
lems of  the  Pacific  include  "Our  Unknown 
Pacific  Islands,"  "An  Australian-American 
Axis,"  and  "The  Future  of  the  British  Em- 
pire." 

PUPIL    PORTRAYS    PEARODY 

George  W.  Martin,  the  author  of  "Pref- 
'  ace  to  a  Schoolmaster's  Biography," 
was  born  on  December  17,  1887,  the  son  of  the 
late  Edward  S.  Martin,  who  conducted  "The 
Easy  Chair"  in  this  Magazine  for  so  many 
years  and  was  for  long  the  Editor  of  the  former 
Life  (the  weekly  humorous  magazine).  He 
was  formally  educated  at  Groton  School 
(1900-1906),  Harvard  College  (1906-1909), 
and  Harvard  Law  School  (1909-1912).  His 
years  at  Groton — and  his  steady  interest  in 
the  place  thereafter — provided  him  with  the 
material  for  his  present  article.  In  the  same 
class  with  him  at  Harvard  were  such  diversi- 
ties as  John  Reed,  Walter  Lippmann,  Hey- 
wood  Broun,  Stuart  Chase,  and  S.  S.  Van 
Dine. 

In  the  First  World  War  he  went  to  France 
in  the  Field  Artillery  and  was  cited  for  gal- 
lantry in  action.  Except  for  this  interlude 
he  has  practiced  law  in  New  York  since 
1912.  He  has  five  children,  three  of  whom 
are  married  to  sailors.  His  wife  owns  a  house 
at  Wilton,  Connecticut,  and  the  family  occupy 
it  in  the  summer. 

He  is  afflicted  with  skepticism — although 
an  Episcopalian  in  good  standing — and  re- 
gards the  efforts  to  improve  the  world  by 
spending  taxes  as  doomed  to  failure.  He 
lends  a  hand  occasionally  to  try  to  organize 
the  universe  so  that  thrift  shall  have  special 
privileges  and  industry  a  sure  reward.  He 
has  long  been  President  of  the  Brearle\' 
School  in  New  York  City.  He  has  always 
been  interested  in  and  involved  with  educa- 
tion, and  conducts  a  continuous  difference 
with  those  who  think  it  is  a  road  to  social  posi- 
tion and  wealth. 

Incidentally,  since  his  article  on  Dr.  Pea- 
body  is  written  entirely  in  the  past  tense,  as  if 
for  a  future  biography,  we  hasten  to  report 
that  as  we  go  to  press  the  former  headmaster 
of  Groton  is  hearty  and  flourishing  like  a  bay 
tree. 


I 


New  York 's  First  Bank 
Established  1784 


Personal  Trusts 
Since  1830 


"  For  Centuries  To  Come" 

**The  freedom  to  achieve  is  as  funda- 
mental as  any  of  the  freedoms  thus  far 
announced.  It  is  at  the  base  of  our  independ- 
ence. It  is  a  quality  of  character.  It  is  a  state 
of  mind.  It  is  a  vigorous,  virile  point  of  view. 

**The  extent  to  which  we  accept  that 
responsibility  and  all  of  its  implications  may 
well  determine  the  course  of  our  economic 
and  political  future  for  centuries  to  come." 

...  A.  L.  M.  WIGGINS, 

President  of  the 
American  Bankers  Association 


Bank  of  New  York 

48  Wall  Street  ^  New  York 

UPTOWN    office:    MADISON    AVENUE    AT    63RD    STREET 


Commercial  Banking 


Executor  and  Trustee 


k 


Frederick  L.  Allen,  Editor;  George  R.  Leighton,  Associate  Editor; 
John  A.  Kouwenhoven,  Mary  Burnet,  Assistant  Editors 

Harpcr§/14^* 


THE  CONTENTS  FOR  February   1944 


Preface  to  the  President's  Autobiography        ....  george  w.  martin     .      .      .193 

What  Business  Thinks  About  Postwar  America    .      .      .  c.  hartley  grattan        .      .199 

The  Gettysburg  Address.  A  Poem gilbert  maxwell       .      .      .  209 

It  Was  Booth's  Body dale  clark 210 

The  Five  Fatal  Mistakes  of  the  Axis albert  carr 219 

Our  Heahh  in  Wartime LOUis  i.  Dublin      ....  224 

Caribbean  Command Fletcher  pratt  ....  232 

The  Easy  Chair ;      ;      ;      .  Bernard  devoto        .      .      .  242 

Preparation  for  Invasion      .    , c.  lester  walker      .      .      .  246 

Night  Flight.  A  Story Josephine  w.  johnson      .      .  253 

The  Strange  Story  of  Sir  Oswald  Mosley       ^.      .      .      .  william  zukerman     .      .      .  257 

The  Silver  Horn  ....;;...      j      .      ;  thomas  sancton  ....  264 

Save  Paper  and  Grow  Thin .  270 

Tokyo  Since  Pearl  Harbor  ..;,;.;..     john  morris 271 

Inept  —  Not  Apathetic  ...;;;.;;.  JOHN  B.  martin     ....  283 

The  Touch  of  Midas      ...;.;.      i      i      .  g.  r.  walker  .      .      .      .      .  284 

The  New  Books  .,,,,,      ■.,,,,      ,  john  chamberlain 

Among  Front  Advertising  Pages 

Books  in  Brief    .-,,-,■,,-,.,•,,     katherine  gauss  jackson 

Among  Back  Advertising  Pages 

Schools  and  Colleges         .;;;.;.;;        j        ;.        .        Among  Back  Advertising  Pages 

Personal  and  Otherwise Among  Back  Advertising  Pages 

Editorial  Comment  on  the  Articles  and  Contributors  in  This  Issue 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS 

HENRY  HOYNS,  Chairman  of  the  Board  cass  canfield,  President 

RAYMOND  c.  HARWOOD,  Treasurer  frank  s.  macgregor,  Executive  Vice  President 

EDWARD  J.  CULLEN,  Chairman  Finance  Committee 


HARPER'S  MAGAZINE:  Published  Monthly:  40  cents  a  copy;  $4.00  a  year;  two  years,  $7.00;  three  years,  $10.00. 
Canada  and  Foreign  $1.00  a  year  additional.  Volume  188.  Serial  No.  1125.  Issue  for  February,  1944.  Composed 
and  printed  in  the  U.S.A.  by  unionlabor  at  the  Rumford  Press,  Concord,  N.  H.  Publication  Office,  10  Ferry  Street, 
Concord,  N.  H.  Editorial  and  Advertising  Offices,  49  East  33, a  Street,  New  York  16.  Copyrighted  1943  in  United 
States  and  Great  Britain  by  Harper  bf  Brothers.  All  rights,  including  tr  anslation  into  other  languages,  reserved 
by  the  Publisher  in  the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  Mexico,  and  all  countries  participating  in  the  International 
Copyright  Convention  and  the  Pan-American  Copyright  Convention.  Entered  as  second-class  matter  at  the  post 
office  at  Concord,  N.  H.,  under  the  Act  of  March  3,  1879.  Address  all  communications  to  49  East  33rd  St., 
New  York  City  16, 

^f^^  Four  weeks*  advance  notice,  and  old  address  as  well  as  the  new, 
are  necessary  for  change  of  subscriber's  address. 


BUY  WAR  BONDS  AND  STAMPS 


%\ 


Honest -to -gosh  American  food! 


/# 


Put  yourself  behind  German  barbed  wire — a 
prisoner  of  war.  You're  hungry  and  home- 
sick.   Into  your  hands  comes  a  heavy  carton. 

It's  all  yours.  Raisins,  sugar,  coffee,  oleo, 
corned  beef,  biscuits,  ham,  salmon,  orange  con- 
centrate, milk  chocolate,  cheese,  powdered  milk, 
soap  and  cigarettes!  Familiar  cans  and  pack- 
ages. Labels  that  look  like  old  friends. 

Can  you  imagine  your  gratitude? 

The  Army  arranges  for  a  carton  of  this  kind 
to  be  sent  to  every  American  soldier  in  every 
German  prison  camp  every  week.  The  food  is 
really  needed  to  help  keep  American  boys 
healthy  and  hopeful  until  V-day  dawns. 

To  that  end,  the  kinds  of  food  in  the  carton 
are  carefully  selected  to  provide  the  most  nutri- 
tious diet  possible  ulider  prison  conditions. 
Dairy  products  are  well  represented  because 
milk  is  nature's  most  nearly  perfect  food. 


National  Dairy  regularly  supplies  products 
for  the  prisoners'  packages.  National  Dairy 
Laboratories  helped  develop  cheese  and  milk 
which  can  safely  be  shipped  anywhere. 

Dedicated  to  the  wider  use  and  better  under- 
standing of  dairy  products  as  human  food  .  .  . 
as  a  base  for  the  development  of  new  products 
and  materials  ...  as  a  source  of  health  and 
enduring  progress  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
town^  and  cities  of  America. 


NATIONAL   DAIRY 

PRODUCTS    CORPORATION 

AND    AFFILIATED    COMPANIES 


LISTEN : 


FEBRUARY  1, 1944 


A  substantial  cross-section  of  the  American 
public  was  accosted  in  a  civil  manner  by  one  of 
our  foremost  researchers  a  couple  of  years  ago  and 
was  asked  a  human  question:  which  recreation  do 
you  enjoy  most? 

The  answers,  in  the  rank  of  his  finding,  said: 

1.  Listening  to  radio 

2.  Going  to  the  movies 

3.  Reading  magazines  and  books 

4.  Hunting  and  fishing 

5.  Watching  sports 

6.  Playing  games  outdoors 

7.  Playing  games  indoors 

8.  Reading  the  paper 

9.  Going  to  a  show 

That  may  or  may  not  point  a  moral  in  a  nation 
in  which  Freedom  of  Choice  is  paramount,  but 
if  there  is  a  moral,  it  is  probably  this:  //  you  insist 
on  swinging  a  niblick  in  the  living-room^  mind 
you  don''t  crack  the  radio  or  there  will  he  hell  to 
fay  jro?n  the  folks,         . 

Up  to  December  I,  1943,  CBS  has  been  di- 
rectly instrumental  in  turning  $136,030,000  into 
War  Bonds,  or  about  the  cost  of  two  major  air- 
craft carriers.  Kate  Smith's  triumphant  day  alone 
(Sept.  2 1 )  on  the  network  raised  some  $  3  8,000,000. 

• 

Walter  Pidgeon,  one  of  the  foremost  actors  in 
America,  makes  his  debut  on  CBS  as  star,  narrator 
and  m.c.  February  6  in  a  national  half-hour  from 
the  Coast  which  promises  to  be  the  most  brilliant 
new  program  on  any  air.  Notable  guest  stars  will 
act,  with  him,  the  plays  which  represent  the  peak- 
performance  of  their  several  careers.  Junior,  please 
go  get  mother's  lipstick  and  write  "8:oo  p.m. 
EWT  Feb.  6,  CBS"  on  the  mirror.  Big  letters. 


It  IS  not  just  a  Story  of  the  imagination.  The 
actress  who  just  spoke  to  you  the  words  of  Mrs. 
Penny  really  gave  her  blood.  She  feels  that  the 
cause  of  China  is  her  cause  and  yours  —  our  cause 
.  .  .  The  Chinese  blood  bank  at  l  54  Nassau  Street 
in  New  York  will  close  in  a  week,  to  leave  for 
China  to  continue  its  work  .  .  .  Will  you  give 
blood?" 

In  9  previous  months  the  Chinese  blood  bank 
had  received  970  pints  of  blood.  In  the  7  work- 
ing days  following  the  broadcast,  217  blood 
donors  reported  there.  The  blood  bank  closed  its 
doors  as  scheduled  with  a  total  of  1,157  piiT^ts  of 
blood  ...  It  maj^es  you  realize  again  the  simple 
power  of  radio  to  get  results  —  and  about  what 
swell  people  feofle  are. 

• 

"Trans-Atlantic  broadcasting,  if  properly  used, 
is  capable  of  bringing  about  a  real  cross-fertiliza- 
tion of  the  culture  of  two  countries,"  says  Edward 
R.  Murrow  in  a  special  article  for  the  BBC  year- 
book of  1943,  which  has  landed  here.  "I  believe 
that  the  common  man  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
shares  the  same  hopes  and  fears,  and  wants  to  live 
in  the  same  kind  of  world  .  .  .  Trans-Atlantic 
broadcasting  is  becoming  more  and  more  a  job  of 
transportation.  Transporting  the  individual  lis- 
tener from  his  home  in  Maine  or  Idaho  by  saying 
to  him:  'Look,  if  you  were  over  here  this  is  what 
you  would  find.  This  is  the  sort  of  thing  you 
would  hear,  see  and  smell.  The  kind  of  food  you 
would  eat;  the  people  you  would  meet;  the  books 
you  would  read,  and  all  the  rest.'  I  for  one  do  not 
believe  that  a  people  who  have  the  world  brought 
into  their  homes  by  a  radio  receiving  set  can  re- 
main indifferent  to  what  happens  in  iJiat  world." 


Young  Dr.  M alone  is  a  CBS  daytime  serial.  On 
a  recent  Thursday  broadcast,  a  Mrs.  Penny,  (one 
of  the  characters  in  the  play)  said  she  had  just 
returned  from  the  Chinese  blood  bank  at  154 
Nassau  Street,  New  York  City,  where  she  had 
donated  a  pint  of  blood  for  plasma.  Said  Mrs. 
Penny  (still  in  the  story) :  "They're  closing  the 
blood  bank  the  middle  of  next  month  —  going 
to  move  it  to  China  .  .  ." 

At  this  point  in  the  broadcast  the  director, 
Theodora  Yates,  stopped  the  story  dead  and  put 
Miss  Adet  Lin  on  the  air;  Adet  is  the  eldest 
daughter  of  Lin  Yutang,  the  Chinese  philosopher. 
Miss  Lin  said:  "You  are  listening  to  a  story,  but 


This  is 


CBS 


tlie  COLUMBIA 
BROADCASTING   SYSTEM 


Official  U.  S.  Army  Air  Forces  photograph  of  the  second  Schweirjfurt 
raid.    Doffed  rules  and  letters  indicate  heavily  bombed  target  areas. 


Schweinfurt  Story 


Both  sides  knew  it  was  a  major  en- 
gagement —  that  second  bombing 
mission  against  Schweinf^ft.  It 
was  a  battle  between  large  armies, 
for  a  crucial  objective.  The  Nazis 
massed  60%  of  their  total  fighter 
strength  in  a  vain  effort  to  prevent 
the  Boeing  Flying  Fortresses  from 
getting  through. 

In  a  period  of  a  few  hours  the 
Forts  invaded  German-held  Eu- 
rope to  a  depth  of  500  miles, 
sacked  and  crippled  one  of  her 
most  vital  industries.  They  did  it 
in  daylight  and  they  did  it  with 
precision. 


This  is  the  task  for  which  the 
Boeing  Flying  Fortress  was  de- 
signed: precision  destruction  hy 
daylight,  in  areas  where  the  going 
is  toughest. 

It  is  not  an  easy  task.  The 
Germans  tried  it  in  the  Battle  of 
Britain,  and  gave  it  up  as  too  costly 
when  185  of  their  own  planes 
were  shot  down  in  a  single  day. 

The  Fortress  is  engineered  to 
perform  superbly  at  altitudes  of 
more  than  yVi  miles;  it  bristles 
with  effective  firepower;  and  it 
can  absorb  terrific  punishment  and 
still  keep  flying. 


Fortresses  are  lost,  of  course  .  .  . 
sometimes  many  of  them  on  a 
single  mission.  But  a  recent  check 
shows  that  over  a  12-month  pe- 
riod, an  average  of  more  than  95% 
of  them  have  returned  from  each 
attack.  Their  stout-hearted  and 
superbly  trained  crews  have  never 
yet  been  turned  back  from  their 
objectives  by  enemy  opposition! 

To  'produce  a  plane  like  the  Fortress 
requires  unusual  qualities  of  research, 
design,  engineering  and  manufac- 
ture. You  can  expect  these  same 
qualities  in  the  peacetime  tomorrow, 
knowing  that  any  product  "Built  hy 
Boeing"  is  hound  to  he  good. 


»E$IQNERS  OF  THE  FLYING  FORTRESS    •    THE  NEW  B-29  SUPER  BOMBER    •    THE  STRATOUNER    •    TRANSOCEAN  CLIPPERS 


BOEING 


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IN  war  and  in  peace  America  depends  on 
bituminous  coal  for  most  of  its  warmth, 
most  of  its  electricity,  most  of  its  indus- 
trial power. 

That  makes  it  important  for  the  public  to 
know  the  real  facts  about  this  fuel,  and 
about  the  people  who  mine  it. 

So  we  take  this  method  of  reporting  to  you. 

And  to  make  sure  that  we  cover  the  sub- 
jects of  greatest  interest  we  have  asked 
thousands  of  people  what  they  most  want 
to  know  about  the  coal  industry  and  the 
way  it  is  run. 

On   this   page   we   present   two   questions 


asked  over  and  over  again.  Next  month  we 
will  present  further  questions  and  answers. 

We  are  fully  conscious  of  our  responsibility 
as  good  citizens  and  good  employers  in  the 
course  of  supplying  America  with  its  No.  1 
fuel  — and  we  consider  answering  your 
questions  a  part  of  that  responsibility. 

BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS 

BiTUMMOus  Coal 

60  East  42»d  Street        New  York  17,  N.  Y. 


Don't  Look  Now— 

But  Television  Has  Grown  Up! 


War  overtook  Television  at  the  awkward 
age.  Like  many  another  green  recruit, 
its  heart — the  Cathode  Ray  Tube — was 
appraised  and  indexed.  It  proved  a  heart 
of  magnificent  promise  in  the  nation's 
need.  This  heart  was  assigned  strange, 
important  duties.  It  is  serving  wherever 
men  are  fighting,  wherever  production 
lines  are  hustling,  wherever  the  stamina 
of  metals  must  be  certified. 

Out  of  war's  crucible,  this  fighting 
heart — the  Cathode  Ray  Tube — is  emerg- 
ing with  vastly  increased  stature,  range 
and  power!  When  materials  are  again 
available,  a  newer,  greater  Television  will 
make  your  easy  chair  at  home  the  choicest 
seat  wherever  exciting  news  is  breaking 
.  .  .  fifth  row  center  on  the  aisle  wher- 
ever the  "stars"  are  scintillating! 

Television  has  grown  up!  The  most- 
prized  possession  in  your  postwar  home 


will  be  your  DuMont  Television-Radio 
Receiver.  Why  DuMont.^  Because  Du- 
Mont is  the  first  name  in  Television!  The 
scientific  achievement  that  makes  clear 
Television  reception  possible  is  its 
amazing  heart  .  .  .  the  work  of  Allen  B. 
DuMont,  who  transformed  it  from  a 
laboratory  curiosity  to  a  commercially 
practical  product  and  a  vital  new  tool 
in  many  industries. 

Today,  DuMont  is  pioneering  in  the 
great  new  field  of  electronic  weapons. 
Tomorrow,  DuMont  leadership  will  as- 
sure your  enjoyment  of  peacetime  Tele- 
vision .  .  .  through  the  manufacture  of 
precision  electronic  equipment  for  Tele- 
vision pick-up  and  transmission  .  . . 
through  distinctive  operation  of  our  own 
commercial  Television  Stations  .  .  .  and 
through  the  manufacture  of  the  finest 
Television-Radio  Receivers. 

COPYRIGHT    1944,   ALLEN    B.    DUMONT    LABORATORIES,    INC. 


'i^^^m^mmm 


ALLEN  B.  DuMQNT  LABORATORIES,  INC.,  GENERAL  OFFICES  AND  MAIN  PLANT,  2  MAIN  AVENUE,  PASSAIC,  N.  J. 
TELEVISION    BROADCASTING    STUDIOS    AND     STATION    W2XWV,    515    MADISON    AVENUE,    NEW    YORK,    N.    Y. 


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WHEN  Rome  faced  Carthage  across 
the  narrow  waist  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, the  issue  was  settled  on  the 
''total"  basis  of  complete  destruction  of  a 
city  and  a  people.  Arguing  from  analogy, 
there  are  many  who  read  "Britain"  for 
"Rome"  and  "Germany"  for  "Carthage." 
But  can  the  analogy  be  pressed?  Is  Germany 
a  victim  of  total  depravity?  Is  there  some- 
thing in  the  Teuton  genes  that  necessarily 
puts  the  issue  between  England  and  Ger- 
many beyond  compromise? 

The  books  of  this  wartime  period  do  not 
help  us  much  in  trying  to  make  up  our  minds. 
There  is  the  Right  Honorable  Lord  Vansit- 
tart's  Lessons  of  My  Life  (Knopf,  S3)  for 
example.  "  Vansittartism"  has  become  a  syn- 
onym for  the  complete  pulverization  of  a 
people.  Between  the  actual  ideas  of  Lord 
Vansittart  and  the  vulgarization  of  his  doc- 
trine there  is,  indeed,  a  wide  gulf.  Vansittart 
does  not  advocate  the  obliteration  of  the 
Germans  or  of  Germany;  he  merely  advocates 
putting  the  nation  in  a  reform  school  for  a 
necessary  period .  What  Vansittart  says,  then, 
is  positively  humane  in  comparison  to  the 
popular  notion  of  "Vansittartism."  Never- 
theless, Vansittart  is  a  Cato  in  his  analysis  of 
the  menace  of  the  modern  Carthage.  He 
tends  to  push  his  indictment  of  the  Germans 
back  to  the  time  of  Tacitus,'  or  at  least  to 
the  rise  of  Brandenburg.  And  the  question 
naturally  poses  itself:  "Can  a  people  that  has 
been  bad  for  generations  and  even  centuries 
be  made  good  by  a  period  of  detention  in  the 
reform  school?"  If  Vansittart  is  right  in  his 
analysis,  his  prescription  for  a  cure  would  seem 
to  be  a  weak  reed :  reform  schools  notoriously 
do  not  reform,  for  they  do  not  allow  for  moral 
growth  by  free  exercise  of  the  will.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  his  analysis  is  wrong,  there 
is  some  hope  that  the  issue  between  England 
and  Germany,  "Rome"  and  "Carthage," 
can  be  settled  on  non-Carthaginian  terms. 

Is  the  analysis  wrong?  Reading  Leland 
DeWitt  Baldwin's  God^s  Englishman: 
The  Evolution  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Spirit 
(Little,  Brown,  S3)  one  is  moved  to  reflect 
that  the  "German  disease"  is  not  so  much 


German  as  continental  European.  The  no- 
tion of  the  Leviathan  State,  the  mystical 
deification  of  "society"  as  something  greater 
than  the  sum  of  its  individual  components, 
the  worship  of  "system"  and  "logic"  at  the 
expense  of  variation  and  natural  growth,  are, 
as  Mr.  Baldwin  never  tires  of  pointing  out, 
characteristics  of  European  thought  on  both 
sides  of  the  Rhine.  The  French,  in  making  a 
fetish  of  Rousseau's  "general  will,"  pushed 
their  revolution  to  totalitarian  ends,  and  the 
French  "nation  in  arms"  drenched  all  Europe 
in  blood  before  the  disease  had  run  its  course. 
If  Vansittart  had  lived  in  the  time  of  Edmund 
Burke,  he  would  almost  certainly  have  pro- 
nounced the  French  a  naturally  depraved 
people.  The  case  against  the  "totalitarian" 
French  of  1801  could  have  been  made  ex- 
tremely impressive:  hadn't  they  put  up  with 
the  Bourbon  totalitarian  State  for  generations, 
hadn't  they  subjected  shopkeepers  to  capital 
punishment  for  the  "crime"  of  selling  textiles 
that  didn't  conform  to  the  laws  of  a  mercan- 
tilist government?  Yet  the  French  nation 
was  enabled  to  come  back  into  the  comity  of 
Europe  precisely  because  the  peacemakers  at 
the  Congress  of  Vienna  did  not  try  to  put  all 
Frenchmen  into  a  reform  school.  After  a 
settlement  of  border  questions,  France  was 
allowed  to  work  out  the  future  according  to 
her  own  lights.  She  has  never  been  a  menace 
to  the  world  since  that  day. 

God^s  Englishman  does  not  attempt  to  settle 
the  future  of  Europe,  but  it  implies  a  settle- 
ment in  its  definition  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
spirit.  The  English  are  willing  to  accept 
"what  is  over  and  done."  This  does  not 
mean  that  Hitler  and  Company  can  escape  the 
consequences  of  their  folly.  But  if  past  his- 
tory is  any  key  to  the  future,  it  does  mean  that 
"Vansittartism"  will  vanish  as  an  important 
English  mood  once  the  victory  is  won  and  the 
chief  Nazis  are  liquidated. 

The  writing  of  God^s  Englishman  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  behavior  of  the  British  after 
Dunkirk.  It  is  an  amusing  book  that  carries 
its  vast  freight  of  erudition  lightly.  Mr. 
Baldwin  thinks  it  was  lucky  that  England  was 
cut  off  from  the  continent  during  the  so-called 


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Fortunate  in  its  physical  environment,  Hiram 
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Its  location  is  in  the  maple  sugar  region  of 
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ing and  overnight  hikes. 

The  college  aims  to  inspire  its  students  to 
make  democracy  a  way  of  Christian  life. 
Scholastically,  its  standards  are  high  and  its 
credits  recognized  everywhere.  It  has  been 
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A  SMALL,  COEDUCATIONAL  LIBERAL 
ARTS  COLLEGE   OF   HIGH   STANDING 


"Dark  Ages."  The  English  Common  Law  and 
the  English  theory  of  government  (if  you  can  call  it 
a  theory)  grew  up  in  relative  isolation.  "Roman 
law  and  its  derivatives,"  says  Mr.  Baldwin  in  a 
somewhat  surprising  passage,  "are  not  always  or 
necessarily  oppressive,  but  they  lend  themselves 
to  the  development  of  totalitarianism  and  the  sub- 
mergence of  the  individual."  On  the  other  hand, 
"the  English  Common  Law,  harsh  and  uneven  as  it 
may  be  in  practice,  staunchly  upholds  the  dignity 
of  the  individual  and  defends  him  against  undue 
encroachments  of  society." 

Most  of  Mr.  Baldwin's  conclusions  will  be  famil- 
iar enough  to  the  average  browser  in  the  literature 
of  British  traits.  But  now  that  "basic  English"  is 
being  suggested  as  a  world  language,  it  may  be 
interesting  to  note  that  Mr.  Baldwin  thinks  the 
virtue  of  the  English  tongue  derives  from  its  com- 
plexity, not  its  simplicity.  Being  a  "polygamous 
marriage"  of  Anglo-Saxon,  Latin,  and  Norman- 
French,  English  can  assume  the  attributes  of  several 
tongues.  It  can  echo  "the  urbanity  and  sophisti- 
cation of  French,  the  rolling  grandeur  of  Latin,  or 
the  staccato  vigor  of  the  Teuton  conquerors." 

Mr.  Baldwin,  who  is  of  Anglo-Saxon  stock  him- 
self, doesn't  make  the  mistake  of  assuming  that  the 
United  States  is  a  reflection  of  England.  The 
U.S.A.,  he  says,  is  the  first  purely  "European" 
nation,  inasmuch  as  it  is  a  blend  of  Anglo-Saxon, 
Teuton,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Slavic  strains.  Never- 
theless, the  United  States  is  what  Mr.  Baldwin 
calls  a  "neo-Anglo-Saxon"  country,  for  our  basic 
political  assumptions  are  English,  not  European- 
continental.  Mr.  Baldwin  goes  so  far  as  to  suggest 
that  we  are  "a  forecast  of  the  European  future," 
for  if  Europe  is  to  have  a  future  this  side  of  suicide 
it  must  rid  itself  of  "Leviathan  worship"  and  the 
theory  that  individuals  can  have  no  protection 
against  the  overriding  mandate  of  the  "general 
will." 

If  the  British  can't  be  counted  on  to  sustain  the 
mood  of  Vansittartism,  what  actually  is  to  be  done 
with  Germany?  In  Behind  the  Steel  Wall  (Vi- 
king, S3)  Arvid  Fredborg,  a  Swedish  journalist  who 
managed  to  stick  on  in  Germany  long  after  men 
like  William  Shirer  and  Howard  Smith  had  de- 
parted, suggests  that  limited  monarchy  is  the  only 
free  way  for  Europe.  "The  monarchical  idea," 
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restoration  of  Europe,  or  at  least  for  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  those  countries  that  still  possess  monarchical 
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Danubian  states.  Anticipating  a  howl,  Fredborg 
denies  that  monarchism  is  necessarily  reactionary 
or  anti-democratic.  He  points  to  Norway,  Sweden, 
Denmark,  and  Britain  to  bolster  his  view. 

No  doubt  if  a  nation  has  the  right  kind  of  mon- 
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beyond  the  reach  of  republics.  But  a  monarchy 
that  is  beyond  the  reach  of  parliamentarism  can 
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IJ 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


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riL  ed  to  Great 
J  itn  she  stood 
iyjnarmed  after 


.1  planes  being 
\vl\   the  enemy  by 
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leffl  n  gasoline  and 
an  eing  sped  to  the 
ov^g  air  power  of 
lir  Nations  over 


nel  Sherman  tanks 
njhrough  Iran  on 
'a]  o  Russia. 


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Tie  to  help  Mont- 
feat  Rommel. 

• 

ian  soldiers  fight- 
id-Lease  tanks  in 
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• 
)e  stuff  of  which 

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FIGHT""'™'" 


JANUARY   14-31 


PARALYSIS 


Fredborg  hasn't  pushed  his  argument  far  enougl 
His  book  is  chiefly  valuable  as  a  reporting  jol 
Fredborg  thinks  the  German  war  machine  i 
still  formidable  enough  to  command  respect,  eve 
though  the  superiority  of  Russian  manpower  im 
poses  a  drain  that  will  prove  fatal  if  Hitler  can' 
somehow  wangle  a  separate  peace  with  Stalin 
which  isn't  at  all  likely  at  this  point.  As  for  th 
precise  mechanics  of  German  surrender  and  th 
reconstitution  of  some  kind  of  civil  order  in  Eu 
rope,  Fredborg  hasn't  much  to  tell  us.  He  think 
Bruening,  the  last  democratic  chancellor  of  Ger 
many,  is  the  main  hope  for  those  who  are  looking 
for  a  1944  version  of  Talleyrand. 

Putting  Vansittart,  Baldwin,  and  Fredborg  to- 
gether, what  becomes  of  the  theory  that  the  struggle 
between  England  and  Germany  is  something  di- 
rectly  comparable    to    the   old    war-to-the-death 
between  Rome  and  Carthage?     Baldwin's  analy- 
sis of  English  traits  tends  to  cut  the  ground  froi 
under  the  theory  that  Britain  would  stick  by 
Draconian    peace.     And    Vansittart    himself    isSli 
forced  to  hope  that  Germans  can  become  good 
"Europeans."     But  the  real  reason  why  the  Rome- 
Carthage  analogy  doesn't  hold  water  is  to  be  found 
in  Fredborg's  book.     Behind  Carthage  there  was 
nothing  much  besides  desert;  Rome  could  blot  out 
the  Carthaginian  culture  without  creating  an  area 
of  dangerous  suction,  for  there  was  nothing  on  the 
other  side  of  Carthage   to  flow  into   an   empty  V 
space.     Such  is  not  the  case  with  Germany.     If^ 
the  Germans  can't  somehow  be  returned  to  the  i 
comity  of  Europe  as  a  free  nation,  the  German  ' 
space  might  become  a  battleground  between  east- 
ern and  western  ideas.  A  hopelessly  weak  Germany  ' 
is  necessarily  a  biddable  Germany.     Our  problem 
is  to  get  rid  of  the  Nazis  and  German  "Leviathan 
worship"   without  creating  a  dangerous  suction 
area  in  the  middle  of  Europe.     I  don't  know  how 
that  is  to  be  done,  unless  Germany  is  to  be  quaran- 
tined and  allowed  to  work  out  its  own  solution. 
But  I  do  know  that  Vansittart  hasn't  got  the  answer 
in  his  "reform  school"  proposition. 


The  most  amazing  publishing  phenomenon  of 
1943  was  a  book  called  Plowman's  Folly,  by  Ed- 
ward H.  Faulkner  (University  of  Oklahoma  Press, 
$2).  Primarily  an  attack  on  the  use  of  the  mold- 
board  plow,  which  Mr.  Faulkner  insists  is  a  soil- 
ruining  implement,  this  little  book  had  sold  30,000 
copies  up  to  December,  and  on  Christmas  Day  there 
were  13,000  unfilled  orders  waiting  on  the  desk  of 
the  Oklahoma  Press  shipping  room.  The  only 
theory  that  can  account  for  such  a  sale  is  that 
people  expect  a  bad  recession  after  the  war,  and  are 
planning  to  get  out  from  under  by  going  back  to  the 
land.  A  good  deal  of  factory-earned  money  is 
now  going  into  country  real  estate,  and  into  the 
liquidation  of  mortgages.  But  how  much?  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know. 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


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II¥    BRIEF  I 

By  Katherine  Gauss  Jackson 

Fiction 

Winter  Wheat,  by  Mildred  Walker.  I 

The  author  of  Dr.  Morton's  Wife  and  The  Brewers] 
Big  Horses  writes  a  story  of  lost  faith  regainec 
through  the  healing  influence  of  growing  things! 
Mrs.  Walker  tells  of  Ellen  Webb's  Hfe  on  a  Mon- 
tana  farm;  the  growing  of  the  wheat;  the  pride  inj 
its  beauty;  the  affection  of  the  family  life;  and^' 
then  the  sudden  change  of  values  that  comes  into 
her  life  when  she  falls  in  love.  Most  of  the  book 
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ception of  the  things  she  really  loves.  An  im- 
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The  Two  Mrs.  Abbotts,  by  D.  E.  Stevenson. 

Another  of  those  indescribable  Buncle  books 
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Stevenson,  like  Angela  Thirkell,  takes  life  in  a 
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Farrar  &  Rinehart,  $2.50 
The  Golden  Fleece,  by  Norah  Lofts. 

Norah  Lofts  is  a  facile  teller  of  exciting  tales 
about  other  eras  than  our  own.  There  is  always 
romance  and  adventure  going  at  express  speed,  and 
excellent  characterization.  This  story  centering 
in  an  old  EngUsh  inn  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century  is  another  absorbing  journey  into  the  past. 

Knopf,  $2.50 
The  Shadow  and  the  Glory,  by  John  Jennings. 

Young  men  under  twenty  going  off  to  fight  for  a 
"cause"  and  falling  in  love  along  the  way  are  al- 
ways faced  with  mental  and  moral  problems  which 
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vital,  lively  story  of  the  American  Revolution 
treats  those  important  problems  with  dignity  and 
understanding.  Reynal  &  Hitchcock,  $2.75 

Avalanche,  by  Kay  Boyle. 

Forsaking  none  of  her  fine  writing,  Kay  Boyle 
writes  a  spy  and  love  thriller  which  can  hold 
its  own  in  the  best  tradition  of  Escape  and  Above 
Suspicion.  Simon  &  Schuster,  $2 

Non- Fiction 

A  Pictorial  History  of  the  Movies,  edited    by 
Deems  Taylor. 

One  of  those  wonderfully  nostalgic  books  which 
reviews  not  only  the  movie  industry  but  every 
reader's  past  as  well.  Where  were  you  and  what 
were  your  preoccupations  when  Mary  Pickford  was 
playing  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,  when  Lillian  Gish  was 
in  The  Birth  of  a  Nation,  when  Charlie  Chaplin  was 
doing  Mack  Sennett  comedies  and  Rudolf  Valen- 
tino was  everybody's  sheik?  An  interesting  record 
and  good  fun  too.  Simon  &  Schuster,  $3.95 


i 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


Five  days  out 

of  one  man's 

life  —  one  of 

the  strangest, 

most  remarkable 

narratives 

ever  w^ritten 


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JACKSON 


AN  extraordinary  piece  of 
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author  of  this  extraordinary 
novel  on  the  secret  passage- 
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tality has  taken  clinical  ex- 
perience and  raised  it  to  the 
level  of  high  poetry.  From 
the  opening  lines  the  reader 
is  caught  up  in  the  power 
and  sweep  of  the  prose, 
which  flows  along  relent- 
lessly to  high  doom  with 
the  surge  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution. As  in  a  detective 
Story,  one  reads  breathlessly 
to  find  how  it  is  all  going  to 
turn  out.'*  $2.50 


\s  it  true  that 

''the  only  good  German 

is  a  dead  German''? 

Who  is  right  —  VANSITTART 
and  others  who  believe  that  Ger- 
many is  incurable  and  should  be 
smashed  forever;  or  HAGEN, 
who  believes  the  peace  of  Europe 
depends  on  a  democratic,self-sup- 
porting  Germany  after  the  War.^ 

THIS  BOOK  MUST  BE  READ  NOW  - 
BEFORE  GERMANY  IS  BEATEN  .  .   . 

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■*^t-"t  ^v». 


^>»  >;-.-v--""\. •  v;,-*5 


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THIS  book  answers  the  questions  that  only  a  man 
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labor  movement  completely  broken  up.**  When  Allied 
soldiers  enter  Berlin,  with  whom  will  they  deal.**  Is  a 
thoroughgoing  democratic  revolution  in  Germany 
possible  1  Who  will  be  its  leaders  ?  Has  the  church  kept 
the  traditions  of  democracy  alive?  Have  the  Nazis 
failed  to  indoctrinate  German  youth?  Is  Moscow's 
*Tree  Germany"  movement  a  threat  to  Britain  and 
America? 

These  are  questions  that  must  be  faced  by  everyone 
who  considers  the  various  plans  for  ''dealing  with*' 
Germany  after  victory.  Hagen's  answers  to  Vansittart 
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The  volume  is  uniform  in  tvpography 
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HARPER 


Good  Night  Sweet  Prince,  by  G^ne  Fowler. 

Another  book  about  an  actor  who  was  so  well 
known  to  the  American  public  that  reading  about 
his  life  is  a  remembrance  of  things  past  for  the  reader 
too.  But  the  emphasis  in  the  book  is  more  on 
Barrymore  the  man  than  on  Barrymore  the  artist, 
since  Mr.  Fowler  was  a  personal  friend  and  cares 
more  about  the  story  of  his  life  than  the  story  of  his 
art,  if  the  t\vo  can  be  separated  so  definitely. 

Viking,  S3.50 
Persons  and  Places:  The  Background  of  My 
Life,  by  George  Santayana. 

The  first  volume  of  the  distinguished  philoso- 
pher's autobiography  in  which  he  tells  of  his  early 
life  in  Spain,  in  Boston,  as  a  young  man  and  a  stu- 
dent. It  ends  just  after  his  graduation  from 
Harvard  and  the  second  volume  will  go  on  from 
there.  Scribners,  S2.50 

They  Sent  Me  to  Iceland,  by  Jane  Goodell. 

A  cheerful  story  by  one  of  the  courageous  and 
uncomplaining  entertainers  whose  job  it  is  to  help 
men  fight  the  hardest  battle  of  the  war,  the  battle 
of  nen/es.  And  Iceland  is  one  of  the  places  where 
it  is  being  fought  hard.  Washburn,  S2.75 

Rise  To  Follow,  by  Albert  Spalding. 

A  charming  life  story  by  a  man  who  is  an  able 
writer  as  well  as  a  talented  musician.  Part  of 
the  book  appeared  in  this  magazine. 

Holt,  $3.50 
Germany  After  the  War,  by  Paul  Hagen. 

What  we  shall  do  with  Germany  after  the  war  is 
one  of  the  largest  questions  we  have  to  face  today. 
Thousands  of  words  have  been  written  and  spoken 
about  it,  and  now  two  books  have  been  published 
which  state  tvvo  opposing  philosophies  fairly  clearly. 
Vansittart's  book.  Lessons  of  My  Life,  reviewed 
above  by  John  Chamberlain,  suggests  the  reform 
school  method  of  dealing  with  the  Germans. 
This  book,  by  a  German  who  fought  Hitler  from 
the  very  beginning,  insists  that  the  only  way  out 
for  Germany  as  well  as  for  us  is  a  democratic 
revolution  there,  supported  by  the  Allies.  It  deals 
with  a  subject  we  are  all  going  to  have  to  make  up 
our  minds  about.  Farrar  &  Rinehart,  S2 

Tales  of  the  Tatras,  by  Kazimierz  Przer^va  Tet- 
majer.     Foreword  by  Carl  Carmer. 

A  Polish  poet  starved  and  froze  to  death  in  War- 
saw under  the  Germans.  But  before  he  died  he 
had  written  down  such  beautiful,  simple,  ageless 
stories  of  the  people  who  live  in  the  Carpathians 
that  now,  gathered  in  one  book,  they  are  a  weapon 
in  the  hands  of  those  who  will  ultimately  destroy 
Hitler.  They  say  plainly,  as  Mr.  Carmer  has 
pointed  out  in  his  foreword,  that  wherever  men 
live  close  to  nature  and  to  beauty,  there  are  the 
same  life-giving  things  of  the  spirit  binding  them 
together  with  bonds  that  are  stronger  than  war  or 
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lustrated. Roy,  $2.50 


Books  Are  W^eapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


(OR  A 


-M 


/Awarded   .he  Thomas  Jefferson 

/s:retdCB::tof.he.Mo„.haub. 

reviews  in  tne  ^^-        ,  w .views,  itwas 
amounts  ever  paid. 


all  over  the  country). 
.Book  and  author  featured  in  5  pages 

of  LIFE  Magazine. 


Illustrated  by 

,V4AS   BENTON 

hTsiege 

ilENIHGRAD 

y  Boris  Skomorovsky 
and  E.  G.  Morris 


Journal   for    one   oi    —    —  Goldwyn-iviayci  .v..  .^w      ^ 

TAPS  FOR  PRIVATE  TU^ 

.,,!  „e  enchon.-.ns  s.o^y,  ie«e  S.uar.  shows  h.rnse^    -  .  ^^^^  STUART'S 

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The  Autobiography 
of  a  Dog 


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IHA  AGAINST 
HE  STORM 


By  Post  Wheeler 


Written  by  an  authority  who  knows 
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plex problem  —  a  book  which  guides 
the  intelligent  reader  to  make  up  his 
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lOSSIA  mi  the 

IIITED  STATES 

By  Pitirim  A.  Sorokin 

•  lor  of  'The  Crisis  of  Our  Age" 


The  Chairman  of  the  Department  of 
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Russian  by  birth,  contributes  a  pro- 
foundly thoughtful  book  on  one  of 
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IE  VATICAN 

mil  tkt  WAR 

iy  Ccmille  M.  Cionfarra 


Catholics  and  Protestants  alike  have 
been  puzzled  as  to  the  stand  of  the 
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our  time.  Here  is  a  brilliant  appraisal 
by  the  man  who  was  the  N.  Y.  Times 
correspondent  in  Italy  from  1935  to 
1942  $3.00 


IE  MOUNTAIN 

'By  Alice  Bed  Parsons 

'     of  "The  Trial  of  Helen  McLeod" 


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flHG  f/>e  BIG 
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iy  John  Pleasant  McCoy 


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UDEN  APPLES 
OF  THE  SUN 


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Illustrated  by 
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SELLING 

FASTER     < 

THAN  EVER  | 

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is  an  important— a  very  impor- 
tant—book." 

—Chicago  Daily  Sews 

UNDER 
COVER 

by  JOHN  ROY  CARLSON 

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EDWARD  HAVILL 
THE  LOW  ROAD 

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MARTIN  FLAVIN 

JOURNEY  IN  THE  DARK 

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Tribune, 


\ii 


A  Literary  Guild  Selection 

I.  V.  MORRIS 

LIBERTY  STREET 


Here  is  a  spirited  and  moving  romance,  peopled  with 
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real  and  human  characters  in  a  world  of  amusing  and 
tragic  events.  $2.50 

How  a  Hollander  Became 
an  American 

DAVID  CORNEL 
DeJONG 

WITH  A  DUTCH  ACCENT 

The  author  of  Old  Haven  describes 
his  Dutch  home  and  his  plunge  into  the  American 
melting  pot.  The  beauty  and  sincerity  of  the  writing 
make  this  a  classic  among  the  many  autobiographies 
by  our  immigrants.  $2.75 


MONICA  DICKENS 

EDWARD'S  FANCY 

This  story  by  the  author  of  One  Pair  of  Hands  and  One 

Pair  of  Feet  is  populated  by  some  of  the  most  novel  and 

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plus  the  urgency  of  the  war  background  and 

the  charm  of  complete  escape, 

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A  TREE  GROW! 
IN  BROOKLYN 

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the  year,  in  my  enthusi- 
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Grows  in  Brooklyn^  thc^l 
heart-warming  story  oi 
Francie  Nolan  and  the 
Brooklyn  slums  which 
has  won  such  fabulous 
success."  —  Orville  Pres- 
cott,  N.  Y.  Times. 
"Crammed  with  univer- 
sal experience  and  its 
characters  encompass 
humanity." — Olga  Owens, 
Boston  Post.  $2.75 

SUSAN  ERTZ 

ANGER  IN  THE 
SKY 

This    brilliant    chronicle  ^ 
of  changing  England  - 
under  the  impact  of  total  ' 
war  tells  of  many  lives  '; 
bound   together  by  the  J 
turn  of  circumstanee.  j 
"It  is  a  book  full  of  en-  j  ' 
couragement   and   good-  ^ 
will  and  good  feeling,  and  jj 
full,  too,  of  acute  obser-   j 
vation   and  understand-    f 
ing   of  common   human    . 
emotions."  —   Saturday 
Review  of  Literature. 

$2.75   '■ 
i 

CLARENCE  ^ 

BUDINGTON 
KELLAND 

HEART  ON  HER 
SLEEVE 

A  hilarious  romance,     f 
charged  with  excitement, 
by  the  author  of  Scatter- 
good  Bains,  Archibald  the 
Great,  etc.  $2.50 


^fiJSiWWlri^S' 


SCH<2DLS 


*«^^WUV** 


NEW  YORK 


ESSENTIALLY  MILITARY  SCHOOLS 

Boys  can  learn  promptness,  obedience,  good  manners. 
The  Association  of  Military  Colleges  and  Schools  of  the  United 
Statss. 

Ask  for  free  booklet  listing  these  schools. 

Room  719,  210  So.  7th  St.,  Philadelphia  6,  Pa. 


EDGEWOOD  PARK 


Recognized  by  leading  colleges  and  universities.  Accredited 
college  preparatory.  Advanced  courses  in  cultural  and  fine  arts, 
secretarial  sc,  medical  ass't,  home  ec,  dramatics,  photography, 
costume  design,  int.  decoration  ,  merchandising,  kindergarten.  All 
sports — riding.     Pool,  lake,  golf.     Moderate  rates.     Catalog. 

Box  H,  Briarcliff  Manor.  N.  Y. 


CONNECTICUT 


SAINT  MARGARET'S  SCHOOL 

A  New  England  School  for  Girls,  emphasizing  preparation  for  the 
leading  colleges.  Also  general  course  with  music,  dramatics,  art, 
secretarial  work,  homemaking  courses.  Hockey,  riding,  tennis,  other 
sports.   Country  estate,  modern  fireproof  building.   Established  1865. 

Alberta  C.  Edell,  A.M.,  Box  H,  Waterbury,  Conn. 

A  CO-EDUCATIONAL  SCHOOL 

If  you  have  difficulty  in  making  a  suitable  selection  from  among 
the  large  number  of  schools  advertised  in  this  issue,  feel  perfectly  free 
to  write  us  for  information  and  suggestions,  giving  f ul  1  particulars. 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49E.  33rdSt..  N.  Y.  C. 


EDGEWOOD 

A  boarding  and  day  school  for  boys  and  girls  from  Nursery  School 
to  College.  Excellent  college  record.  Carefully  selected  faculty. 
Complete  workshops  for  Arts  and  Crafts.  Country  life.  Year- 
round  sports.  Training  School  for  teachers.  Twenty-acre  campus 
thirty  miles  from  New  York.     Write  for  catalogue.     Address 

The  Registrar,  Greenwich,  Conn. 

THE  FIRESIDE 

Boys  from  7  years  to  college  preparatory.  The  individualized 
life  and  activities  of  home,  farm,  classroom,  studio,  laboratory  and 
shop  are  planned  to  build  health,  scholarship,  character.  Have 
your  boy  learn  to  live  wholesomely,  thoughtfully  and  happily  while 
preparing  for  the  future. 

Leonid  V.  Tulpa,  Ed.M.  and  Mrs.  Tulpa,  Plainfield,  Conn. 


MASSACHUSEHS 


BERKSHIRE  SCHOOL 

Enroll  now  for  term  beginning  Feb.  28.  Four-term  year  helps  boys 
obtain  diploma  before  draft  age.  College  prep.  Also  8th  grade. 
Navigation,  meteorology,  radio  and  communications,  military  science. 
Aviation  ground  course,  actual  flight  training  under  C. A  .A.  9  planes, 
3  licensed  instructors.    38th  year.    Write  for  information. 

Delano  de  Windt,  Headmaster,         Box  A,  Sheffield,  Mass. 

THE  DANA  HALL  SCHOOLS 

TENACRE— DANA  HALL— PINE  MANOR  JR.  COLLEGE. 

Tenacre  and  Dana  Hall  offer  girls  a  continuous  education  from 
Primary  through  High  School.  College  Preparatory  and  General 
Courses.  Pine  Manor  Junior  College  fully  accredited:  Liberal  and 
Fine  Arts,  Homemaking. 

Helen  Temple  Cooke,  Head,  Box  P,  Wellesley,  Mass. 

A  JUNIOR  COLLEGE 

The  facilities  of  our  School  Information  Bureau  are  at  your  com- 
mand for  any  additional  assistance  you  may  require  in  selecting  the 
school  best  suited  to  your  demands.     Address 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49  E.  33rd  St.,  N.  Y.  C. 


NORTHAMPTON  SCHOOL  FOR  GIRLS 

Years  of  experience  in  college  preparation.  School  life  in  tune 
with  times.  Warwork  program,  physical  fitness, high  academicstand- 
ards  emphasized.  For  Catalogue  and  Booklet,  Entrance  Require- 
ments of  the  Major  Colleges  for  Women,  address  either 

Dorothy  M.  Bement,  Sarah  B.  Whitaker,  Principals, 

Box  H,  Northampton,  Mass. 

MARY  A.  BURNHAM  SCHOOL  ~ 

Facing  Smith  College  campus.  Accredited  college  preparation 
and  general  course.  Exceptional  work  in  music,  art.  Advanced 
courses,  drama,  secretarial.  Riding,  all  sports  Also  Junior  School. 
Train  service.     65th  yr.     Catalogue  on  request. 

Mrs.  Geo.  W.  Emerson,  Box  43, 

Northampton,  Mass. 

ABBOT  ACADEMY 

1829-1944.  For  girls.  College  Preparatory:  Fine  and  Practical 
Arts  Courses.  For  the  Duration:  Continued  emphasis  on  Funda- 
mentals, with  Special  Training  for  Physical  Fitness  and  for  War 
Service  Activities.  Spacious  campus  in  beautiful  New  England 
town.     All  sports.     Convenient  railroad  facilities.     Catalogue. 

Marguerite  H.  Hearsey,  Principal,  Andover,  Mass. 


MAINE 


WASSOOKEAG  SCHOOL 


A  year-round  school  since  1928.  Boys  13  to  18.  Three  academic 
years  beginning  July,  October,  and  February.  Accredited  summer 
school  established  1926.  The  summer  setting  for  summer  study  at 
the  School-Camp  on  Lake  Wassookeag  is  two  miles  from  the  winter 
campus. 

Lloyd  Harvey  Hatch,  Headmaster,  Dexter,  Maine. 


RHODE  ISLAND 


MOSES  BROWN  SCHOOL 

Help  and  inspiration  for  each  boy,  a  century-old  tradition.  Known 
for  successful  college  preparation.  Arts  and  crafts  hobbies.  Secluded 
30-acre  campus.  Moderate  tuition.  Belmont,  separate  residence  for 
younger  boys.  Home  care.  Sanely  progressive  methods  of  instruction. 

L.  Ralston  Thomas,  Headmaster,  ^  ^    , 

261  Hope  Street,  Providence,  R.  I. 


OAK  GROVE 

A  Friends  School  for  Girls.  Emphasizes  Preparation  for  College 
and  Gracious,  Purposeful  Living.  Music,  Art,  Expression.  Upper 
and  Lower  Schools.  Junior  College  Secretarial  Science.  Joyous  out- 
door recreation.  Winter  Sports  featured.  Riding  included.  Beau- 
tiful new  fireproof  Dormitories  and  Recitation  Buildings.  . 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Owen,        Box  120,  Vassalboro,  Mame. 


NEW  HAMPSHIRE 


HIGH  MOWING  SCHOOL 

Purposeful  school  life  directed  by  qualified  and  experienced  faculty. 
College  preparatory  and  general  courses ;  fifth  through  eighth  grades. 
Country  and  farm  activities,  winter  sports,  outdoor  swimming  pool. 
Coeducational.  ...  -^  « 

Mrs.  Beulah  H  .  Emmet  ,  Principal,  Wilton,  N  .  tl. 


When  writing  to  schools  please  mention  Harper's  Magazine 


SCHOOLS    AND   COLLEGES 


PENNSYLVANIA 


VALLEY  FORGE  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

In  present  emergency  your  boy  trained  for  Civil  and  Military 
leadership.  Ages  12  to  18.  All  modern  fireproof  buildings.  Small 
individualized  classes.  All  sports.  Motorized  Field  Artillery. 
Infantry,  Cavalry,  Sr.  ROTC.  Band.  Highest  Government  rating. 
Catalog.  ■  * 

Box  L,  Wayne,  Pa. 


MARYLAND 


MARYLAND  COLLEGE  FOR  WOMEN 

A.B.,  B.S.,  Degrees  and  Certificates  Liberal  Arts,  Merchandis- 
ing, Home  Economics,  Music,  Secretarial,  Kindergarten  Training. 
War  Courses,  Riding,  Sports.  Rural  seclusion  10  miles  from  Balti- 
more.    Non-sectarian.     Established  1853.     Catalog. 

Box  H-2,  LUTHERVILLE,  Md. 


WELL-ROUNDED  EDUCATION 

NEEDED  FOR  POST-WAR  LEADERSHIP 

NOT  YOU,  but  your  sons  and  daughters  must  build  the 
world  of  tomorrow  and  preserve  its  peace  and  prosperity. 

Their  leadership,  their  resourcefulness,  their  mental  and 
spiritual  stability  depends  upon  the  kind  of  education  you  give 
them  today. 

Our  young  men  and  women  are  fighting  today's  battles  — 
your  boys  and  girls  must  preserve  what  their  sacrifices  have  won. 

The  complete,  well-rounded  education  provided  by  the 
independent  schools  and  colleges  does  more  than  train  for 
today's  emergency  —  it  develops  the  leaders  for  tomorrow! 

THIS  STATEMENT  IS  SPONSORED  BY  A  GROUP  OF 
50  SCHOOLS  AND   COLLEGES 

Educational  Guide  will  be  mailed  free  if  you  address 
Harper's  School  Bureau,  49  E.  33rd  St.,  N.  Y.  16 


WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


LANDON  SCHOOL 

For  boys.  Strict  college  preparation.  Small  study  groups. 
Experienced  masters.  Limited  enrolment.  Student  government 
and  honor  system  develop  initiative,  self-reliance.  Country  day 
plan  and  boarding.  Separate  buildings  and  grounds  for  lower 
school.     Sports  for  all.     Riding.     Catalog. 

Albert  E.  Rogers,  A.M., 

Box  H,  Edgemoor,  Washington  14,  D.  C. 


A  SCHOOL  AT  THE  CAPITAL 

If  you  have  difficulty  in  making  a  suitable  selection  from  amon 
the  large  number  of  schools  advertised  in  this  issue,  feel  perfectly  fr€ 
to  write  us  for  information  and  suggestions,  giving  full  particulars. 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49  E.  33rd  St.,  N.  Y.  C. 


VIRGINIA 


STAUNTON  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

Distinguished  for  excellent  academic,  military 
and  athletic  training.  Beautiful  location  in  historic 
Shenandoah  Valley  of  Virginia.  High  altitude,  un- 
excelled health  record.  Liberal  course  for  cadets 
not  entering  college.  Modern,  fireproof  buildings, 
two  gymnasiums  and  modern  swimming  pool. 
R.O.T.C.  Unit  has  highest  War  Dept.  rating.  Sep- 
arate Junior  School.  Visitors  cordially  welcomed. 
For  illustrated  catalogue  address: 

Superintendent, 

Box  H-2,  Staunton,  Va. 


FORK  UNION  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

Highest  rating.  Small  classes.  Accredited.  R.O.T.C.  Super 
vised  study.  Prepares  for  college  or  business.  Highest  standards 
Juniorschoolfor  small  boys.  Housemother.  All  athletics.  Swim, 
ming.     Twenty -seven  states  represented .     Catalog. 

Dr.  J.  J.  Wicker. 

Box  8,  Fork  Union,  Va. 


A  SCHOOL  OF  MUSIC 

The  facilities  of  our  School  Information  Bureau  are  at  your  com- 
mand for  any  additional  assistance  you  may  require  in  selecting  th< 
school  best  suited  to  your  dexnands.     Address 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine,  J 

49  E.  33rd  St..N.  Y.C. 


GEORGIA 


GEORGIA  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

Located  8  miles  from  Atlanta.     Many  cultural  advantages. 

Winter  and  Summer  School.  Prep  School  —  Junior  College  — 
Separate  Junior  School  —  R.  O.  T.  C.  —  War  Courses.  Accredited. 
Moderate  rates.     Write  for  catalog  to 

Col.  W.  C.  Brewster,  Pres.,  College  Park,  Ga. 


RIVERSIDE  MILITARY  ACADEMY 


Distinguished  preparatory  school.   Highest  official  R.O.T.C.  rating. 
Optional  accelerated  program.'    Junior  College.     All  athletics.     Sep- 
'        '       ''  '  Total  expense  $1094.     Catalog: 

Box  H-2,  Gainesville,  Ga. 


arate  school  for  younger  boys. 
Gen.  Sandy  Beaver,  Pres. 


MISSISSIPPI 


WHITWORTH  COLLEGE 

Preparatory  and  Junior  College,  Liberal  and  Fine  Arts,  Dramatic 
Art,  Music,  Secretarial  Science,  Home  Economics,  Color  and  Design. 
An  exceptional  two  year  course  in  Journalism,  Physical  Education, 
Sports,  Golf,  Riding,  Camping,  Swimming. 

Attractive  well  located  campus. 

Exiucational  tours  and  field  trips  included  in  rate  of  $650. 

For  catalogue  address 

Sinclair  Daniel,  Pres., 

Box  229,  Brookhaven,  Miss. 


SCHOOLS  AND  COLLEGES 

will  find  by  comparison  that  Harper's  Magazine,  because  of  its 
high  character  and  universal  circulation  among  people  of  refinement, 
intelligence,  and  wealth,  is  the  avenue  of  surest  appeal  to  a  most  '- 
desirable  clientele.     Since  the  beginning,  private  schools  have  sought 
the  columns  of  Harper's  Magazine.     No  other  periodical  has  been 
used  so  extensively  and  probably  no  one  factor  has  been  so  helpful  ~ 
in  furthering  the  interests  of  the  private  schools.     For  advertising  ^ 
rates  and  further  information,  address 

Harper's  Mag.\zine,  49  E.  33rd  St.,  New  York,  N.  Y. 


FLORIDA 


THE  CASEMENTS 


Junior  College  or  Preparatory  Courses,  credits  transferable.  Girls 
may  spend  fall  and  spring  in  Washington,  D.  C,  at  Fairmont.  Lib- 
eral and  fine  arts,  domestic  arts,  social  service,  radio,  dramatics, 
music,  merchandising,  secretarial.  Private  beach,  golf,  riding. 
Catalog. 

Maud  van  Woy,  A.B.,  President.  Box  H,  Ormond  Beach,  Fla. 

THE  BOLLES  SCHOOL 

On  St.  Johns  River.  Accredited.  Prepares  for  college  and 
Government  Academies.  5th-12th  grades.  Fireproof  dormitory. 
Gymnasium.  Military  training.  Honor  Naval  School.  Fall  term 
begins  September  11.  Summer  term  begins  June  12.  For  catalog, 
address: 

Col.  Roger  H.  Painter,  Pres.,  Jacksonville,  Fla. 

FLORIDA  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

R.O.T.C.     Fully  accredited.     Separate  Junior  School.     Recrea- 
tion center  on  Gulf  of  Mexico.     Limited  enrollment. 
Col.  Walter  B.  Mendels,  Pres., 

Box  7,  St.  Petersburg,  Fla. 


FLORIDA  SOUTHERN 


Accredited  liberal  arts  college.  Co-educational.  Lo- 
cated in  healthful  ridge  section.  Frank  Lloyd  Wright 
buildings.  Excellent  facilities.  Distinguished  faculty. 
Personal  guidance.  Quarter  system.  A.B.,  B.S.  de- 
grees.    Art,  Music,  Business.     Write 

Dr.  L.  M.  Spivey,  President,  Lakbland,  Fla. 


ST.  JOSEPH  ACADEMY 

Florida's  School  for  Girls.  Located  in  the  Ancient  City  of  Saint 
Augustine.  Resident  school  pre-primer  through  12th  grade.  Special 
Commercial — Music — Art  and  Home  Economics  Courses.  Spacious 
grounds — outdoor  pool — tennis — basketball  and  badminton  courts. 
Fully  accredited.     Address 

The  Directress,  St.  Augustine,  Fla. 

BARRY  COLLEGE 

A  Catholic  College  for  Women,  conducted  by  the  Sisters  of  St. 
Dominic — Bachelor  degrees  in  the  Arts,  Science,  Philosophy,  Music, 
Teacher  Training,  Commercial  Education,  Home  Economics. 
Two-year  Terminal  Course  in  Secretarial  Work.  Spacious  campus 
—  outdoor  swimming  pool — tennis.  Moderate  marine  climate. 
Ideal  location.  Miami,  Fla. 


When  writing  to  schools  please  mention  Harper^ s  Magazine 


SCHOOLS   AND    COLLEGES 


INDIANA 


ULVER 


iQuipmciit. 


MILITARY  ACADEMY 

On  Lakt'  Maxiiikiickcc.  I'r(i)arc:3  for  leading 
collcKt's:in<lrfsi)<)iisil)Ici  itizciiship.  High  scho- 
lastic HtandardH.  Senior  R.O.T.C.  units  — 
Artillory.  Cavalry,  Infantry,  Band,  Motorized 
Exceptional  facilities.     Catalog. 

26  IVrshinn  I'lacc,  CuLViiR,  Ind. 


HOWE  MILITARY  SCHOOL 

]'/.p''M"K  young  Ameri<aiifl  for  leadership  in  war  and  peace. 
R.0. 1  .C.  Accredited  college  i^reijaratory,  Inininess courses.  Junior 
school — separate  faculty.  Small  classes  —  sound  instruction. 
Supervised  extra-curricular  activities,  sports,  hobbies  Episcopal. 
Est.  1884.     New  term  begins  Jan.  31.     Write  for  catalog . 

BuRRETT  B.  liouTON,  M.A.,  824  Acarlemy  PI.,  Howe,  Ind. 


ILLINOIS 


AORGAN  PARK  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

Four-year  U.  S.  Army  Reserve  OfTicer  training  program.  Superior 
I jpreparatory  course.  Fully  accredited.  Small  classes.  Strong  fac- 
lulty.  Usually  85%  of  graduates  go  to  leading  colleges.  All  sports. 
MjGym.     Near  Chicago's  cultural  advantages. 

71st  year.     Lower,  Junior  Schools  also.     Catalog. 

Box  H-24,  Morgan  Park,  111. 


(S 


WISCONSIN 


1ST.  JOHN'S  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

For  almost  60  years  St.  John's  has  been  training  boys  to  make 
wise  choices  in  life.  Thorough  instruction,  plenty  of  good  times. 
Accredited  preparation  for  college.  Inspiring  military  discipline  de- 
velops self-confidence,  leadership.  All  sports,  rowing,  riding.  Golf 
course.     Beautiful  lakeside  location.     Catalog. 

1224  De  Koven  Hall,  Delafield,  Wis. 


WESTERN  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

Distinguished  military  records  of  alumni  in  service  prove  value  of 
training  at  Western.  Daily  routine  develops  initiative  and  strong 
purpose.  Prepares  boys  successfully  for  meeting  responsibilities. 
Government-approved  officers'  military  training.  Fireproof  bar- 
racks.    Complete  athletic,  social  program.     66th  year.     Catalog. 

Col.  R.  L.  Jackson,  Pres.,  Box  H-2,  Alton,  111.  (near  St.  Louis) 


MICHIGAN 


CRANBROOK  SCHOOL 


Boys'  preparatory  school  distinguished  for  scholastic  standards, 
outstanding  campus,  buildings,  facilities.  Excellent  faculty,  small 
classes.  Prepares  for  all  colleges.  Exceptional  work  in  fine  and 
industrial  arts,  music,  sciences.  Broad  athletic  program.  Fire- 
resisting  dormitories.  Grades  7  thru  12.  Summer  session. 
The  Registrar,  5191  Lone  Pine  Road,  Bloomfield  Hills,  Mich. 


OHIO 


A  JUNIOR  COLLEGE 

The  facilities  of  our  School  Information  Bureau  are  at  your  com- 
mand for  any  additional  assistance  you  may  require  in  selecting  the 
school  best  suited  to  your  demands.     Address 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49  E.  33rd  St.,  N.  Y.  C. 


LAUREL  SCHOOL 

Thorough  College  Preparation  and  General  Courses  for  girls. 
Separate  unit  for  Juniors.  Emphasis  on  Art,  Music,  Dramatics  and 
Athletics.  In  the  residential  section  of  Cleveland  with  modern 
buildings  and  fifteen  acres  for  all  sports.  Homelike  atmosphere  in 
a  small  group.     Catalogue. 

Edna  F.  Lake,  Headmistress,      Lyman  Circle,  Cleveland,  Q. 


MISSOURI 


LINDENWOOD  COLLEGE 

For   women.     Confers   A.B.,    B.S.,    B.M.   degrees.     Accredited. 

Also  2-year  Junior  College  (A. A.  degree) .  Modernized  curriculum 
prepares  students  for  successful  home-making,  and  for  leadership  in 
dvicand  sociallife.  Physical  Education,  Secretarial,  Teacher  Train- 
ing.   Music.    Art.    Sports.    Near  St.  Louis.    118th  year.    Catalog. 

Harry  Morehouse  Gage,  Pres.,    Box  644,  St.  Charles,  Mo. 


KEMPER  MILITARY  SCHOOL 

One  of  America's  Most  Distinguished  Military  SchOOla. 
High  School  and  Junior  College.     100th  Year. 
Write  for  Catalog  and  View  Book. 
Col.  A.  M.  Hitch, 

424  Third  St..  BOONVILLE,  Mo. 


CALIFORNIA 


A  MILITARY  ACADEMY 

If  you  have  difficulty  in  making  a  suitable  selection  from  among 
thelarge  number  of  schools  advertised  in  this  issue,  feel  perfectly  free 
to  write  us  for  information  and  suggestions,  giving  full  particulars. 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49  E.  33rdSt.,  N.  Y.C. 


ANNA  HEAD  SCHOOL  FOR  GIRLS 

Est.  1887.  College  Preparatory.  General  Post  Graduate  Courses. 
Accredited  —  East  and  West.  Lower  School.  Outdoor  life  the 
year  round.  Tennis.  Swimming.  Hockey.  Riding.  A  homelike 
school  in  a  college  town.  Week-end  camping  on  25  acre  ranch  in' 
Santa  Cruz  Mts.     Write  for  Catalogue. 

T.  R.  Hyde,  M.A.  and  Lea  G.  Hyde,  B.A., 

2526  Channing  Way,  Berkeley,  Calif. 


SPECIAL  SCHOOLS 


A  SPECIAL  SCHOOL 


The  facilities  of  our  School  Information  Bureau  are  at  your  com- 
mand for  any  additional  assistance  you  may  require  in  selecting  the 
school  best  suited  to  your  demands.     Address 

School  Information  Bureau,  Harper's  Magazine, 

49  E.  33rd  St.,  N.  Y.C. 


PERKINS  SCHOOL 

A  year  round  special  school  for  the  Scientific  Study  and  Education 
of  children  of  retarded  development.  Constant,  sympathetic  super- 
vision. Individual  training.  Five  homelike,  attractive  buildings. 
80  acres  of  campus  and  gardens. 

Franklin  H.  Perkins,  M.D.,  Dir.,  Box  11,  Lancaster,  Mass. 


CAMPS  AND  SUMMER  SCHOOLS 


ik 


MOSS  LAKE  CAMP 

Daily  Riding.  Excellent  Sailing.  All  land  and  water 
sports.  Staff  of  nationally  known  experts.  All-inclusive 
fee.  Adirondack  lake  and  preserve  devoted  exclusively 
to  our  conception  of  an  ideal  girls'  camp.  Affiliated  camp 
for  brothers  3  miles.     Six  hours  to  New  York  or  Buffalo. 

Dr.  G.  S.  LoNGSTAFF,  8932  Clinton  Ave.,  Jamaica,  L.I . 


A  SUMMER  CAMP 


For  your  boy  or  girl?  If  you  are  planning  to  send  your  boy  or 
girl  to  a  camp  this  summer,  we  would  commend  for  your  considera- 
tion the  announcements  that  appear  in  the  Summer  Camp  Section 
of  this  issue.  The  facilities  of  our  School  Information  Bureau  are 
also  at  your  command  for  any  additional  assistance  you  may  require 
in  selecting  the  summer  camp  best  suited  to  your  demands. 

Address  School  Information  Bureau, 

Harper's  Magazine,  49  E.  33rd  St.,  Nkw  Yore,  N.  Y. 


ADMIRAL  FARRAGUT  NAVAL  CAMP 

Boys  10-17.  July  5  to  August  25  on  Toms  River.  Naval  train- 
ing, land  and  water  sports.  Academic  programs  available.  64 
boats,  2  gyms,  2  athletic  fields.  Utilizes  winter  school  facilities. 
Limited  enrolment  —  early  application  very  advisable.       Catalog. 

Admiral  S.  S.  RoBisoN,  U.S.N.  (Ret.),  Supt., 

Box  M,  Pine  Beach,  N.  J. 


ULVER^ 


SUMMER  SCHOOLS 

On  Lake  Maxinkuckee.    A  boy's  ideal  vacation 
at  moderate  cost.    Emphasis  on  correct  posture, 
courtesy, initiative, character.  Three  camps:  Naval 
or  Cavalry  (boys  14-17) ;  Woodcraft  (boys  9-14) . 
1000-acre  campus,  all  land  and  water  sports     Specify  catalog  desired. 
26  Lake  Shore  Place,  Culver,  Ind. 


A  NEW  RESOURCE 


HAS  BEEN  DEVELOPED 


The  wealth  of  America  has 
been  wrought  from  her  natural 
resources  of  fertile  lands,  wide 
forests  and  rich  mineral  deposits 
by  the  brains  and  muscles  of 
her  people. 

But  another  resource  is  now 
available.  A  new  source  of 
wealth  and  well-being  has  been 
developing  gradually  and  al- 
most unnoticed  which  is 
tremendously  important  today 
and  of  still  greater  importance 
for  tomorrow. 

This  new  resource  is  the  re- 
search laboratory. 

Today,  in  hundreds  of  indus- 
trial and  college  laboratories, 
trained  minds  are  expanding 
the  world's  knowledge,  and 
applying  the  results  of  research 
to  industry  and  to  war. 

In  the  Bell  System,  research 
has  always  been  a  fundamental 
activity.  The  telephone  was  in- 


vented in  a  research  laboratory'. 
And  for  years  Bell  Telephone 
Laboratories  has  been  the 
largest  industrial  laboratory  in 
the  world. 

Underlying  modem  research 
is  the  realization  of  vast  latent 
values  in  nature.  Although  the 
lone  genius  does  from  time  to 
time  bring  to  light  some  part  of 
these  hidden  values,  only  organ- 
ized scientific  research  can  as- 
sure the  thorough  exploration 
that  will  render  the  full  mea- 
sure of  use  for  human  welfare. 

Research  means  imagining 
and  experimenting.  It  means 
the  searching  out  and  bringing 
together  of  facts.  It  means  clear 
statements  of  problems,  precise 
measurements  and  keen  analy- 
sis. It  means  tenacious  follow- 
ing along  unexpected  paths. 

These  are  the  procedures  of  re- 
search. Its  consummation  is  the 


grasping  by  subtle  minds  of  re- 
lationships in  nature  no  one  has 
previously  known.  And  on  the 
basis  of  the  broader  knowledge 
so  established  are  built  new 
materials,  new  methods  and 
new  structures  to  serve  the 
people  of  America. 

The  Bell  Telephone  Labora- 
tories has  now  concentrated  its 
efforts  on  communication  sys- 
tems and  equipment  for  the 
armed  forces.  When  the  war  is 
over  its  researches  in  com- 
munication will  again  be  ap- 
plied to  an  ever-improving 
telephone  service  in  America. 


1 


BELL  TELEPHONE  SYSTEM 


Harpers 


VOL  188     JVoll25     February  \9^\ 


PREFACE   TO   THE    PRESIDENT'S 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 


GEORGE    W.    MARTIN 


'HAT  everyone  wants  to  know  about 
the  President  is  how  he  got 
this  way.  For  there  are  no  stories 
of  infant  prowess  or  early  promise  that 
indicated  he  was  going  to  be  extra  special. 
He  spent  six  years  at  Groton;  and  one  of 
the  older  masters  artlessly  remarked,  "We 
didn't  think  he  was  so  much." 

He  went  to  Harvard  without  attract- 
ing any  particular  notice,  and  was  ex- 
ceedingly obscure  in  the  Columbia  Law 
School  and  later  in  the  law  offices  of  Car- 
ter, Ledyard  and  Milburn.  From  1882 
to  1910  anyone  who  knew  him  well  would 
have  said  that  he  was  an  endowed  and 
protected  young  man,  incapable  of  hard 
work,  and  unlikely  to  amount  to  anything. 
And  about  1910  he  must  have  come  to  the 
same  conclusion,  for  he  quit  further  pre- 
tense of  diligence:  he  resigned  from  Gar- 


ter, Ledyard  and  Milburn,  went  back  to 
Hyde  Park,  and  got  himself  elected  to  the 
State  Senate.  Thus  he  got  the  door  shut 
on  this  part  of  his  existence;  but  he  bore 
scars  of  his  experiences  for  many  years. 

He  was  an  only  child,  which  is  a  large 
misfortune  right  at  the  outset.  He  was 
a  delicate  boy,  which  is  a  tragedy  at  board- 
ing school.  Boys  are  important  among 
themselves  almost  in  direct  ratio  to  their 
athletic  ability,  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  was 
never  an  athlete.  Nor  was  he  a  scholar. 
He  had  the  soul  and  instincts  of  a  journal- 
ist; but  he  was  in  a  social  stratum  where 
one  must  be  ordinary,  industrious,  unread, 
and  inarticulate  or  else  be  branded  as  a 
smarty  or  a  show-off.  He  attempted  to 
conform  to  these  requirements,  but  the 
product  was  obviously  synthetic.  Cousin 
Theodore  regarded  him  as  a  Miss  Nancy, 


Copyright,  1944,  by  Harper  &  Brothers.    All  Rights  Reserved! 


194 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  the  Milburn  boys  didn't  even  know  he 
was  alive.  Everybody  called  him ' ' Frank- 
lin" and  regarded  him  as  a  harmless  bust. 

Now  that  was  what  he  was  up  against. 
He  had  spent  twenty-eight  years  trying  to 
be  an  Upper-class  Product,  and  he  was  a 
failure.  Furthermore,  he  was  aware  that 
he  never  was  going  to  be  able  to  do  it. 
The  industry  which  masters  infinite  details 
by  exceeding  diligence  was  the  method  of 
the  downtown  lawyers;  but  it  was  not  for 
him.  He  simply  could  not  do  it.  He 
didn't  want  to  do  it,  and  he  didn't  have 
to  do  it.  The  whole  business  was  fan- 
tastic. The  pontifical  vaporings  of  the 
very  great  were  insufferable.  The  con- 
versation of  the  idiot  stockbrokers,  the 
insensate  interest  in  money,  the  deliber- 
ately cultivated  illiteracy  of  the  Long 
Island  set,  and  the  complacency  of  the 
rich  made  no  sense.  These  things  might 
be  amusing  for  a  pachyderm  like  Cousin 
Theodore,  who  had  a  special  license  as  an 
enfant  terrible;  but  they  were  so  much 
dust  in  the  mouth  for  anyone  that  could 
get  off  and  look  at  them.  "Give  me  a 
place  to  stand  .  .  ."  said  Archimedes. 

By  accident,  or  through  cussedness,  or 
by  inheritance,  there  was  supplied  a  place 
to  stand  and  observe.  Mr.  Roosevelt 
was  a  Democrat:  an  attribute  exceedingly 
peculiar  and  important.  For  there  were 
almost  no  Democrats  in  those  days.  Mark 
Hanna  and  Cousin  Theodore  had  prac- 
tically exterminated  them.  When  Mr. 
Roosevelt  was  at  Groton  he  was  the  only 
Democrat  among  one  hundred  and  fifty 
boys.  A  gentleman  just  could  not  be  a 
Democrat.  A  lot  of  them  were;  but  not 
in  the  Union  Club,  not  on  Long  Island. 
There  was  a  popular  impression  that  the 
Democrats  were  all  Irish  or  Southerners; 
and  so  long  as  the  G.A.R.  pensions  held 
out  and  the  tariff  racket  continued  to  bleed 
the  consumers,  Republicanism  looked  like 
Gibraltar.  Their  sufferings  however  pro- 
duced a  camaraderie  among  the  Demo- 
crats which  was  pleasant  and  refreshing 
to  the  spirit,  and  undoubtedly  furnished 
to  Mr.  Roosevelt  the  strength  to  break 
his  bonds  and  start  in  1910  to  be  himself. 
The  Wall  Street  lawyers  note  that  the 
President  made  a  failure  of  being  a  lawyer; 
they  assume  that  this  embittered  him  to- 
ward the  profession  and  made  him  hate 


all  lawyers.  He  certainly  is  no  lawyer^ 
and  never  was.  Whether  this  is  a  sigm 
of  intelligence  or  not,  whether  he  is  freel 
from  an  incubus  or  really  is  envious,  is^ 
something  each  can  decide  for  himself. 
Everyone  has  not  the  same  admiration 
for  lawyers  that  they  harbor  for  them-^ 
selves. 

II 

IN  1910  he  was  elected  to  the  State- 
Senate  and  gave  up  trying  to  be  a 
lawyer.  He  was  not  under  the  necessity 
of  earning  a  living,  he  had  no  important 
message  for  the  world,  and  he  rapidly 
became  popular.  When  Wilson  was  Pres- 
ident he  was  made  Assistant  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  and  he  gave  entire  satisfaction 
to  those  with  whom  he  had  dealings.  He 
was  fortunate  in  having  Josephus  Daniels 
as  Secretary.  Almost  anyone  would  have 
looked  good  beside  Josephus. 

The  war  came  and  went;  and  in  1920 
he  was  nominated  for  Vice-President  on 
the  ticket  with  Cox.  People  called  him 
"Frank."  Everybody  did — except  those 
who  had  known  him  before  1910,  and  they 
still  called  him  "FrankHn."  The  cam- 
paigning was  lots  of  fun,  and  he  was  good 
at  it;  but  after  the  election  he  was  off  the 
public  payroll  for  the  first  time  in  ten 
years.  And  after  this  he  lost  the  use  of 
his  legs. 

This  is  something  to  think  about.  He 
was  not  forty,  and  it  looked  as  though  he 
were  through.  He  went  to  Hyde  Park 
and  considered  how  he  could  organize  his 
life  so  as  to  make  it  worth  going  on  with. 
If  he  was  discouraged  his  wife  was  not. 
She  decided  they  were  not  to  make  an 
end  or  rust  unburnished  in  disuse;  and  she 
persuaded  Al  Smith  and  the  Democratic 
politicians  to  come,  and  keep  coming,  to 
the  house  under  pretense  of  consulting  the 
sage  and  getting  his  support.  And  grad- 
ually he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
was  a  power  in  the  State.  In  1928  he  ran 
for  Governor,  at  Al  Smith's  insistence,  in 
order  to  help  the  latter's  Presidential 
chances;  and  the  same  anti-Catholic, 
anti-immigrant  prejudices  that  beat  Al 
Smith  elected  Mr.  Roosevelt  Governor. 

For  this  comeback  Mrs.  Roosevelt  is 
more  responsible  than  anyone  else.  She 
not  only  did  not  oppose  it;  she  actually 


PREFACE    TO    THE    PRESIDENT'S    AUTOBIOGRAPHY         1^5 


(brought  it  about.  No  estimate  of  the 
I  character  of  the  President  would  be  worth 
anything  which  did  not  take  her  influence 
into  consideration.  The  outstanding  fact 
about  her  is  that  she  is  a  lady,  a  swell. 
What  she  does  may  be  exasperating,  but  it 
is  never  cheap  or  shrill.  For  this  we  can- 
not be  too  thankful.  In  foreign  countries 
she  has  done  us  credit,  astonished  high  and 
low  alike,  and  generally  contributed  to 
some  desirable  end. 

Her  column,  "My  Day,"  is  just  plain 
balderdash.  She  knows  this,  but  she  ob- 
serves the  people  like  it,  and  she  considers 
it  is  part  of  a  legitimate  democratic  proc- 
ess. It  is  certainly  no  worse  than  what 
Uncle  Theodore  used  to  get  off.  Her 
speeches  are  usually  delivered  in  behalf  of 
some  deserving  cause.  At  first  she  spoke 
badly;  then  she  took  lessons,  and  became 
first-class;  of  late  years  she  has  been  lazy 
about  preparation — and  a  little  vain  per- 
haps— and  speaks  rather  poorly.  But  she 
is  wonderfully  amiable  about  saying  what 
the  particular  committee  wants  to  have  her 
say,  and  modestly  indifferent  about  push- 
ing her  own  greatness  to  the  fore. 

She  suffers  with  the  curse  of  all  endowed 
and  protected  ladies:  complacency.  All 
dowagers  are  complacent  and  are  con- 
demned to  spend  much  of  their  time  talk- 
ing to  vice-presidents  of  trust  companies 
about  their  money;  but  Mrs.  Roosevelt 
exhibits  a  case  of  it  that  eclipses  all  pre- 
vious clinical  records.  It  exceeds  even  the 
interesting  condition  of  Astarte,  Queen  of 
Babylon,  described  by  Voltaire,  when  she 
was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Prince  of 
Hyrcania. 

She  takes  herself  seriously,  and,  like  all 
sincere,  humorless  people,  when  she  gets 
going  wrong  she  is  a  menace.  She  was 
cruelly  exploited  by  the  National  Youth 
Administration  before  it  was  finally  abol- 
ished by  Congress,  and  she  loyally  stood 
by  it  after  it  was  a  dead  albatross.  It 
is  the  general  opinion  that  she  has  done 
harm  to  the  cause  of  the  Negroes  by  ill- 
considered  suggestions  and  misstatements 
of  facts:  mostly  the  result  of  her  yearnings 
for  the  millennium.  But  on  the  whole  she 
spreads  the  passion  for  sweetness  and 
light  around,  and  the  only  people  who 
have  to  listen  willy-nilly  are  the  troops  in 
formation. 


Ill 


MR.  Roosevelt  came  to  the  Presi- 
dency exceedingly  well  prepared. 
He  had  had  uninterrupted  leisure  at  Hyde 
Park  to  read  and  think,  and  he  had  had 
the  practical  experience  of  being  Governor 
of  New  York.  President  Wilson  had  a 
similar  preparation,  but  he  lacked  one 
great  asset  possessed  by  Mr.  Roosevelt:  he 
had  not  spent  twenty-eight  years  associat- 
ing with  the  Long  Island  set  before  being 
emancipated.  Mr.  Wilson  thought  that 
the  rich  were  villains;  Mr.  Roosevelt  knew 
they  were  foolish  and  ignorant.  When 
Cousin  Theodore  called  them  "malefac- 
tors of  great  wealth"  he  was  making  stern 
threats;  when  Mr.  Roosevelt  called  them 
* 'economic  royalists"  he  merely  classified 
them  as  pelicans  in  the  wilderness. 

He  had  great  endurance.  He  could 
talk  with  Huey  Long  drunk  or  Senator 
Borah  sober — feats  requiring  about  equal 
stores  of  patience.  While  he  talked  or 
listened  his  smile  constantly  came  and 
went,  and  his  eyes  twinkled,  and  his  ex- 
pression betokened  understanding  and 
sympathy.  If,  afterward,  it  appeared  that 
he  just  could  not  have  heard  a  word  of 
what  was  said  to  him,  nevertheless  the 
pleasant  impression  remained  in  the 
memory.  Thus  he  differed  from  Presi- 
dent Wilson. 

John  Wesley  complains  that  he  could 
make  no  impression  on  the  rich  or  the 
educated.  It  may  be  that  riches  or  educa- 
tion set  a  man  apart  from  his  fellows  so 
that  he  becomes  impatient  of  the  auto- 
biographical monologues,  the  illogical  ex- 
travagances, and  the  atmosphere  of  wish- 
ful thinking  in  which  most  men  live. 
Doubtless  the  desirability  of  riches  or  edu- 
cation is  open  to  question,  and  certainly 
indigent  philosophers  have  occasionally 
condemned  them  as  distractions  from  lead- 
ing the  Good  Life;  but  in  this  land  they 
are  the  twin  goals  of  one-hundred-per-cent 
Americans  everywhere,  and  the  only 
questioning  about  them  is  in  connection 
with  who  is  to  be  in  the  class. 

The  record  is  clear  that  when  Mr. 
Roosevelt  became  President  he  intended 
and  attempted  to  reduce  taxes  and  gov- 
ernment expenditures.  In  this  he  was 
thwarted  by  Congress;  and  when,  with 


196 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Republican  votes,  they  passed  a  law  over 
his  veto  restoring  a  part  of  the  cuts  made 
in  veterans'  expenditures  and  restoring  all 
the  reduction  in  the  civil  service  pay,  he 
evidently  reconsidered  the  whole  problem 
in  the  light  of  the  political  factors  in- 
volved. This  is  essentially  what  President 
Hoover  thought  he  too  was  doing  when 
he  refused  to  halt  the  speculation  by  raising 
the  rediscount  rate,  and  refused  to  ridicule 
the  "noble  experiment."  The  difference 
between  Mr.  Hoover  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  is 
that  the  latter  knows  all  the  strata  of  the 
ape-stuff.  Mr.  Roosevelt  knows  that  men 
are  naturally  lazy  and  drunken  and  timid 
and  somewhat  dishonest;  and  that  there  is 
nothing  either  good  or  bad,  but  thinking 
makes  it  so.  Everything  in  government  is 
ultimately  a  political  question,  whether 
it  involves  bread-and-circuses  or  bond  is- 
sues. It  is  fatuous  to  say  that  we  have  a 
government  of  laws  and  not  of  men. 
There  is  just  no  such  thing.  All  that  can 
be  done  is  to  protect  the  minority  from 
arbitrary  and  capricious  acts  so  far  as  pos- 
sible. When  the  President  talks  about  the 
Four  Freedoms  being  guaranteed  to  the 
people  of  the  world  he  is  simply  doing  a 
mystical  whirling-dervish  dance.  A  gov- 
ernment can  guarantee  freedom  of  speech 
and  freedom  of  worship  because  those 
freedoms  are  restraints  on  government, 
which  can  be  enforced  by  independent 
courts.  But  freedom  from  want  and  free- 
dom from  fear  do  not  involve  restraints  on 
governments.  They  involve  the  individ- 
ual putting  forth  effort  and  exercising 
self-control,  and  neither  statutes  nor  edicts 
nor  pontifical  pronouncements  avail  to 
make  men  over — although  religion  does  so 
sometimes.  When,  therefore,  the  Presi- 
dent promises  the  more  abundant  life  he 
is  thinking  of  himself  as  the  Great  White 
Father. 

It  is  when  he  gets  off  on  an  emotional 
jag  and  mistakes  himself  for  the  high  priest 
of  liberty  that  he  throws  the  rich  into 
paroxysms  of  rage.  For  they  suppose  he 
is  scheming  to  ruin  them,  whereas  he 
thinks  he  is  merely  giving  hope  to  the 
downtrodden.  But  sometimes  he  has 
made  mistakes,  as  in  1937  when  he  under- 
took to  pack  the  Federal  Courts.  The  ap- 
proach was  suave  and  specious  and  the 
provocation  had  been  very  great.     The 


President  was  under  no  misapprehension 
as  to  what  was  involved.  Apparently  he 
did  not  realize  that  the  Supreme  Court  is  a 
kind  of  sacred  cow  with  the  citizenry.  At 
all  events  he  was  met  not  only  by  the 
chronic  cries  of  the  rich,  but  by  a  powerful 
and  astute  opposition  supported  both  by 
politicians  and  by  disinterested  persons  of 
prominence  who  carried  on  as  though 
they  thought  the  Day  of  Doom  had  come. 

He  was  determined  however  not  to  be 
bothered  further  by  the  courts,  and  he 
proceeded  with  a  series  of  discreditable 
appointments  to  the  Federal  Bench.  The 
worst  of  this  is  that  these  judges  are  ap- 
pointed for  life,  and  so  the  defeat  of  the 
Administration  will  not  avail  to  get  rid  of 
any  of  them.  What  the  members  of  the 
Supreme  Court  will  do  with  matters  that 
are  laid  before  them  is  as  predictable,  these 
days,  as  what  a  cage  of  chimps  would  do 
with  a  bunch  of  bananas.  Inasmuch  as 
the  principal  function  of  courts  is  to  enun- 
ciate principles  so  that  all  men  may  be 
treated  alike,  to-day  and  to-morrow,  and 
be  able  to  conduct  their  affairs  accord- 
ingly, the  simian  gymnastics  of  the  judges 
are  not  so  terribly  amusing.  The  Presi- 
dent is  apparently  quite  serene,  and 
continues  to  make  wholly  unsuitable  ap- 
pointments in  emulation  of  Madame  de 
Pompadour. 

It  is  in  the  selection  of  men  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  exhibits  his  greatest  weakness. 
The  same  technique  of  friendly  cheerful- 
ness which  makes  him  easy  to  get  on  with 
cripples  him  when  it  comes  to  firing 
incompetents.  Washington  seethes  with 
jealousies,  recriminations,  and  deliberate 
sabotage.  The  favorites  fight  for  the 
President's  smile  like  the  Caliph's  cour- 
tiers. The  suggestion  made  to  King 
Canute  is  no  more  foolish  than  many  of 
those  submitted  to  Mr.  Roosevelt;  and, 
though  he  tries  some  pretty  wild  schemes 
he  discards  even  crazier  ones.  In  the 
men  around  him  he  is  very  different  from 
Cousin  Theodore,  whose  feet  were  always 
on  the  ground  (and  usually  his  ear  was 
too).  The  President  however  seems  not 
aware  that  many  intelligent  and  original 
thinkers  cannot  be  administrators.  He 
has  put  men  in  office  because  they  have 
written  books,  or  taught  in  colleges,  or 
been  recommended  by  Felix  Frankfurter, 


■]  u 


PREFACE    TO    THE    PRESIDENT'S    AUTOBIOGRAPHY         197 


without  any  consideration  of  their  execu- 
Livc  abiUty.  If  he  had  let  Jim  Farley  make 
the  appointments,  there  would  have  been 
much  less  straining  for  the  millennium 
and  much  more  plain  hard  work  done. 
!  This  weakness  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  for 
preferring  thinkers  to  doers  is  something 
quite  definite.  Psychologists  may  have  a 
name  for  it,  but  common  people  see  that 
it  is  a  reflection  of  his  own  nature  in  some 
way.  It  enrages  the  rich,  who  have  to  do 
business  with  the  Government;  and  the 
appointees  talk  in  a  silly  way  about  what 
they  are  going  to  do  in  the  future  with  the 
I  propertied  class.  Since  the  war  it  has  got 
better:  the  President  is  too  busy  to  listen 
to  moans  and  yearnings,  and  the  neces- 
sities of  the  situation  have  tightened 
everything  up.  The  rich,  and  particularly 
the  lawyers,  have  been  sure  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  has  deliberately  subjected  them 
to  this  hazing  in  revenge  for  being  cast 
out  of  Wall  Street  and  the  Long  Island 
set.     This  is  pretty  funny. 

It  is  true  however  that  a  lot  of  the  up- 
lifters  seem  to  care  a  great  deal  about  what 
the  rich  think:  that  is,  they  tell  one  another 
over  and  over  that  the  rich  are  afraid  of 
them  and  that  they  are  bad,  bold  boys. 
This  is  pretty  funny  too. 

Heywood  Broun  used  to  repeat  that  the 
rich  accused  Mr.  Roosevelt  of  being  ''a 
traitor  to  his  class."  Broun  thought  this 
was  just  like  the  rich — just  what  one  would 
expect.  But  Broun  was  not  rich  enough 
to  know.  The  rich  were  astonished  at 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  but  never  regarded  him  as 
a  traitor.  They  thought  he  was  a  crook — 
or  a  pansy:  they  were  not  sure  which. 
He  was  making  a  speech  one  night  at  the 
Harvard  Club,  and  one  of  the  audience 
came  out  of  the  dining  room: 

"What's  he  talking  about?"  asked  a 
member. 

"Love." 

"Love!" 

"Oh  no;  not  what  you  think.  Brotherly 
love.  Golden  Rule.  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  He's  just  found  out  about  it. 
Little  RoUo  turns  to  Literature.  Takes 
himself  for  Jeremiah.  Sharing  the  light 
with  those  who  sit  in  darkness.  I  need 
air." 

Now  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  really  inter- 
ested in  love.     He  was  calm  about  it  be- 


cause for  twenty-eight  years  he  had  been 
subjected  to  the  boarding-school  conven- 
tion which  forbids  any  mention  of  such 
things — otherwise  he  might  have  become 
an  itinerant  preacher;  but  when  he  began 
to  talk  about  it  in  public  the  Long  Island 
set  just  thought  he  was  fearfully  and  won- 
derfully queer.  There  was  an  immodesty 
about  the  performance  which  embarrassed 
them. 

IV 

WHEN  the  war  came  a  lot  of  people 
forgave  their  enemies  and  got 
down  to  work.  However  soft  in  the  heads 
the  Long  Island  set  might  be,  their  hearts 
were  in  the  right  place.  They  hated 
McCormick  and  Wheeler  second  only 
to  Hitler;  and  they  had  no  intention  of 
living  in  a  world  where  promises  were 
made  to  be  broken,  and  where  someone 
else  had  been  elected  the  Master  Race. 
The  rich  went  off  to  this  war  promptly  and 
without  haggling  for  special  berths.  And 
the  President  got  busy.  Things  just  had 
to  get  done,  and  if  the  rich  could  do  them, 
then  they  were  to  be  fed  into  the  mill  as 
well  as  the  moral  yearners.  The  Vice- 
President  does  not  believe  this,  even  yet — 
so  we  can  all  be  thankful  for  one  thing, 
and  pray  for  the  President's  health. 

The  pressures  traceable  to  the  war 
printed  a  new  chiaroscuro  of  Mr.  Roose- 
velt. Where  formerly  the  emphasis  had 
been  on  the  manipulation  of  the  ape-stuff 
and  the  popular  kaleidoscope  of  reform, 
now  it  became  essential  to  find  adminis- 
trators. The  time  for  commissions,  sur- 
veys, statistical  curves,  and  charts  was 
past.  Something  more  was  needed  as  a 
recommendation  than  faithfulness  to  the 
New  Deal.  All  this  the  President  knew, 
and  he  was  aware  that  his  own  deficiencies 
must  be  supplemented  by  the  capacities  of 
men  different  from  himself.  \Vhat  was 
required  was  set  forth  by  Thiers  a  hundred 
years  ago: 

I  used  constantly  to  find  my  orders  forgotten, 
or  neglected,  or  misinterpreted.  As  I  have  often 
said  to  you,  men  are  naturally  idle,  false,  and 
timid;  menteurs,  Idches,  paresseux.  Whenever  I 
found  that  an  employee  supposed  that  because  an 
order  had  been  given,  it  had  been  executed,  or 
that  because  he  had  been  told  a  thing  it  was  true, 
I  gave  him  up  as  an  imbecile.  Bonaparte  nearly 
lost  the  battle  of  Marengo  by  supposing  that  the 


198 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Austrians  had  no  bridge  over  the  Bormida. 
Three  generals  assured  him  that  they  had  care- 
fully examined  the  river,  and  that  there  was 
none.  It  turned  out  that  there  were  two,  and 
our  army  was  surprised.  When  I  was  preparing 
for  war  in  1840  I  sat  every  day  for  eight  hours 
with  the  Ministers  of  War,  of  Marine,  and  of  the 
Interior.  I  always  be^an  by  ascertaining  the 
state  of  execution  of  our  previous  determinations. 
I  never  trusted  to  any  assurances,  if  better  evi- 
dence could  be  produced.  If  I  was  told  that 
letters  had  been  despatched,  I  required  a  cer- 
tificate from  the  clerk  who  had  posted  them  or 
delivered  them  to  the  courier.  If  answers  had 
been  received,  I  required  their  production.  I 
punished  inexorably  every  negligence,  and  even 
every  delay.  I  kept  my  colleagues  and  my 
bureaux  at  work  all  day,  and  almost  all  night. 
We  were  all  of  us  half  killed.  Such  a  tension  of 
mind  wearies  more  than  the  hardest  bodily 
work.  At  night  my  servants  undressed  me,  took 
me  by  the  feet  and  shoulders,  and  placed  me  in 
my  bed,  and  I  lay  there  like  a  corpse  till  morning. 
Even  my  dreams,  when  I  dreamt,  were  adminis- 
trative. 

Under-Secretary  of  War  Patterson  works 
this  way,  but  not  many  others  in  Wash- 
ington. 

The  greatest  virtue  a  politician  can 
possess  is  patriotism,  and  of  this  one  must 
judge  of  the  President  not  on  scattered 
episodes  but  on  his  whole  performance. 
It  is  not  without  significance  that  he  should 
have  made  enemies  like  John  L.  Lewis  and 
McCormick  of  the  Chicago  Tribune;  and 
many  good  citizens  are  only  afraid  he  does 
not  hate  them  enough  in  return.  Only 
foolish  people  will  accuse  him  of  lack  of 
patriotism.  What  could  or  could  not  be 
done  at  any  particular  time  can  be  esti- 
mated properly  only  in  the  light  of  cir- 
cumstances then  existing.  As  late  as  the 
summer  of  1941  the  Republicans  in 
Congress  voted  to  disband  our  Army  and 
send  it  home.  The  lack  of  understanding 
which  prompted  this  is  to  be  attributed  to 
something  other  than  willingness  to  sac- 
rifice their  country  in  order  to  discredit 
their  political  opponents. 

The  President,  likewise,  has  done  some 
unwise  things,  and  is  generally  considered 
to  have  been  particularly  misguided  in  his 
dealings  with  organized  Labor.  The  full 
circumstances  which  confronted  him  how- 
ever are  unknown  to  his  critics  and  likely 
to  remain  so.  If  the  results  of  the  Gov- 
ernment's labor  policy  have  been  unfor- 
tunate it  is  not  clear  that  a  different  ap- 
proach would  not  have  induced  a  situation 


such  as  caused  the  downfall  of  France. 
There  is  a  maturity  about  Mr.  Roosevelt 
which  distinguishes  him  sharply  from  most 
other  politicians — not  merely  jokes  like 
Alf  Landon,  but  able  men  like  Mr.  Will- 
kie.  Mr.  Willkie  is  probably  a  better 
administrator  than  Mr.  Roosevelt,  and  he 
is  certainly  a  more  vigorous  crusader;  but 
his  travel  book  is  curiously  sophomoric  in 
its  artless  advocacy  of  freedom  from  cark 
and  care  in  a  world  where  everyone  is 
going  to  govern  himself. 

It  is  easy,  as  we  read  the  newspapers  at 
home,  to  conclude  that  all  politics  is  a 
cheat  and  that  politicians  are  welshers; 
but  when  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence 
of  a  high  officer  of  the  Government  we 
treat  him  with  instinctive  deference  and 
listen  to  what  he  says.  We  seem  to  lose 
energy  of  judgment  and  become  hesitant 
and  modest.  The  matters  that  were  so 
evident  to  us  that  morning  at  breakfast 
now  appear  complicated  and  uncertain. 
Our  suspicions  of  his  good  faith  seem 
pretty  cheap,  and  perhaps  we  ask  our- 
selves how  often  we  too  bow  in  the  House 
of  Rimmon. 

The  jealousies  and  envy  innate  in  each 
of  us  are  apt  to  direct  our  attention  to  the 
clay  feet  rather  than  to  the  head  of  gold; 
and  perhaps  the  reason  why  no  man  is  a 
hero  to  his  valet  is  because  a  valet  is  in- 
capable of  recognizing  heroism  when  he 
sees  it.  Certainly  the  carping  belittle- 
ments  of  those  who  can  see  no  good  in 
Mr.  Roosevelt  are  not  only  tiresome,  but  a 
reflection  on  themselves.  For  he  is  not 
confronted  with  problems  bounded  by  the 
Isles  of  Greece  or  limited  by  the  frontiers 
of  the  Roman  Empire  or  generated  in  the 
horse-and-buggy  era.  He  governs  130,- 
000,000  people  as  diverse  in  racial  strains 
and  interests  as  the  world  produces;  he 
commands  and  holds  the  respect  and  co- 
operation of  180,000,000  Russians,  whose 
political  concepts  are  totally  at  variance 
with  his  own;  300,000,000  Chinese  look  to 
him  with  trust  and  confidence.  After 
Dunkirk,  make  no  mistake,  he  saved  Eng- 
land— and  America — despite  the  isola- 
tionists. 

Come,  Brothers:  this  is  a  great  man,  a 
gallant,  understanding  man:  worthy  to 
stand  beside  Pericles,  or  Marcus  Aurelius, 
or  Sir  Robert  Walpole. 


WHAT    BUSINESS    THINKS    ABOUT 
POSTWAR    AMERICA 


C.     HARTLEY    GRATTAN 


FTER  having  been  engaged  in  deep 
thought  and  wresthng  of  the  spir- 
it for  a  considerable  time,  the 
American  business  community  is  begin- 
ning to  utter.  The  utterances  bear  small 
resemblance  to  the  statements  that  Charles 
Schwab  and  Henry  Ford  used  to  make  in 
the  days  when  prosperity  was  just  around 
the  corner.  There  is  evidence  that  our 
business  men  have  been  trying  to  grapple 
with  the  facts  of  life.  The  old  and  time- 
worn  texts  from  the  Business  Book  of  Argu- 
ments that  have  been  preached  so  often  in 
the  past  are  still  heard — but  not  all  the 
time.  Yeast  of  some  sort  has  been  at 
work.  The  War  Congress  of  the  National 
Association  of  Manufacturers,  held  at  the 
Waldorf  Astoria  Hotel  in  New  York  in 
December,  1943,  was  strikingly  different 
from  recent  sessions.  Every  incoming 
train  was  crowded  with  guests  and  mem- 
bers; there  was  an  atmosphere  of  a  gath- 
ering of  the  clans,  of  preparation  for  some 
sort  of  Armageddon. 

The  reason  for  the  change  noticeable  in 
many  business  groups  is  not  mysterious. 
Something  tells  them  that  they  have  got 
to  stand  and  deliver.  That  something 
doesn't  come  from  the  office  of  the  Daily 
Worker;  it  is  not  a  challenge  from  John  L. 
Lewis  or  the  United  Automobile  Workers; 
it  isn't  a  threat  from  the  New  Dealers  in 
Washington  nor  from  That  Man.     The 


war  prosperity  has  given  the  boys  some 
new  heart  and,  when  they  think  about 
what  is  to  come  after  the  war,  some  of 
them  at  least  realize  that  they  are  con- 
fronted with  a  condition  and  not  a  theory. 
The  condition,  the  state  of  affairs,  is  this: 
For  fourteen  years  the  American  economy 
has  been  running  on  a  sort  of  conditional 
basis,  tinkered  and  patched  with  vari- 
ous expedients.  The  underlying  problems 
have  not  been  met  and  the  war  has  inten- 
sified their  pressures.  Somehow  or  other, 
something  has  got  to  be  done.  The  more 
alert  business  men  now  see  that  unless 
they  and  business  can  deliver  they  are 
through. 

They  don't  believe  they  are  through 
however.  With  more  confidence  than 
they  have  shown  in  a  long  while,  they  de- 
mand that  they  be  given  another  chance. 
Something  like  a  crusade  for  "free  enter- 
prise" has  now  begun. 

The  first  ringing  calls  of  this  crusade 
have  already  reached  the  general  public  in 
the  shape  of  display  advertising.  The 
hand  of  the  copywriter  is  still  unsure  and 
some  of  the  specimens  are  such  as  to  pro- 
voke sour  remarks.  Here  is  a  railway  ad- 
vertisement with  a  picture  of  a  little  boy 
climbing  the  stairs  to  bed.  The  text  tells 
us  how  cut  up  the  little  fellow  is  by  the 
news  that  his  father  is  "missing  in  action," 
and  then,  with  a  horrible  lurch,  intimates 


200 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


that  the  boy's  father  died  to  keep  the 
United  States  "a  land  in  which  govern- 
ment is  the  servant,  not  the  master  of 
the  people."  In  the  first  place,  who  knows 
whether  he  did  or  not?  And  in  the  second 
place,  what  right  has  a  railroad  to  exploit 
human  sympathy  fur  a  small  boy's  grief? 
Again,  a  chain  of  popular  magazines  ad- 
dresses company  executives  with  a  picture 
of  jobless  men  selling  apples  and  beneath 
it  the  slogan:  "Your  advertising  can  pre- 
vent this!"  One  wonders  how  many 
business  men  are  prepared  to  let  it  go  at 
that,  without  inquiring  why  the  magic 
didn't  work  in  1929. 

But  no  doubt  these  bulls  and  howlers 
will  be  elided  in  due  course  as  the  free-en- 
terprise crusade  gets  under  way.  Enough 
exhibits  of  a  more  serious  character  are 
available  to  show  something  of  what  busi- 
ness thinks  of  the  problems  which  it  faces. 

The  chief  long-term  problems  are:  un- 
employment, monopoly,  distribution,  for- 
eign trade.  The  immediate  problems  are 
focused  in  (1)  the  termination  of  war  con- 
tracts; (2)  reconversion  to  civilian  produc- 
tion; and  (3)  the  disposition  of  govern- 
ment-owned plants.  In  this  article  I  pro- 
pose to  give  specimens  of  current  business 
thinking  on  these  subjects  and  to  test  their 
validity. 

II 

THE  first  item  on  the  docket  is  the  ques- 
tion of  unemployment.  A  considera- 
tion of  this  leads  at  once  to  an  analysis  of 
what  business  prospects  after  the  war  are 
supposed  to  be.  Let  us  piece  together  ele- 
ments from  the  forecasts  of  R.  H.  Wells, 
president  of  Corrigan,  Osburne  and 
Wells,  Inc.,  management  consultants;  Pro- 
fessor Sumner  Slichter  of  Harvard,  a  fa- 
vored economist  among  sophisticated  busi- 
ness leaders;  Leon  Henderson,  speaking 
as  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Editors  of  the 
Research  Institute  of  America;  and  a  num- 
ber of  others.     This  is  what  we  get: 

1.  The  period  of  demobilization  of  the  armed 
forces  and  reconversion  of  industry  to  peace- 
time uses  will  last  from  one  to  three  years,  ac- 
companied by  considerable  unemployment. 

2.  Then  will  come  a  sharp  boom,  based  chiefly  on 
wartime  savings  and  a  "catching-up"  demand 
for  automobiles,  houses,  plant  and  equipment, 
and  the  like,  lasting  three  to  five  years,  with 
high  but  perhaps  not  full  employment. 


3.  A  deep  depression  may  follow  when  the  ef- 
fects of  Period  2  are  exhausted,  lasting  two  or 
more  years,  with  heavy,  widespread  unem- 
ployment. 

4.  A  sustained  boom  may  then  be  expected,  last- 
ing perhaps  for  ten  years  (though  on  this  there 
is  sharp  disagreement).  This  will  be  the  real 
testing  time  of  private  enterprise's  ability  to 
provide  something  like  full  employment. 

Some  business  writers  appear  to  dis- 
count the  difficulties  which  will  be  en- 
countered in  Period  1 ,  or  cover  them  with 
the  proviso  that  adjustments  will  not  be 
difficult  if  government  policies  are  favor- 
able, and  some  appear  to  omit  Period  4 
from  their  calculations  altogether.  Some 
pessimists  hold  that  Period  4  may  never  be 
reached  with  private  enterprise  still  free, 
for  the  relapse  of  Period  3  will  have 
brought  the  much-feared  government  into 
the  field  of  employment-providing,  if  it 
hasn't  crowded  in  during  Period  1.  It  is 
the  profound  suspicion  that  large-scale  un- 
employment will  not  be  tolerated,  except 
perhaps  during  Period  1,  that  leads  spokes- 
men like  Paul  G.  Hoffman,  chairman  of 
the  Committee  for  Economic  Develop- 
ment (an  outfit  set  up  by  private  industry, 
but  under  the  patronage  of  Jesse  Jones, 
Secretary  of  Commerce),  and  Eric  A. 
Johnston,  president  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  to  emphasize  that  the  workers 
must  be  employed  quickly  and  permanmtly 
right  after  the  war.  Otherwise,  says 
Johnston,  the  government  will  take  over 
and  private  enterprise  will  be  doomed. 
Alfred  Sloan,  at  the  recent  NAM  War 
Congress,  warned  industry  that  it  must 
m.ake  good  by  providing  plenty  of  jobs  to 
people  who  have  seen  what  industry  could 
do  in  the  way  of  employment,  payrolls, 
and  other  benefits  during  the  war.  Fail- 
ing this,  said  Mr.  Sloan,  the  private-enter- 
prise system  will  be  supplanted  by  some 
form  of  socialism. 

It  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  labor  the 
point.  There  is  hardly  a  business  spokes- 
man still  flourishing  who  does  not  insist 
that  private  enterprise  cannot  hope  to 
survive  unless  it  delivers  the  jobs.  The 
profitability  of  business  is  of  course  the 
ratification  of  its  existence,  but  the  em- 
.phasis  on  profit  softens  when  the  question 
of  survival  is  to  the  fore.  Business  men 
know  that  if  they  supply  some  jobs,  but  not 
enough,  government  will  step  in  to  care  for 


WHAT    BUSINESS    THINKS    ABOUT    POSTWAR    AMERICA    201 


the  unemployed  by  providing  work  of  its 
own  devising;  and  business  men  don't 
want  that  to  happen. 

Right  here,  I  judge,  is  where  a  bitter 
argument  is  sure  to  develop  sooner  or  later 
between  business  representatives  and  men 
in  government.  Long  before  the  depres- 
sion it  was  known  that  there  were  "al- 
ways" some  unemployed.  How  many 
workers  must  be  unemployed  before  busi- 
ness will  concede  its  inability  to  employ 
all  those  able  to  work?  How  many  un- 
employed should  the  government  silently 
carry  on  unemployment  insurance  before 
it  launches  a  public  works  program  to 
absorb  them  in  "useful"  work?  I  don't 
believe  that  a  clear  answer  can  be  found, 
and  so  we  can  reasonably  expect  unem- 
ployment figures  to  be  a  football  full  of 
dynamite  after  this  war. 

Business  leaders  calculate  that  56,000,- 
000  jobs  will  have  to  be  provided,  or  about 
10,000,000  more  than  in  1940  (with  about 
700,000  jobs  added  each  year  to  take  care 
of  the  natural  increase  of  the  working 
population),  but  they  admit  there  will  be 
considerable  unemployment  directly  after 
the  end  of  hostilities.  The  Post-War  Di- 
vision of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
is  convinced  that  if  conditions  are  bad 
12,000,000  will  be  out  of  work  six  months 
after  the  war;  if  conditions  are  favorable, 
probably  7,000,000.  The  Research  In- 
stitute of  America  favors  the  12,000,000 
figure.  Charles  E.  Wilson  of  the  WPB 
and  General  Electric  is  more  modest.  He 
told  Fred  C.  Kelly  recently  that  the  peak 
will  be  between  3,000,000  and  6,000,000. 

The  fitting  of  these  people  into  perma- 
nent jobs  is  the  crux  of  the  problem  as 
business  sees  it,  relating  the  unemploy- 
ment figures  to  the  period  of  transition 
between  the  war  and  the  postwar  boom. 
Leon  Henderson  warns  that  the  three 
years  from  1944  through  1946  will  be 
tough  for  all  of  us.  He  and  others  who 
are  like-minded  appear  to  see  the  situation 
this  way:  war  production  schedules  will 
be  dislocated,  causing  much  unemploy- 
ment, when  Germany  is  defeated,  prob- 
ably late  in  1944;  this  dislocation  may  be 
followed  by  a  partial  and  spotty  resump- 
tion of  civilian  production  for  a  market 
which  is  relatively  inactive  in  some  parts 
of  the  country  owing  to  unemployment; 


and  another  period  like  it  will  occur  two 
years  later  when  Japan  goes  down. 

Pushing  their  way  through  this  period, 
business  men  will  want  to  hold  the  work- 
ers on  unemployment  insurance  until  re- 
conversion is  accomplished  and  we  have 
arrived  in  the  boom  of  Period  2.  Right 
here,  I  expect,  is  where  the  government 
may  want  to  launch  a  public  works  pro- 
gram to  absorb  these  unemployed.  And 
hard  words  are  bound  to  be  exchanged 
between  business  and  government  over  the 
issue. 

Ill 

A  GAINST  this  background  business  faces 
jf\  the  immediate  and  closely  related 
problems  of 

1.  The  termination  of  war  contracts 

2.  Reconversion  to  civilian  production 

3.  The  disposition  of  government-owned  plants 

The  first  two  items  involve  the  amount 
of  surplus  materials  which  will  be  on  hand 
in  the  various  plants  and  the  best  way  to 
dispose  of  them;  the  extent  of  the  unem- 
ployment which  the  ending  of  the  contract 
will  bring;  the  length  of  time  it  will  take  to 
reconvert  the  plant  to  peacetime  produc- 
tion; and  the  availability  of  funds  to  carry 
out  the  reconversion.  This  last  problem 
is  divisible  into  two  phases:  first,  the 
amount  of  money  which  will  be  due  to 
the  contractor  from  the  government  when 
the  contract  is  canceled  and  the  availa- 
bility of  all  or  a  portion  of  it  to  him;  and 
second,  the  size  of  the  funds  which  the 
business  has  accumulated  during  the  war 
to  finance  its  reconversion. 

Most  spokesmen — from  both  business 
and  government — think  that  reconversion 
will  be  facilitated  if  the  government  will 
establish  a  central  bureau  to  handle  the 
cancellation  of  war  contracts  which  will 
operate  according  to  publicly  announced 
rules.  The  Senate  Committee  on  Post- 
War  Planning,  headed  by  Senator  Walter 
F.  George,  recommends  such  a  scheme,  to 
operate  under  policies  laid  down  by  Con- 
gress. What  business  wants  is  quick 
settlement  in  cash.  Suggestions  include 
substantial  immediate  payments  on  claims 
(up  to  75  per  cent  of  total  claims)  and 
fairly  immediate  arbitration  of  balances. 
Where  the  rest  of  the  money  for  reconver- 
sion is  to  come  from  is  something  on  which 


202 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


business  men  hold  varying  opinions;  the 
issue  is  often  obscured  by  the  lumping  to- 
gether of  reconversion  costs,  rehabilitation 
costs,  and  even  expansion  costs. 

Still,  in  spite  of  the  loud  noises  in  cer- 
tain quarters,  most  companies  expect  no 
trouble  in  financing  reconversion,  given  a 
co-operative  government  policy.  A  study 
made  by  the  National  Industrial  Confer- 
ence Board  showed  that  only  3  per  cent  of 
the  firms  reporting  felt  that  they  would 
need  outside  financial  help.  An  SEC 
report  issued  in  November  showed  that  at 
the  end  of  1 942  the  five  largest  companies 
of  fifty  basic  industrial  groups  had  post- 
war reserves  totaling  $514,593,000.  Some 
concerns,  probably  mostly  small  ones, 
will  either  have  failed  to  build  up  such 
special  reserves  or  will  not  have  sufficient 
money  in  them  to  do  the  job.  On  the 
available  evidence,  the  problem  of  financ- 
ing reconversion  seems  to  have  been  ex- 
aggerated by  some  business  groups,  chiefly 
in  order  to  attack  the  government's  taxa- 
tion program. 

As  for  the  task  of  reconversion  itself,  its 
magnitude  is  fairly  obvious.  The  Confer- 
ence Board  figures  show  that  between  two 
and  three  companies  out  of  every  ten  it 
surveyed  will  have  no  reconversion  prob- 
lem at  all,  because  the  goods  produced  to 
meet  war  contracts  are  identical  with 
peacetime  products.  But  at  the  other  end 
of  the  scale  four  of  the  ten  firms  face  one 
hundred  per  cent  reconversion.  The  rest 
fall  in  between.  If  I  read  the  figures 
rightly,  many  firms  don't  intend  to  convert 
all  their  war-born  facilities,  either  because 
they  don't  see  how  to  use  them  in  peace- 
time or  because  they  can  be  used,  if 
needed,  as  they  stand.  Some  cannot  be 
converted  at  all. 

While  the  Conference  Board  report  is 
not  a  comprehensive  survey,  it  does  show 
that  the  reconversion  problem  is  extreme- 
ly complicated  and  varies  in  importance 
from  company  to  company  and  as  between 
lines  of  production.  The  implication  is 
that  businesses  will  come  back  into  the 
peacetime  market  very  unevenly.  Ac- 
cording to  the  report,  steel,  shoe  and 
leather,  chemical,  and  foundry  companies 
will  require  least  time,  while  the  automo- 
bile, electrical  equipment,  paper,  petro- 
leum, and  food  industries  expect  to  take 


from  four  to  six  months.  A  few  concerns 
expect  to  need  from  a  year  to  eighteen 
months. 

Thus  it  would  appear  that  heavy  unem- 
ployment lasting  from  three  to  eighteen 
months  can  be  expected  as  a  phase  of  re- 
conversion— regardless  of  when  it  takes 
place — and  since  unemployment  will  vary 
both  between  industries  and  industrial 
areas,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  1944- 
1 946  will  be  diflficult  years.  The  situation 
will  be  even  worse  if  the  government  fails 
to  market  its  fifty  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
salable  war  goods  in  an  orderly  fashion 
after  the  fighting  ceases.  The  political 
significance  of  the  period  will  be  immense, 
for  advocates  of  government  spending  to 
provide  jobs  will  certainly  seize  their 
chance  to  call  for  action,  while  the  spokes- 
men of  private  enterprise  will  be  counsel- 
ing patience  until  the  expected  boom  gets 
under  way,  haunted  by  the  fear  that  their 
chance  to  do  their  stuff  may  be  lost 
forever. 

There  are  a  number  of  incidental  fac- 
tors favorable  to  business.  In  the  first 
place,  business  expects  unemployment  in- 
surance to  play  an  important  role.  That 
business  should  feel  this  way  clearly  proves 
that  this  particular  social  service  is  now 
firmly  established  in  this  country.  The 
Chamber  of  Commerce  not  only  looks 
upon  unemployment  allowances  as  the  sal- 
vation of  the  displaced  workers  (while 
frankly  describing  the  allowances  as  "half 
rations")  but  also  feels  that  the  money  will 
help  business  directly  by  providing  funds 
for  a  basic  minimum  of  purchasing  power. 
A  similar  role  may  be  played  by  the  al- 
lowances granted  to  service  people  on 
demobilization  in  addition  to  what  they 
may  be  allowed  to  claim  as  unemployment 
insurance  if  they  fail  to  find  work. 

Business  feels  also  that  the  suggestion 
for  a  gradual  demobilization  of  the  armed 
forces  is  sound,  for  it  would  ease  the  pres- 
sure on  jobs.  Closely  related  to  this  is  the 
prospect  for  the  continued  manufacture  of 
armament — though  on  a  diminished  scale 
— for  national  defense.  "Production  will 
probably  be  much  greater,"  says  Charles 
E.  Wilson,  "than  it  was  before  1939." 
This  armament-making  will  help  the 
other  efforts  to  keep  the  economy  on  an 
even  keel.     But  at  the  best,  these  favorable 


WHAT    BUSINESS    THINKS    ABOUT    POSTWAR    AMhRiCA    203 


factors  will  not  alter  the  essential  character 
of  the  1944-1946  period. 

The  total  size  of  the  plant  built  with 
! government  funds  for  war  use  and  now 
destined  to  be  turned  to  peace  use  is  stag- 
gering. Not  all  of  it  can  be  used.  Some 
of  it  will  be  junked.  Already  a  chrome 
mine  at  Mouat,  Montana,  has  been  aban- 
doned because  Turkish  chrome  can  now 
be  readily  obtained  and  at  a  cheaper  rate. 
But  even  with  all  the  junking  and  aban- 
donment, capacity  will  be  far  greater  than 
ever  before;  and  it  will  be  needed  if  56,- 
000,000  persons  are  to  find  jobs. 

Secretary  of  Commerce  Jesse  Jones  re- 
( cntly  outlined  the  character  of  the  gov- 
ernment holdings  thus: 


However  that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that 
business  men  will  fight  tooth  and  nail  to 
force  the  government  to  relax  its  grip  on 
the  plants.  Their  allies  within  the  gov- 
ernment will  assist  in  the  fight. 

Who  should  be  encouraged  to  buy  the 
plants,  if  and  when  they  are  offered  for 
sale?  Senator  George's  Post-War  Com- 
mittee has  suggested  that  they  go  to  pri- 
vate enterprise,  but  be  so  distributed 
among  purchasers  as  to  encourage  small 
enterprise.  This  brings  us  to  the  question 
of  monopoly  and  the  structure  of  private 
industry,  about  which  business  men  are 
not  in  agreement  at  all.  Here  the  solid 
front  against  government  is  broken  and  the 
ranks  of  business  men  are  split  wide  open. 


534  plants  for  production  of  airplanes,  engines,  and  parts 

"  aluminum 

"  aviation  gasoline  and  related  products 
"  machine  tools 
"  magnesium 

"  minerals  and  metal  products 
"  ordnance  equipment 
"  radio  and  other  scientific  equipment 
"  ships,  ship  engines,  and  parts 
"  iron,  steel,  and  related  products 

"  synthetic  rubber  and  materials  necessary  for  its  manufacture 
"  jewel  bearings  and  diamond  dies 
"  hemp  and  rope  fiber 
6  pipe  lines  for  transport  of  petroleum  products 
j        These  are  included  in  the  1,753  plants  built  through  the  authorization  of  the  Defense  Plant  Cor- 
I    poration,  a  subsidiary  of  the  RFC,  at  a  cost  of  more  than  9  billion  dollars.     The  plants  and  money  are 
in  addition  to  other  billions  spent  by  the  War  and  Navy  Departments  and  the  Maritime  Commission 
in  building  facilities  and  equipment. 


84 

35 

116 

40 

60 

78 

98 

65 

164 

60 

14 

43 

The  total  investment  in  the  government 
holdings,  built  under  the  high-cost  condi- 
tions of  wartime,  is  not  so  important  as  the 
use  to  which  they  may  be  put  after  the  war. 
The  suspicion  which  many  business  men 
feel  as  to  the  government's  intentions  was 
well  stated  by  Clyde  G.  Conley,  president 
of  the  American  Institute  of  Steel  Construc- 
tion, when  he  asked  assurance  that  the 
plants  be  not  used  to  ^'compete  with  and 
ultimately  destroy"  private  industry. 
Many  of  the  new  plants  are  in  precisely 
those  industries  which  promise  to  be  of  key 
significance  in  the  postwar  economy.  Busi- 
ness men  foresee  that  Left-wing  New  Deal- 
ers, if  any  survive,  and  socialists  will  see 
them  as  an  opening  wedge  for  getting  the 
government  permanently  into  business,  and 
that  military-minded  persons  will  want  to 
use  them  to  give  a  defense  emphasis  to  in- 
dustries so  closely  tied  up  with  warmaking. 


IV 


THE  problem  of  monopoly  has  been 
subjected  to  increasing  scrutiny  in  the 
past  few  years.  Senator  O'Mahoney, 
who  investigated  the  matter  for  a  Senate 
committee,  has  stated: 

The  investigation  of  the  Truman  committee 
and  the  activities  of  the  Anti-Trust  Division  of  the 
Department  of  Justice  all  tell  the  same  story — 
that  huge  enterprise,  in  strange  disregard  of  its 
own  ultimate  interests  as  well  as  the  interest  of  the 
system  of  free  enterprise,  has  been  consistently  en- 
deavoring to  destroy  the  profit-making  oppor- 
tunities of  its  competitors.  Whether  it  be  in  the 
production  of  aluminum  or  rubber  or  steel  or  oil, 
many  of  the  giant  corporations  which  participate 
in  holding  the  bulk  of  war  contracts  have  done 
everything  in  their  power  to  prevent  the  estab- 
lishment of  competitive  enterprises  that  might 
possibly  compete  with  them  after  the  war  is  over. 

All  this  is  fairly  well  known,  but  the  fact 
has  not  sunk  home  that  much  of  the  new 


204 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


capacity  has  passed  to  the  management  of 
the  established  companies  and  that  they 
might  well  seek  to  buy  it  up  at  a  discount 
after  the  war,  to  govern  it  permanently  for 
their  own  purposes,  ^ow  far  the  war  ef- 
fort has  helped  monopoly  is  well  illustrated 
from  a  speech  by  Tom  G.  Glark  of  the 
Justice  Department's  Anti-Trust  Division: 

At  the  start  of  the  war  program  in  this  country 
175,000  companies  provided  70  per  cent  of  the 
nation's  manufacturing  output,  while  to-day,  two 
and  a  half  years  later,  the  ratio  has  been  reversed 
to  the  point  where  100  corporations  hold  70  per 
cent  of  the  war  and  essential  contracts.  This 
group  .  .  .  has  obtained  the  bulk  of  the  .  .  . 
new  plants  built  at  government  expense.  .  .  . 
The  danger  is  that  these  plants  will  not  be  in  com- 
petition [after  the  war  but]  will  be  controlled  by  a 
small  group  which  will  set  up  its  own  trade  bar- 
riers by  private  agreement — commonly  known  as 
cartels. 

Monopoly  reaches  its  goal  by  restrictions 
on  production  and  jobs.  Hence  it  is  a 
menace  to  any  program  for  providing  56,- 
000,000  jobs.  That  is  why  the  leading 
business  spokesmen  of  the  job-supplying 
persuasion  are  angrily  against  monopoly. 
Eric  A.  Johnston  has  called  it  "a  sissy  way 
of  doing  business."  William  Benton,  vice- 
president  of  the  University  of  Ghicago, 
who  accompanied  Johnston  on  a  recent 
trip  to  England  and  discovered  how  mo- 
nopoly-minded some  English  business  lead- 
ers are — even  to  the  point  of  wanting 
statutory  authority  for  their  organizations 
— is  equally  convinced  upon  the  point. 
James  H.  McGraw,  Jr.,  takes  a  full  page  in 
the  New  Tork  Times  to  demand  competition 
and  to  denounce  monopoly  and  to  list  all 
the  McGraw-Hill  business  papers  which 
now  maintain  a  similar  attitude.  The 
diligent  processors  in  Henry  Luce's  Opin- 
ion Works,  in  their  pamphlet,  "America 
and  the  Future,"  announce  dogmatically, 
"Monopolies  must  be  prosecuted." 

There  is  thus  a  good-sized,  highly  vocal 
group  within  business  which  would  go 
along  with  Tom  Glark  in  any  systematic 
assault  on  monopoly  he  might  organize, 
and  which  would  also  support  a  govern- 
ment policy  of  selling  its  plants  with  an  eye 
to  frustrating  monopolies,  actual  or  po- 
tential, in  aluminum,  magnesium,  air- 
craft, and  so  on.  So  the  question  is,  if 
business  is  to  get  the  government  plants, 
what  business?     I  would  judge  that  if  this 


controversy  is  hushed  up  it  will  mean  that 
the  monopolists  have  retained  their  posi- 
tion and  that  the  shouts  of  the  competition 
boys  are  mere  eyewash.  Since  it  is  ar- 
gued by  them  that  only  competitive  busi- 
ness can  find  those  56,000,000  jobs,  it 
would  seem  logical  to  suppose  that  if  the 
monopolists  defeat  the  competitionists, 
business  will  have  set  the  stage  for  its  own 
eventual  defeat  in  its  campaign  to  be  the 
nation's  sole  job  provider. 

Glosely  tied  to  the  question  of  monopoly 
vs.  competition  is  the  matter  of  industrial 
expansion — of  new  industries  making  new 
products  or  new  companies  operating  in 
old  fields,  supported  by  "venture"  or  spec- 
ulative capital.  The  idea  that  new  prod- 
ucts are  going  to  dazzle  the  world  af- 
ter the  war  is  being  violently  exploited 
by  business,  both  in  advertising  and  in 
its  more  formal  statements.  Lammot 
duPont,  chairman  of  the  board  of  E.  I. 
duPontde  Nemours  &  Gompany,  has  said: 

Wood  that  won't  burn,  glass  that  won't  break, 
window  screens  that  contain  no  wire,  and  ma- 
chine bearings  that  contain  no  metal  are  just  a 
few  of  the  things  in  the  offing. 

Better  and  yet  cheaper  homes,  finer  and  less 
costly  automobiles,  radios  and  refHgerators,  more 
nourishing  food,  superior  medicines — a  greater 
abundance  of  almost  everything  that  adds  to  the 
comfort  and  satisfaction  of  living — all  of  these 
will  be  awaiting  the  homecoming  soldier  when 
the  war  is  won. 

Spurred  to  extraordinary  efforts  by  the  ex- 
traordinary needs  of  the  past  two  years,  we  have 
gone  ahead  thirty  or  fifty  years  as  measured  by 
the  old  rate  of  development  in  many  fields. 

There  is  not  complete  agreement  in 
business  about  the  extent  to  which  new 
products  will  revolutionize  daily  living. 
Alfred  Sloan  does  not  foresee  any  greatly 
increased  use  of  light  metals  in  automobile 
manufacture.  Grover  Loening,  chairman 
of  the  Helicopter  Gommittee  of  the  Na- 
tional Advisory  Gommittee  for  Aeronau- 
tics, has  heatedly  denounced  "all  this  talk 
that  the  helicopter  is  to  be  flown  by  every- 
one from  grandma  to  the  tired  business 
man  right  after  the  war." 

Yet  the  question  at  issue  here  is  not  so 
much  the  effects  on  living  of  the  new  prod- 
ucts— for  it's  a  certainty  that  many  new 
products  are  coming — as  their  probable 
effect  on  employment  and  the  structure  of 
business.  It  is  said  that  numerous  small 
businesses  have  been  able  to  pay  off  their 


WHAT    BUSINESS    THINKS    ABOUT    POSTWAR    AMERICA    205 


debts  and  get  themselves  Into  the  clear 
through  war  contracts  and  arc  busily 
looking  for  something  new  to  manufacture. 
However  that  may  be,  it  is  noticeable  that 
most  of  the  new  products  are  being  devel- 
oped by  large,  well-established  concerns, 
with  whose  names  we  are  entirely  familiar, 
or  by  their  subsidiaries — whose  names 
may  not  always  betray  the  direct  relation. 
The  most  attractive  booklet  on  electronics 
I  have  received  came  from  the  General 
Electric  Company.  A  booklet  on  plastics 
and  artificial  fibers  came  from  the  Celanese 
Corporation  of  America.  The  duPont 
Company  is  certain  to  continue  its  pioneer- 
ing in  new  materials.  Unless  action  is 
taken  to  prevent  it,  a  few  big  corporations 
may  keep  a  stranglehold  on  most  new 
products,  just  as  they  did  on  aluminum, 
electric  lamps,  glass  bottles,  spectacle 
glass,  synthetic  rubber,  vitamin  tablets, 
and  other  products  when  war  broke  out. 

The  key  to  this  situation  is  the  monop- 
oly possibilities  in  patents  which  can  be 
licensed  sparingly,  or  held  out  of  use,  by 
their  owners.  The  problem  will  have  to 
be  dealt  with  by  those  groups  which  have 
declared  for  competition.  Only  if  new 
products  are  freed,  to  a  reasonable  degree, 
from  patent  restriction  can  their  full  use 
be  realized  and  their  full  effects  as  ex- 
panders of  employment  be  secured.  It 
will  not  be  enough  if,  for  instance,  the 
basic  production  of  the  new  materials  is 
monopolized  and  only  the  processing  of 
them  farmed  out.  We  know  from  ex- 
perience that  that  leads  to  exploitation 
of  the  material  by  limiting  the  supply  at 
the  source. 

The  other  aspect  of  this  question  of  ex- 
pansion as  it  affects  the  monopoly  vs,  com- 
petition argument  involves  venture  capi- 
tal. Business  spokesmen  are  putting  much 
emphasis  on  new  and  small  business, 
which  they  regard  as  indispensable  to 
business  progress.  But  the  emphasis  is 
usually  accompanied  by  attacks  upon  the 
government's  taxation  policy,  which  they 
say  discourages  venture  capital.  I  cannot 
find  the  evidence  which  would  show  that 
venture  capital  has  dried  up  primarily  for 
this  reason.  (Monopoly  may  be  ironi- 
cally defined  as  the  effort  of  business  to 
attain  security.  It  certainly  has  the  effect 
of  giving  security  of  a  kind  to  the  monop- 


olists and  their  allies — a  security  from 
competition — but  monopoly  cuts  produc- 
tion and  jobs.)  Edward  Everett  Chase, 
president  of  the  New  England  Council, 
touched  upon  this  question  when  he  re- 
cently called  attention  to 

.  .  4  the  great  inconsistencies  between  what  is 
being  said  about  free  enterprise  and  what  is  being 
done  by  owners  of  the  capital  that  is  essential  to 
free  enterprise.  .  .  .  Everywhere  we  encounter 
a  reluctance  to  take  risks.  Everywhere  we  find  a 
strong  belief  in  private  ownership,  and  every- 
where we  see  a  scarcity  of  persons  willing  to  be- 
come owners  when  risk  is  apparent.  The  de- 
mand for  security  is  not  confined  to  the  disin- 
herited. 

Will  capital  take  the  venture  if  monop- 
oly is  broken?  It  is  not  clear.  "Let  us 
co-operate,"  says  Mr.  McGraw,  ''in  sin- 
cere efforts  to  modernize  these  [anti-trust] 
laws  and  extend  them  by  specific  legisla- 
tion to  monopolistic  practices  they  cannot 
now  reach.  I  do  not  have  a  simple  for- 
mula for  this,  but  I  believe  we  must  try 
to  find  one."  Certainly  the  supporters  of 
competition  have  their  work  cut  out  for 
them. 


THE  problems  of  distribution  and  for- 
eign trade  have  received  less  careful 
examination  from  business  men  recently, 
although  both  have  been  much  talked 
about.  There  are  exceptions  among  the 
spokesmen  however.  The  current  harp- 
ing on  jobs  and  production  has  deflected 
attention  from  the  question  of  distribution 
and  some  business  men  are  getting  wor- 
ried about  it.  The  wartime  production 
record  of  private  enterprise  is  no  guarantee 
at  all  that  it  can  do  as  well  in  peacetime. 
Probably  the  credit  for  war  production 
goes  more  to  the  technicians  than  to  the 
business  men;  at  any  rate,  war  production 
is  utterly  different  from  peacetime  produc- 
tion. Here  is  the  opinion  of  G.  F.  Hughes, 
who  writes  "The  Merchant's  Point  of 
View"  for  the  New  Tork  Times: 

What  the  main  peacetime  problem  of  Ameri- 
can industry  will  be  is  not  oversimplified  when  it 
is  put  down  as  producing  for  many  customers 
of  uncertain  purchasing  power  and  uncertain 
moods,  as  against  a  war  problem  of  producing  for 
one  customer  with  ample  funds  and  one  purpose, 
namely  to  get  as  much  as  possible  in  the  shortest 
space  of  time;  .  .  .  Distribution  is  where  we 
fall  down,  authorities  agree.  .  ,  » 


206 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


And  so  they  do.  Harking  back  to  the 
outhne  of  the  economic  future  presented 
earUer,  business  is  giving  tremendous  em- 
phasis to  the  effects  of  the  banked-up  sav- 
ings of  wartime  in  creating  a  boom.  These 
savings  are  the  basis  o^  Period  2  in  the  out- 
hne. According  to  Fortune,  the  first  five 
choices  for  spending  will  be  automobiles, 
homes,  mechanical  refrigerators,  house  re- 
pairs, and  washing  machines. 

In  my  estimation  this  prospective  boom 
is  probably  less  significant  for  the  future 
of  private  enterprise  than  is  sometimes  im- 
plied. It  cannot  keep  going  long  on  the 
basis  of  people's  savings;  it  must  find  a  way 
to  distribute  purchasing  power  to  the 
greatest  possible  number  on  a  continuing 
basis.  Some  wise  business  men  are  saying 
that  the  important  factors  here  will  be  low 
prices  for  commodities  at  retail,  combined 
with  high  real  wages  and  high  average 
annual  incomes  for  workers.  Savings  can 
never  be  a  substitute  for  current  income, 
for  when  a  man's  current  income  stops 
he  doles  out  his  savings  for  minimum  neces- 
sities only.  It  is  because  some  business 
men  know  these  things  that  they  think  the 
real  testing  time  will  be  Period  4,  when 
war-created  savings  will  have  disappeared 
and  the  replacement  demand  will  be  sat- 
isfied, for  then  the  shift  will  have  to  be 
made,  in  Professor  Slichter's  words,  from 
a  "catching-up"  economy  to  a  "self-sus- 
taining" economy.  If  business  can  make 
that  shift  successfully  its  economic  prob- 
lem will  be  greatly  simplified.  But  my 
guess  is  that  it  will  never  get  a  chance  to 
make  it  if  the  distribution  problem  is  not 
solved. 

The  solution  can't  be  found  in  foreign 
trade  either,  though  if  foreign  trade  ex- 
pands it  will  be  a  major  boon  to  the  econ- 
omy, since  it  will  provide  that  10  per  cent 
of  our  total  trade  which  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  calls  "velvet."  In  making  a 
peaceful  world  a  high  volume  of  foreign 
trade  is  regarded  as  essential  by  both  busi- 
ness leaders  and  non-business  theorists. 
On  the  business  side  Thomas  W.  Lamont, 
chairman  of  the  board  of  J.  P.  Morgan  & 
Company;  Thomas  J.  Watson,  president 
of  the  International  Business  Machines 
Company;  and  Eric  A.  Johnston  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  all  combined  in  a 
single  broadcast  to  preach  this  doctrine. 


Where  and  what  we  are  going  to  sell  is 
something  else  again.  The  Export  Man- 
agers Club,  looking  for  our  principal  com- 
petitor after  the  war,  placed  Great  Britain 
first,  Germany  a  poor  second,  Europe  in 
general  third,  Russia  fourth,  Sweden  and 
Canada  fifth  place  jointly,  with  the  rest, 
including  Japan,  far  down  the  list.  As  for 
trade  outlets,  the  same  group  named  Latin 
America  as  a  "good"  prospect,  followed  by 
South  Africa,  China  and  the  East  Indies, 
Scandinavia,  Australasia,  India,  and 
Great  Britain. 

The  concentration  of  attention  on  ex- 
port prospects  is  shown  by  the  proposals 
to  keep  a  high  percentage  of  the  new  ship- 
ping tonnage  on  the  seas  and  oceans,  to  get 
a  proper  share  of  international  air  traffic, 
to  build  up  a  worldwide  American-owned 
cable  and  wireless  service,  and  to  work  out 
a  method  of  stabilizing  the  currencies  of 
the  world — all  of  which  proposals  have 
ardent  supporters  among  business  men. 

But  I  have  discovered  no  concrete  dis- 
cussion of  import  prospects.  Alfred  Sloan 
insists  that  our  trade  will  have  to  travel  on 
a  "two-way  street,"  but  this  opinion  seems 
to  be  a  reflex  of  his  dread  of  "a  world 
WPA."  Of  course  there  is  the  widely  en- 
dorsed reciprocal-trade  program  of  Secre- 
tary Hull,  and  since  this  involves  lowering 
American  tariff's  as  well  as  those  of  other 
countries,  the  presumption  is  that  heavy 
imports  are  looked  for.  Well,  maybe. 
But  the  anti-import  groups,  the  boys  who 
want  to  sell  but  not  to  buy,  have  yet  to  con- 
cede their  defeat.  On  the  evidence,  I 
should  say  that  American  business  in  gen- 
eral is  but  little  clearer  about  foreign  trade, 
its  principles  and  practice,  than  it  was  in 
1918.  And  in  any  event,  foreign  trade 
can't  solve  the  inner  contradictions  in  the 
American  economy.  This  brings  us,  at 
the  last,  to  the  business  demand  for  "a 
favorable  climate"  and  the  nature  of  the 
contrast  between  business  and  government 
as  systems  of  power. 

VI 

PRACTICALLY  all  busincss  spokesmen  to- 
day employ  the  phrase  "a  favorable 
climate" — or  some  equivalent  expression 
— to  cover  something  which  they  regard 
as  indispensable  to  their  success  in  the  post- 


WHAT    BUSINESS    THINKS    ABOUT    POSTWAR    AMERICA     207 


war  world.  What  they  mean  Is  not  al- 
ways clear  in  positive  terms,  but  it  is  ob- 
vious that  the  unfavorable  climate  that  they 
fear  originates  with  government.  There 
is  thus  a  strong  flavor  of  anti-government 
propaganda  in  most  pro-business  writing 
and  it  carries  over  into  proposals  for  ac- 
tion. Consciously  or  unconsciously,  busi- 
ness argues  for  the  idea  that  the  govern- 
ment should  do  Httle  more  than  provide 
the  ring  within  which  business  will  battle 
out  the  economic  problem — perhaps  oc- 
casionally calling  fouls  and  preventing 
the  combatants  from  eating  one  another 
alive. 

Business  wants  the  task  of  stabilizing 
the  economy  left  exclusively  in  its  hands. 
This  means  that  business  has  a  deep  hos- 
tility to  government  spending  of  the  sort 
advocated  by  Professor  Alvin  H.  Hansen, 
and  is  dead  set  against  the  idea  of  a  "com- 
pensating economy"  in  which  the  govern- 
ment would  provide  the  compensation  as 
Stuart  Chase  suggests.  It  is  this  attitude 
which  underlies  the  effort  of  the  private 
builders,  supported  by  Eric  A.  Johnston, 
to  force  the  government  out  of  housing, 
either  entirely  or  in  large  measure.  (Some 
business  men  have  even  asked  that  the  gov- 
ernment sell  its  existing  holdings  to  private 
landlords.)  It  is  this  attitude  which  is  re- 
flected also  in  the  demand  of  A.  L.  M. 
Wiggins,  president  of  the  American  Bank- 
ers Association,  that  the  government  dis- 
solve its  moneylending  agencies;  and  in 
the  suggestion  of  Samuel  W.  Murphy,  pres- 
ident of  Electric  Bond  &  Share,  that  the 
government  sell  all  its  power  plants,  in- 
cluding the  TVA,  to  private  enterprise. 

However,  not  all  business  men  take  such 
extreme  views  of  the  desirable  limits  of 
government  activity.  Some  of  them,  like 
Beardsley  Ruml,  treasurer  of  R.  H.  Macy 
&  Company,  admit  that  government 
should  play  a  major  role  if  economic  stabil- 
ity is  to  be  won,  including  within  the  range 
of  its  activities  planned  public  works,  on  a 
limited  scale  if  business  is  booming,  on  an 
extended  scale  if  it  is  slack. 

These  men  recognize  how  long  and  how 
variously  government  has  assisted  business 
to  get  along  in  the  world.  These  men 
would  modernize  that  assistance,  substi- 
tuting "public  works"  for  Henry  Clay's 
"internal  improvements,"  for  example. 


But  here  is  the  real  core  of  deep  concern 
about  the  future:  As  a  rule  business  spokesmen 
fail  to  take  a  rational  view  of  the  scope  oj  gov^ 
ernment  activities.  This  inspires  disquiet  in 
many  quarters  not  necessarily  hostile  to  business. 
Business  is,  in  this  country,  a  system  of  power  of 
major  importance,  but  by  its  very  nature  it  is 
incapable  oj  meeting  the  needs  oJ  the  American 
people  as  the  sole  system  oJ power.  Government 
is  also  a  system  oJ  power,  but  there  are  very  good 
reasons  j or  opposing  any  movement  to  make  it 
solely  responsible  j  or  all  the  needs  oj  the  people. 
If  either  of  these  two  major  powers  on  the  Amer- 
ican scene  appears  to  want  to  destroy  the  other 
by  plan,  then  the  neutral  citizen  has  genuine 
cause  for  alarm. 

I  do  not  think  that  business  men  gen- 
erally want  to  knock  the  government  down 
and  out,  but  many  of  them  appear  to  want 
the  government  to  serve  their  purposes 
only.  They  are  keen  to  use  the  govern- 
ment, but  not  to  grant  it  joint  and  equal 
status  in  the  national  community.  (Many 
business  men  always  have  felt  that  way, 
so  it  isn't  exactly  unexpected  that  the  idea 
should  arise  now  when  private  enterprise 
feels  itself  resurgent  after  a  decade  in  the 
doghouse.) 

There  are  three  major  fields  of  govern- 
ment policy  about  which  business  is  wor- 
ried. One  has  been  emphasized  through- 
out this  article — the  policy  of  providing  a 
considerable  proportion  of  the  jobs  needed 
after  the  war;  another  is  the  taxation  pol- 
icy; a  third  is  the  labor  policy.  Here  is 
the  way  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  argues 
the  case  against  government  spending  for 
jobs: 

A  solution  ;  :  :  that  is  advocated  by  a  number 
is  (1)  high  taxes  on  the  upper  income  brackets; 
(2)  planned  public  works;  (3)  deficit  spending; 
(4)  expanded  social  security  payments;  those  to- 
gether draining  off  excessive  savings  and  thereby 
automatically  converting  them  into  incomes  of 
the  people  who  will  be  occupied  in  the  construc- 
tion of  public  works  or  merely  consume  the  in- 
come in  some  form  of  "social  security."  .  .  .  The 
problem  is  to  make  [the]  depressed  one-third  of 
our  population  more  productive  so  that  they  can 
produce  for  themselves,  rather  than  become 
wards  of  the  state.  A  system  of  super  public 
works  merely  to  create  purchasing  power  smacks 
of  made-work  and  constitutes  a  species  of  escap- 
ism. .  .  .  Our  problem  is  to  put  .  .  .  surplus 
man  power  and  capital  to  work  by  creating  the 
necessary  mobility  and  flexibility  which  will  ab- 
sorb the  surpluses  into  production.  However, 
this  capital  will  go  to  work  only  if  there  is  reason- 


208 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


able  prospect  of  the  security  of  the  investment  and 
a  fair  return.  In  short,  human  wants  can  be 
satisfied  by  labor  and  management  only  if  such  a 
process  yields  a  fair  wage  to  both  worker  and  in- 
vestor ...  it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  base 
national  policy  [on  the  theory  that  requires  heavy 
government  spending]  So  long  as  there  is  substan- 
tial suspicion  that  cause  LAd  effect  have  been  in- 
verted by  its  spokesmen  .  ;  .  the  problem  is  to 
create  such  a  business  climate  that  investments 
and  new  commitments  will  be  forthcoming  at  a 
steady  rate. 

The  Chamber  doesn't  say  that  the 
spending  theory  is  mere  bunk;  it  is  simply 
highly  skeptical.  It  asks  that  an  alterna- 
tive interpretation  of  the  data — its  own 
theory — be  given  a  chance.  In  fact  its 
whole  program  for  the  survival  of  private 
enterprise  is  based  on  getting  that  chance, 
and  it  is  the  resulting  difficulty  of  com- 
promising with  the  alternative  theory  that 
promises  to  make  arguments  over  govern- 
ment spending  so  violent. 

And  so  it  is  that  people  to-day  are  not 
being  asked  to  choose  between  a  theoreti- 
cal program  and  a  practical  one,  though 
that  impression  is  abroad.  They  are  be- 
ing asked  to  select  between  two  theories 
of  what  is  needed  to  make  the  economy 
work.  Out  of  depression  and  war,  busi- 
ness is  emerging  to  try  to  sell  a  theoretical 
program  of  which  the  results  can  no  more 
be  guaranteed  than  could  the  results  of 
New  Deal  theory  in  the  prewar  years. 

Business  isn't  abandoning  the  professors 
and  the  government  economists  in  favor 
of  "practical"  men  and  their  political 
counterparts.  The  reverse  is  true.  Busi- 
ness is  employing  professors  and  ex-gov- 
ernment economists  to  furbish  up  its  case. 
Among  them — in  the  case  of  the  Commit- 
tee for  Economic  Development — are  such 
men  as  Gardiner  C.  Means  (of  the  abol- 
ished National  Resources  Planning  Board), 
Howard  Myers  (of  the  defunct  Works 
Progress  Administration),  Robert  R.  Na- 
than (fugitive  from  the  War  Production 
Board),  Calvin  B.  Hoover  of  Duke  Uni- 
versity, Harold  Groves  of  Wisconsin,  and 
many  others.  It  is  on  the  basis  of  an 
alternative  theory,  tricked  out  like  the 
opposite  theory  with  appeals  to  freedom, 
high  living  standards,  and  progress,  that 
business  now  advances  to  the  fray. 

In  taxation  what  business  chiefly  wants 
is  greater  control  over  its  own  earnings, 
through  lower  taxation  and  relief  from 


taxation  under  certain  circumstances,  so 
that  it  may  test  out  its  theory  that,  if  this 
boon  is  granted,  private  enterprise  will 
undertake  the  risks  of  speculative  invest- 
ment and  keep  the  economy  expanding. 
A  natural  corollary  of  this  is  the  insistent 
demand  for  strict  governmental  economy 
after  the  war.  But  business  cannot  guar- 
antee that  the  hoped-for  result  will  follow.  . 
It  makes  this  particular  demand  simply  to  2 
round  out  its  general  theory  of  how  the 
economy  can  be  run  by  private  Enterprise 
acting  on  its  own. 

So  it  is  with  labor.  It's  not  news  that 
many  business  men  are  definitely  anti- 
labor  union.  But  the  broader  idea  seems 
to  be  a  desire  to  break  up  the  current 
alliance  between  government  and  labor 
with  the  objective  of  cementing  one  be- 
tween business  and  labor.  The  quid  pro 
quo  for  labor  is  to  be  jobs  and  higher  real 
wages,  but  not  higher  money  wages,  against 
which  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  for  ex- 
ample, argues  vehemently. 

Thus  the  "more  favorable  climate"  idea- 
includes  many  things,  among  them  much 
anarchistic  anti-government  sentiment. 
But  on  the  higher  levels  it  appears  to  be  a 
quick  way  of  expressing  the  wish  and  hope 
of  getting  government  to  modify  its  theory 
and  practice.  Since  this  involves  chang- 
ing laws,  the  clash  will  work  itself  out  in 
politics — and  business  is  not  without  pow- 
erful political  friends.  It  will  have  even 
more  friends  if  government  can  find  no  better 
way  to  translate  its  theory  into  practice  than 
through  bigger  and  better  WPA^s,  which  the 
people  very  clearly  do  not  want. 

The  situation  to-day  is  roughly  as  though 
business  had  foreseen  the  Great  Depression 
in  1926  and  had  begun  to  plan  for  the 
continuance  of  a  high  level  of  business 
activity,  thus  arriving  at  1929  with  some 
ideas  in  hand  instead  of  a  mess  of  optimis- 
tic ignorance  about  what  was  around  the 
corner.  The  notion  that  we  live  in  a  self- 
adjusting  economy  has  vanished  from  the 
minds  of  most  business  leaders.  They  ad- 
mit that  another  depression  is  not  only 
possible;  it  is  highly  likely  unless  plans  are 
laid  beforehand  to  prevent  it.  And  most 
important  of  all,  most  business  leaders  rec- 
ognize the  fact  that  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  failure  of  business  plans  will 


THE    GETTYSBURG    ADDRESS 


209 


be  the  permanent  entry  of  the  government 
into  the  task  of  providing  jobs. 

That  government  can  take  over  is  ad- 
mitted; as  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  says, 
that  "the  state  can  operate  industry  is  not 
denied  generally  by  economists.  .  .  ." 
But  business  is  willing,  so  its  spokesmen 
say,  to  risk  all  on  its  theory  to  win  all  if  it 
succeeds.  Its  spokesmen  realize  that  none 
of  the  maladjustments  that  have  plagued 
the  economy  since  1929  has  really  been 
righted.  Nevertheless  they  believe  that 
business  can  right  them  and  go  forward  to 
brilliant  achievements  if  given  a  chance. 

Faced  with  the  alternatives,  both  of 
which  are  politically  feasible  in  the  United 
States  to-day,   the  wise  citizen  will  not 


shackle  himself  to  either  party  to  the  argu- 
ment nor  bind  himself  to  either  private  or 
government  enterprise.  He  will  try,  as 
best  he  can,  to  tip  the  balance  now  on  one 
side,  now  on  the  other,  in  accordance  with 
his  understanding  of  how  the  general  wel- 
fare can  best  be  served.  That's  a  tough 
job  all  by  itself.  While  dogmatists  flour- 
ish on  both  sides  of  the  fence,  the  truth  is 
not  in  them.  We  are  in  an  age  of  explora- 
tion. All  allegations  to  the  contrary,  we 
don't  know  where  we  are  going,  though  we  cer- 
tainly are  on  our  way.  Explorers  who 
know  exactly  where  they  are  going  should 
be  regarded  with  extreme  suspicion. 
True  explorers  are,  by  nature  and  cultiva- 
tion, curious,  adventurous,  and  skeptical. 


THE    GETTYSBURG   ADDRESS 


GILBERT    MAXWELL 


SILLY  and  dull  and  commonplace,  the  voice 
Of  that  misguided  day 
Said  of  your  speech,  old  hero. 
Not  having  come  to  the  Skull, 
Not  having  knelt  to  pray  while  the  heedless  slept, 
Nobody  wept 
At  what  you  had  to  say; 
Nobody  heard  by  choice. 
I  hope  you  did  not  grieve.     I  hope  you  knew 
(With  your  speech  as  wind,  except  to  the  ears  of  a  few) 
That  the  brave  thought  born  in  pain 
Had  then,  as  now,  no  need 
Of  brief  applause.  ^ 

I  hope  you  knew  that  the  words  which  now  stand  plain, 
Give  pause 

And  dazzle  the  eyes  of  fools  like  sun, 
Though  buried  centuries  deep  as  the  words  of  One 
No  less  misheard  and  murdered  without  cause, 
Would  rise,  arrayed  in  light,  to  live  again. 


IT    WAS   BOOTH'S    BODY 

A  Mystery  Writer  s  Solution  to  a  Civil  War  Mystery 


DALE     CLARK 


THE  most  horrifying  and  baffling  crime 
in  American  history  occurred  on  the 
night  of  Good  Friday,  April  14, 
1865.  Its  victim  was  Abraham  Lincoln, 
President  of  the  United  States.  The  plot 
also  involved  a  planned  murder  of  the 
Vice-President  and  an  attempt  to  cut  the 
throat  of  the  Secretary  of  State.  The 
outcome  was  a  mystery  which  has  in- 
trigued historians,  biographers,  and  ex- 
perts on  legal  evidence  for  nearly  four- 
fifths  of  a  century. 

The  enigma  is:  did  the  Federal  detec- 
tives bring  back  to  Washington  the  body 
of  John  Wilkes  Booth,  or  was  the  corpse 
that  of  another  and  innocent  man? 
Actually  it  was  the  body  of  Booth,  but  it 
does  not  appear  that  the  Federal  authori- 
ties were  ever  entirely  sure.  Their  un- 
certainty was  due,  it  is  now  clear,  to  a 
stratagem  of  Booth's.  Booth  hoped  at  the 
last  to  escape,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
trooper  who  shot  him — against  orders — 
he  might  have  attempted  to  put  his 
stratagem  into  effect. 

The  evidence  about  the  body  points 
both  ways.  The  experts  who  say  it  was 
Booth's  body  have  got  round  the  contrary 
testimony  by  ignoring  it,  or  by  dismissing 
it  as  "mistaken."  Those  who  say  it  was 
not  Booth's  body  have  been  forced  to 
ignore  and  dismiss  the  statements  of  every 
single  person  who  ever  looked  at  the  corpse. 


The  most  recent  biographer,  after  study- 
ing the  seventy-nine-year  accumulation  of 
evidence,  decided  that  "the  question  of 
whether  or  not  the  man  who  died  at 
Garrett's  farm  was  John  Wilkes  Booth  is 
one  that  doubtless  will  never  be  settled." 

Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  a 
solution,  an  extraordinarily  simple  one 
too;  it  is  based  on  the  presumption  that 
both  sides  are  right,  that  all  the  witnesses  told 
the  truth  to  the  best  of  their  ability,  and 
that  no  one  lied  about  any  important 
question — except  the  murderer  himself, 
who  had  the  most  to  gain  by  the  deception. 

The  solution  which  follows  fits  every 
principal  statement,  explains  every  major 
disagreement,  and  accords  with  every  act 
of  every  participant  in  the  case.  If  the 
old  mystery  can  be  solved  by  presuming 
that  John  Wilkes  Booth  coupled  deceit 
with  murder,  should  not  the  presumption 
be  raised  for  study? 

THE  commonly  accepted  story  is  that 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  great  war 
of  1861-65  a  band  of  conspirators  in 
Washington  plotted  to  kidnap  Lincoln  and 
exchange  him  for  the  Confederate  prison- 
ers held  by  the  North.  A  young  actor, 
John  Wilkes  Booth,  in  1864  left  for  safe- 
keeping with  John  S.  Clarke  a  letter 
revealing  himself  as  the  author  and  ring- 
leader of  the  conspiracy.     Among  those 


IT    WAS    BOOTH'S    BODY 


21 


about  him  were  Mrs.  Mary  Surratt,  who 
kept  a  boarding  house  in  the  city,  and  her 
son  John;  David  Hcrold,  a  simple  and 
half-witted  youth;  a  young  Confederate 
veteran,  Lewis  Payne;  and  others,  with 
whom  Dr.  Samuel  A.  Mudd  of  Bryan- 
town,  south  of  the  city,  had  perhaps  been 
associated. 

The  kidnapping  never  came  off,  and 
after  Lee's  surrender  Booth  decided  to 
avenge  the  South  by  murdering  Lincoln. 

On  Good  Friday,  April  14th,  Booth  gave 
Mrs.  Surratt  a  pair  of  opera  glasses  to  be 
left  for  him  at  a  tavern  on  the  route  of  his 
subsequent  flight.  To  his  friend  and 
fellow-actor,  John  Matthews,  he  entrusted 
a  sealed  envelope  to  be  delivered  to  the 
National  Intelligencer  neither  before  nor 
later  than  the  next  morning. 

That  night,  the  story  continues.  Booth 
entered  the  President's  box  at  Ford's 
Theater  during  the  performance  of  "Our 
American  Cousin"  and  shot  Lincoln  in 
the  head;  dropped  the  gun  and  knifed 
Major  Rathbone;  leaped  from  the  box  to 
the  stage,  but  caught  his  spur  on  a  draped 
flag,  and  so  fell  and  broke  his  left  leg  above 
the  ankle;  but  nevertheless,  rushed  from  a 
rear  door  to  mount  a  horse  waiting  in  the 
alley.  He  talked  his  way  past  the  sentry 
at  the  Anacostia  bridge,  as  did  David 
Herold,  his  confederate,  a  few  minutes 
later.  The  two  rode  through  Surratts- 
ville  together,  and  on  to  the  home  of  Dr. 
Mudd,  where  Booth  appeared  wearing  a 
false  beard  as  disguise.  Dr.  Mudd  slashed 
the  left  boot  to  remove  it  from  the  swollen 
ankle  and  splinted  the  broken  leg.  Booth 
stayed  in  the  Mudd  home  until  late  Satur- 
day, and  then  went  off  wearing  a  shoe 
instead  of  the  slashed  boot.  This  left 
boot,  with  "J.  Wilkes"  written  in  it,  was 
surrendered  on  the  following  Friday  to 
Federal  officers;  it  is  preserved  in  the  War 
Department  archives. 

Thereafter,  as  the  story  goes.  Booth  and 
Herold  made  their  way  southward  to  the 
farm  of  another  Southern  sympathizer. 
Colonel  Samuel  Cox;  they  lay  hidden  in  a 
thicket  for  some  days  before  crossing  the 
Potomac  in  a  small  boat;  on  Monday,  the 
24th,  they  reached  Port  Conway  on  the 
Rappahannock  and  crossed  by  ferry  to 
Port  Royal.  Three  men  helped  them  to 
the   Garrett  farm   nearby  and   got  per- 


mission for  Booth  to  stop  there  under  the 
name  of  Boyd,  in  the  role  of  a  wounded 
Confederate  soldier.  Herold  v/ent  on 
with  these  men  to  Bowling  Green;  one 
biographer  says,  to  buy  a  pair  of  shoes. 
The  next  day,  after  Herold's  return,  the 
two  fugitives  were  frightened  into  the 
woods  by  a  passing  troop  of  Federal 
cavalry. 

The  Garrctts  took  alarm;  they  would 
permit  Booth  and  Herold  to  spend  the 
night  only  in  a  tobacco  barn — and  they 
locked  the  barn  door  on  them.  That 
night  the  cavalry  troop,  commanded  by  a 
Lieutenant  Doherty,  and  escorting  two  Se- 
cret Service  operatives — Lieutenant  Colo- 
nel Conger  and  Lieutenant  L.  B.  Baker — 
returned  and  surrounded  the  barn,  and 
Baker  called  upon  the  fugitives  to  come 
out.  Herold  surrendered.  His  compan- 
ion would  not.  The  barn  was  fired,  and 
the  man  inside  either  committed  suicide  or 
was  shot — against  orders — by  a  semi- 
crazed  trooper.  The  dying  man  was 
carried  to  the  Garrett  porch,  where  he  ex- 
pired at  about  seven  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, having  murmured  only  a  few  intelli- 
gible words:  "Tell  Mother  I  die  for  my 
country." 

Conger  hurried  on  ahead  to  Washing- 
ton, taking  with  him  a  diary  found  in  this 
man's  pocket  (with  pictures  of  Booth's 
actress  friends  tucked  in  it),  a  pocket 
compass,  a  knife,  a  note  of  exchange  in 
Booth's  name,  a  diamond  pin,  a  manicure 
file,  and  a  pipe.  He  delivered  these  arti- 
cles to  La  Fayette  Baker,  chief  of  the 
Secret  Service,  who  hurried  with  them  to 
Secretary  of  War  Stanton.  Later  in  the 
day  the  body  reached  Washington  and 
was  taken  aboard  the  warship  Montauk; 
the  next  day  it  was  taken  from  the  ship  by 
La  Fayette  Baker  and  Lieutenant  Baker 
(they  were  cousins)  and  secretly  buried  in 
the  old  Penitentiary  adjoining  the  Federal 
Arsenal.  The  Bakers  let  it  be  understood 
that  the  corpse  had  been  weighted  down  in 
the  river  or  swamps,  or  in  some  way  so 
disposed  of  that  mortal  eye  might  never 
look  on  it  again. 

The  story  began  to  spread  that  there 
had  been  a  mistake;  that  the  dead  man  had 
not  been  John  Wilkes  Booth  at  all;  that 
the  living  Booth  had  been  seen  here,  there, 
and  the  other  place.     In  1867,  when  La 


212 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Fayette  Baker  published  his  History  of  the 
Secret  Service^  he  tried,  as  he  said,  to  "for- 
ever put  at  rest  the  many  absurd  and 
foolish  rumors  in  circulation." 

Booth  [he  wrote]  had  h^  a  tumor  or  carbuncle 
cut  from  his  neck.  .  .  .  Dr.  May,  a  well-known 
and  very  skillful  surgeon,  of  twenty-five  years* 
practice  in  Washington,  had  performed  the  op- 
eration. ...  I  called  on  Dr.  May,  who,  before 
seeing  the  body,  minutely  described  the  exact 
locality  of  the  tumor,  the  nature  and  date  of  the 
operation,  etc.  After  being  sworn,  he  pointed  to 
the  scar  on  the  neck,  which  was  then  plainly 
visible.  Five  other  witnesses  were  examined,  all 
of  whom  had  known  the  assassin  intimately  for 
years.  .  .  .  General  Barnes  cut  from  Booth's 
neck  about  two  inches  of  the  spinal  column, 
through  which  the  ball  had  passed.  .  .  .  Im- 
mediately .  .  .  the  Secretary  of  War  gave  orders 
as  to  the  disposition  of  the  body,  which  had 
become  very  offensive  .  .  .  the  leg,  broken  in 
jumping  from  the  box  to  the  stage,  was  much 
discolored  and  swollen,  the  blood  from  the  wound 
having  saturated  his  underclothing. 

Read  carefully,  this  statement  by  La 
Fayette  Baker  does  not  say  that  the  other 
five  witnesses  examined  were  themselves 
permitted  to  view  or  examine  the  body. 
He  rested  his  case  on  the  one  witness,  and 
this  witness  had  another  story  to  tell. 
Dr.  John  Frederick  May  in  his  version  of 
the  incident  said: 

"The  body  was  on  the  deck,  completely 
concealed  by  a  tarpaulin  cover,  and 
Surgeon-General  Barnes  and  his  assistants 
standing  near  it.  By  his  order  the  cover 
was  removed,  and  to  my  great  astonish- 
ment revealed  a  body  in  whose  lineaments 
there  was  to  me  no  resemblance  to  the 
man  I  had  known  in  life!  My  surprise 
was  so  great  that  I  at  once  said  to  General 
Barnes,  'There  is  no  resemblance  in  that 
corpse  to  Booth,  nor  can  I  believe  it  to  be 
that  of  him,' 

"After  looking  at  it  for  a  few  moments,  I 
asked,  'Is  there  a  scar  upon  the  back  of  its 
neck?'  He  replied,  'There  is.'  I  then 
said,  'If  that  is  the  body  of  Booth  let  me 
describe  the  scar  before  it  is  seen  by  me'; 
and  did  so  ...  so  accurately  as  to  cause 
him  to  say,  'You  have  described  the  scar 
as  well  as  if  you  were  looking  at  it.  .  .  .' 

"The  body  being  turned,  the  back  of 
the  neck  was  examined  and  my  mark  was 
unmistakably  found  by  me  upon  it.  And 
it  being  afterward,  by  my  request,  placed 
in  a  sitting  position,  I  was  finally  enabled 
to  imperfectly  recognize  the  features  of 


Booth.     But  never  in  a  human  being  had  a 
greater  change  taken  place.  .  .'  . 

"The  right  lower  limb  was  greatly  con- 
tused, and  perfectly  black  from  a  fracture 
of  one  of  the  long  bones  of  the  leg.  ..." 

II 

^RE  is  the  very  kernel  of  the  seventy- 
nine-year-old  riddle: 

How  could  John  Wilkes  Booth,  who 
broke  his  left  leg  on  the  stage  at  Ford's 
Theater,  and  had  his  left  boot  cut  away 
by  Dr.  Mudd,  turn  up  as  a  corpse  with  a 
broken  right  leg?     Was  Dr.  May  mistaken? 

The  body  of  the  supposed  John  Wilkes 
Booth  was  returned  to  the  Booth  family 
by  order  of  President  Johnson,  February 
15,  1869.  In  an  undertaking  establish- 
ment in  Washington,  and  again  in  Balti- 
more, the  remains  were  inspected  by  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  friends,  and  stage  folk; 
and  all  agreed  that  it  was,  indeed,  John 
Wilkes  Booth. 

Conclusive?  Unfortunately  not.  Three 
different  times  Edwin  Booth  had  to  im- 
plore the  government  to  surrender  these 
remains  for  family  burial  "to  lessen  the 
crushing  weight  of  grief  that  is  hurrying 
my  mother  to  her  grave,"  before  the 
authorities  agreed  to  do  so.  It  would 
have  needed  a  stony  soul  to  tell  the  sufTer- ' 
ing  mother  after  all  that  time  that  the 
government  had  released  the  wrong  body, 
even  if  that  had  been  true.  For  emo- 
tional reasons  the  family  and  friends  looked 
primarily  for  proof  that  the  body  was 
Booth's  rather  than  for  discrepancies  in- 
dicating it  might  not  be. 

Anyway,  what  happened  on  these  occa- 
sions? One  account  says  the  body  was 
identified  on  the  basis  of  one  filled  tooth, 
and  another  of  two;  in  one  account  it  is  in  a 
"box"  and  in  another  in  a  "casket";  the 
head  is  severed  and  passed  from  hand  to 
hand  in  one  report,  but  in  another  the  leg 
is  severed;  the  same  foot  wears  a  "shoe" 
and  a  cut-down  boot  in  different  accounts. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  there  has  since  been 
speculation  as  to  whether  or  not  the  body 
was  really  that  of  Booth. 

But  from  our  point  of  view  the  most 
important  feature  of  these  reports  is  that 
only  two  of  them  state  specifically  which 
leg   was   broken.     A   Baltimore  reporter 


IT    WAS    BOOTH'S    BODY 


213 


said  the  right  leg.  Colonel  W.  M.  Pcgram 
and  Mr.  H.  G.  Wagner,  on  the  other  hand, 
said  in  a  statement  made  by  Pegram  and 
sworn  to  by  Wagner: 

The  body  .  .  .  lay  dressed  in  the  suit  of  clothes 
in  which  he  had  been  shot.  On  the  right  leg  was 
a  long  cavalry  boot,  coming  up  to  the  knee.  The 
left  leg  was  disjointed  at  knee  and  ankle,  the  latter 
having  been  broken  when  he  jumped  from  the 
box  to  the  stage  of  the  theater  after  shooting 
Lincoln. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Dr.  Mudd  .  .  . 
cut  the  boot  from  the  left  leg  and  manufactured  a 
shoe  from  the  boot's  foot,  in  which  we  saw  the 
remains  of  the  actual  foot  lying  in  the  casket.  .  .  . 
Tlie  coal-black  hair  which  rolled  back  from  the 
forehead  had  grown  probably  nearly  a  foot  in 
length. 

The  scientific  fact  of  course  is  that  hair 
does  not  grow  after  death,  except  as  it  is 
apparently  lengthened  by  the  drying  and 
contraction  of  the  skin.  Booth's  hair 
could  not  have  been  so  long  unless  he  wore 
it  so  in  life;  and  his  photographs  show  that 
he  wore  it  trimmed  short  and  parted  to  the 
side.  If  hair  grew  after  death  the  upper 
lip,  cheeks,  and  chin  would  have  been 
covered  with  it.  No  one  else  noted  these 
circumstances.  Nor  did  these  two  men. 
They  had  the  common  belief  that  hair 
does  grow  in  the  grave;  the  belief  colored 
their  memories  when  they  came  to  make 
their  statement.  It  was  not  really  a  lie, 
but  a  misconception.  And  could  they 
not  be  equally  wrong  with  respect  to  which 
leg  was  fully  booted? 

Among  all  the  witnesses  who  testify  to 
having  looked  on  the  corpse,  Dr.  John 
Frederick  May  is  clearly  the  best.  He 
was  a  surgeon  and  not  a  layman;  he  viewed 
the  body  officially  and  for  the  specific  pur- 
pose of  the  record;  by  describing  the  neck 
scar  before  he  saw  it,  he  demonstrated  the 
excellence  of  his  memory  for  detail;  he 
was  not  easily  satisfied  and  (even  after  the 
scar  was  found)  studied  the  corpse  long 
and  intently.  He  alone  among  the  wit- 
nesses confesses  to  a  reasonable  doubt  in 
his  own  mind;  he  alone  was  a  skeptic  who 
had  first  to  convince  himself.  Yet  he  was 
finally  convinced  that  the  corpse  he  saw 
was  clearly  that  of  the  actor  upon  whom 
he  had  operated. 

Historians  have  weighed  the  circum- 
stances of  the  chase  and  capture,  the  per- 
sonal possessions  of  Booth  found  on  the 


dead  man,  the  teeth  in  his  head,  and  the 
testimony  of  friends  and  relatives;  they 
added  these  up — and  decided  that  May 
was  mistaken  about  the  injured  limb. 

But  Dr.  May  was  not  mistaken.  He 
deceived  no  one.  John  Wilkes  Booth 
deceived  everyone. 

Ill 

EVERY  schoolchild  knows  nowadays 
that  Lincoln's  assassin  caught  his 
spur  on  the  flag,  fell,  and  broke  his  left  leg 
on  the  stage.  But  at  the  time  the  persons 
in  Ford's  Theater  were  singularly  unaware 
of  it.  Booth  jumped  up,  says  W.  J. 
Ferguson,  a  callboy  in  the  theater,  "al- 
most without  pause.  .  .  .  Apparently  un- 
hurt, three  feet  to  a  stride,  he  rushed 
across  the  stage."  La  Fayette  Baker, 
coming  to  Washington  from  New  York  on 
the  Sunday  after  the  tragedy,  found  that 
"No  direct  clue  .  .  .  had  been  obtained, 
beyond  the  conceded  fact  that  J.  Wilkes 
Booth  was  the  assassin." 

No  one  knew  that  the  murderer  was 
fleeing  in  a  lamed  condition.  The  posters 
offering  rewards  for  his  capture  said  noth- 
ing of  a  limp  or  leg  injury.  All  over  the 
country  police  were  arresting  false  Booths, 
none  of  whom  had  legs  broken. 

So  far  as  anyone  knew  who  witnessed 
the  assassin's  flight  from  the  theater,  he 
might  have  hurt  his  left  leg,  or  his  right  leg, 
or  no  leg  at  all.  He  was  able  to  swing  into 
the  saddle  of  his  horse  without  any  assist- 
ance— which  means  that  he  inserted  his 
left  foot  into  the  stirrup,  grasped  the  saddle 
with  his  hand,  and  so  hoisted  his  whole 
weight  on  that  leg. 

All  the  histories  and  biographies  which 
have  Booth  landing  on  his  left  foot,  or 
have  his  left  leg  doubling  under  him,  or 
have  him  dragging  that  leg  as  he  fled,  are 
based  on  impressions  and  recollections 
colored  by  subsequent  events.  The  "fact" 
that  Booth  had  hurt  his  left  leg  was  not 
known  to  anyone  in  Washington  that 
night — or  to  the  grim  horseman  himself  as 
he  journeyed  the  moonlit  roads  of  Mary- 
land. 

The  false  whiskers  behind  which  the 
assassin  presented  himself  to  Dr.  Samuel 
Mudd  are  a  clue  to  the  whole  mystery. 
Booth's  biographers  suppose  that  he  put 
the  stage  beard  on  to  deceive  Dr.  Mudd  as 


214 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


to  his  identity;  he  distrusted  Mudd;  that 
high-minded  gentleman  was  not  the  man 
to  connive  with  murder.  Granted,  but 
does  that  fully  explain  the  beard? 

It  does  not,  for  thcreason  that  no  stage 
whiskers  available  to  Booth  in  1865  could 
possibly,  for  a  moment,  deceive  the  doctor. 
The  whiskers  might  pass  in  the  open,  by 
moonlight,  and  possibly  Booth  had  thought 
to  bring  them  on  that  account.  But 
Mudd,  at  the  close  range  from  which  he 
must  examine  the  injured  leg,  and  by  the 
light  he  would  need  to  do  it,  must  at  least 
see  the  beard  was  false.  He  could  not 
help  seeing  it,  and  Booth  knew  he  must 
see  it. 

The  murderer  who  halted  in  Mudd's 
yard  at  4  a.m.  did  not  arrive  without  hav- 
ing done  some  thinking  along  the  way. 
He  was  not  any  casual  and  ordinary  crim- 
inal; he  was  John  Wilkes  Booth,  a  flam- 
boyant actor,  a  great  Don  Juan,  a  con- 
spirator, a  maker  of  plots,  and  a  murderer. 
He  was  not  the  helpless  pawn  of  events;  he 
who  had  schemed  the  death  of  the  Presi- 
dent, the  Vice-President,  and  the  Secretary 
of  State  could  still  scheme  and  improvise 
and  intrigue  to  alter  his  own  private  des- 
tiny. Booth  must  be  understood  for  what 
he  was;  his  behavior  must  be  reckoned  ac- 
cording to  the  whole  mad  trajectory  of  his 
life.  Would  he  gamble  that  life  now  on 
the  feeble  device  of  a  stage  beard — a  trick 
which  could  not  fool  a  child? 

No.  The  deception  was  deeper  and 
more  devious.  Mudd  could  not  be 
trusted;  it  would  not  do  to  accost  him 
with,  "Hello,  Pm  Booth.  I've  just  killed 
Lincoln."  That  disclosure  would  only 
drive  the  ethical  Dr.  Mudd  straight  to  the 
authorities.  "I  fell  from  my  horse  and 
hurt  my  leg"  would  not  do  either,  because 
Mudd  if  not  warned  might  mention  Booth's 
name  to  his  neighbors  before  hearing  of 
the  assassination.  This  doctor  must  be 
approached  from  another  tangent — the 
only  way  in  which  such  a  man,  personally 
honorable,  but  nevertheless  a  sympathizer 
with  the  Lost  Rebellion,  could  be  ap- 
proached. John  Wilkes  Booth  under- 
stood Samuel  Mudd  very  well;  he  had 
encountered  the  mingled  sympathies  and 
reluctances  of  the  "fellow- traveler"  often 
enough  in  his  career.  Such  an  honorable 
gentleman  will  never  wink  at  crime,  but 


he  will  close  his  eyes  to  it.  He  cannot 
come  into  the  open,  but,  given  a  loophole, 
will  slip  through  that. 

John  Wilkes  Booth  put  on  the  stage 
beard  precisely  because  the  doctor  must 
see  that  it  was  false.  The  object  was  to 
frighten  Mudd,  and  yet  not  give  him 
direct  and  positive  information. 

Afterward  the  saddened  Mudd  pleaded, 
"He  was  in  disguise.  I  did  not  know 
Booth  whilst  in  my  house."  Of  course  he 
did  not.  He  did  not  wish  the  knowledge, 
and  so  averted  his  eyes.  ''That  beard  is 
false,''  must  have  flashed  through  his  mind. 
He  tore  his  gaze  away;  the  disguise  hinted 
of  something  grim,  dark,  and  hidden.  In 
those  desperate  years  there  were  a  good 
many  things  a  sympathizer,  a  fellow- 
traveler  inside  the  Union  lines,  had  best 
not  look  into  too  deeply.  The  troubled 
Mudd  busied  himself  with  a  knife,  incised 
the  right  boot,  and  splinted  the  right  leg. 

Booth  was  helped  upstairs  to  bed;  he 
passed  the  greater  part  of  the  day  in  the 
Mudd  home.  Now  he  knew  the  serious- 
ness of  his  injury.  Now  his  flight  must  be 
both  painful  and  slow.  Is  it  too  much  to 
suppose  John  Wilkes  Booth  did  a  little 
thinking  on  his  problem? 

The  great  danger  was  that  Dr.  Mudd 
could  not  be  counted  on  not  to  break 
under  questioning  as  determined  man- 
hunters  closed  upon  the  countryside. 
Dr.  Mudd  must  be  persuaded  to  give  mis- 
leading information,  if  he  talked  at  all. 
He  must  say  it  had  been  the  left  leg. 

This  was  simple  enough;  it  needs  no 
intellectual  giant  to  see  the  advantage  of  a 
false  description  to  a  fugitive.  Simply  too. 
Booth  knew  the  boot  could  not  be  drawn 
onto  his  splinted  limb.  But  if  a  boot 
were  left  behind  it  must  be  a  left  one.  .  .  . 
Could  Mudd,  finding  a  left  boot  in  the 
house,  swear  positively  he  had  set  a  right 
leg?  Perhaps  he  could  not.  He  had 
given  the  leg  only  his  mechanical  and  pro- 
fessional attention;  his  personal  thoughts 
and  anxieties  were  elsewhere. 

(It  may  seem  to  the  reader  incredible 
that  the  doctor  should  not  remember. 
But  does  the  reader  know  that,  as  a  matter 
of  court  record,  one  autopsy  surgeon 
testified  that  the  fatal  ball  lodged  behind 
Lincoln's  left  eye,  and  another  that  it 
lodged  behind  his  right?) 


IT    WAS    BOOTH'S    BODY 


215 


If  Mudd  swore  to  the  right  leg  could  he 
make  anyone  believe  him  -against  the 
physical  fact  of  a  left  boot?  Perhaps  he 
would  destroy  the  boot  though.  No! 
He  dared  not.  He  must  reflect  that 
Booth  might  be  caught,  he  might  tell  all — 
and  then  to  have  burned  the  boot  would 
have  put  a  rope  round  Mudd's  neck. 

Off  came  Booth's  left  boot — with  Her- 
old's  help — to  be  slashed  by  a  knife  as  the 
right  one  had  been. 

Mrs.  Mudd  saw  the  visitor's  beard  slip 
as  he  hobbled  downstairs.  Did  Booth, 
the  actor,  blunder  so  clumsily  and  fatally? 
It  is  out  of  character.  It  is  only  in  char- 
acter if  it  was  done  deliberately  in  order 
that  she  should  stare  at  his  face — and  not 
see  that  he  had  on  his  right  foot  a  left  shoe 
of  Mudd's  and  on  his  left  foot  (and  inside 
iiis  trouser  leg)  the  right  boot  Mudd  had 
slashed. 

Once  away  from  Mudd's  house  Booth 
had  to  trade  his  uncomfortable  footgear 
with  Herold — who  could  wear  the  boot 
and  the  shoe  on  the  appropriate  feet. 
(Later,  at  the  conspirators'  trial,  the  gov- 
ernment put  into  the  evidence  a  boot  of 
Payne's  with  Booth's  name  in  it.  Booth, 
who  claimed  a  professional  income  of  over 
twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  may  well 
have  provided  his  followers  with  discarded 
articles  of  dress.  Possibly  Herold's  boots, 
like  Payne's,  were  Booth's  old  ones.) 
Booth  put  on  Herold's  left  boot  whole,  and 
cut  off  the  upper  of  the  right  one. 

If  our  theory  is  correct,  he  did  so  be- 
cause he  expected  the  Union  patrols  to  be 
seeking  a  man  with  a  broken  left  leg, 
wearing  one  boot  and  one  shoe.  At  all 
events  proof  that  he  did  do  so  is  suggested 
by  the  following  facts:  (1)  that  this  is  the 
only  possible  explanation  for  the  cut-down 
boot  Pegram  and  Wagner  claim  to  have 
seen  in  the  casket;  (2)  that  this  explains 
why  Herold  went  to  Bowling  Green  to  buy 
himself  shoes;  and  (3)  that  it  suggests  why 
the  government  which  put  the  slashed  left 
boot  into  the  trial  evidence  did  not  also 
put  in  the  right  one  and  Mudd's  shoe,  in- 
stead of  presumably  burying  these  in  the 
secret  grave.  The  shoe  and  the  mate  to 
that  left  boot  would  have  been  valuable 
evidence  if  found  on  Booth's  body. 

This,  then,  is  the  solution  to  the  mystery: 
John  Wilkes  Booth  never  had  a  broken 


left  leg;  the  deceit  originated  with  him. 
If  the  assassin  of  Lincoln  was  reported  to 
have  a  broken  left  leg  was  it  not  possible 
that  he,  with  a  broken  right  leg,  might 
dodge  the  gallows? 

IV 

THERE  is  no  eyewitness  to  swear  which 
leg  Booth  limped  on.  No  one  noticed 
that.  Why  should  they?  They  did  not 
know  the  assassin  had  a  broken  leg.  By 
the  time  the  point  came  to  be  argued  it 
could  not  have  been  very  clear  in  anyone's 
recollection  which  had  been  the  lamed 
limb. 

We  must  look  for  internal  evidence,  and 
we  find  it  in  the  behavior  of  La  Fayette 
Baker  when  the  body  was  returned  to 
Washington.  Baker  was  guided  by  three 
purposes.  He  desired  to  apprehend  Lin- 
coln's murderer;  he  wanted  to  collect  the 
reward  money;  and  he  wished  to  convict 
every  person  involved  in  the  conspiracy — 
and  that  last  was  Stanton's  ardent  wish 
too. 

So  far  as  the  first  two  motives  go,  the 
fact  that  the  corpse  had  a  broken  right  leg 
made  no  diflference  at  all.  But  the  evi- 
dence against  Dr.  Samuel  Mudd  was  that 
he  had  set  a  left  leg;  it  was  a  left  boot  found 
in  his  home.  Now  if  the  body  of  Booth 
were  publicly  displayed  v/ith  a  broken 
right  leg,  and  wearing  a  different  pair  of 
boots  altogether,  Mudd  might  go  free. 
And  if  Mudd  went  free,  then  the  whole 
tenuous  chain  of  inferences  stretching 
from  the  utterly  innocent  Jefferson  Davis 
to  the  questionably  guilty  Mary  Surratt  to 
the  guilty  Payne  began  to  fall  apart. 

Historians  have  had  to  accept  the  lame 
excuse  that  Stanton  feared  some  lock  of 
hair  of  Booth's  might  fall  into  Southern 
hands  to  be  preserved  as  a  holy  relic. 
But,  guarded  by  troops,  the  body  might 
have  been  submitted  to  an  open  autopsy 
before  its  secret  burial.  It  has  never  been 
explained  why  this  was  not  done. 

Did  Baker  and  Stanton  rush  the  corpse 
from  the  sight  of  man  in  order  to  convict 
Mudd? 

We  must  judge  these  men  on  their 
records.  What  was  La  Fayette  Baker's 
claim  upon  the  reward?  He  said  in  his 
History  of  the  Secret  Service  that  he  sent 
Conger,  L.  B.  Baker,  and  Doherty's  cav- 


216 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


airy  troop  to  Port  Royal  because  one  of 
his  men,  Theodore  Woodall,  brought  in  a 
Negro  whom  Baker  himself  questioned. 
He  says  also  that  Woodall  left  Washington 
on  Sunday,  April  23,  in  the  afternoon  or 
evening,  traveling  ly  steamboat  to  Port 
Tobacco,  not  arriving  there  until  nearly 
Monday  morning.  He  further  says  that  on 
^^Sunday  morning,  the  23rd  of  April^^  he  sent 
Major  General  Hancock  a  written  request 
for  the  cavalry  troop.  He  publishes  a 
copy  of  this  note — dated  April  24.  He 
says  the  cavalry  troop  came,  under  com- 
mand of  Lieutenant  "Dougherty,"  and 
that  he  told  him:  "You  are  going  in  pur- 
suit of  the  assassins."  And  that  he  ^Hhen 
dispatched  a  messenger  to  the  quarter- 
master of  the  Sixth  Street  Wharf"  request- 
ing a  steamboat  to  take  the  troop  down 
the  river.  "The  messenger  returned" — 
bearing  the  quartermaster's  reply,  dated 
April  22, 

All  this  is  from  Baker's  report  to  Stan- 
ton, as  reprinted  in  Baker's  own  book. 
These  inconsistencies  in  dates  show  La 
Fayette  Baker's  lack  of  concern  for  accu- 
rate statements  of  fact  when  advancing  his 
claim  for  the  seventy-five-thousand-dollar 
reward. 

In  another  chapter  of  his  History  he  de- 
clares that  the  diary  taken  from  Booth's 
body  recorded  "the  adventures  of  the  fugi- 
tive: one  of  these  was  the  killing  of  his  horse 
in  the  tangled  forest  to  avoid  detection, 
and  then  sleeping  between  the  animal's 
legs  to  get  the  warmth  while  it  remained 
in  the  dead  body,  during  the  long  hours  of 
the  horrible  night." 

But  the  diary,  containing  Booth's  asser- 
tion that  there  had  been  no  intention  of 
assassination  before  the  day  of  the  murder, 
was  not  produced  along  with  Booth's  other 
possessions  at  the  conspirators'  trial; 
Stanton  kept  this  item  of  evidence  and 
forgot  about  it,  and  La  Fayette  Baker 
never  recalled  it  to  mind  during  the  trial. 
When  it  was  later  produced  eighteen  pages 
were  missing;  only  two  entries  remained 
in  it — and  neither  of  them  mentions  the 
dead  horse  incident. 

Either  the  account  in  Baker's  History  is 
untrue  or  else  pages  were  removed  from 
the  diary  after  it  came  into  the  possession 
of  Baker  and  Stanton — neither  possibility 
reflecting   any  credit  on   the  man   who 


managed  the  identification  and  secret 
burial  of  John  Wilkes  Booth. 

Judging  La  Fayette  Baker  by  his  own 
book,  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  the  reason 
for  the  secrecy  was  Booth's  broken  right 
leg  and  changed  boots. 

The  second  item  of  proof  may  be  read 
between  the  lines  in  two  letters  written — a 
year  and  five  months  apart — by  Edwin 
Booth,  the  great  actor  whose  misfortune  it 
was  to  be  John  Wilkes'  brother. 

Baltimore,  Sept.  11,  1867 
General  U.  S.  Grant: 
Sir: 

Having  once  received  a  promise  from  Mr. 
Stanton  that  the  family  of  John  Wilkes  Booth 
should  be  permitted  to  obtain  the  body  when 
suiBScient  time  had  elapsed,  I  yielded  to  the 
entreaties  of  my  mother  and  applied  for  it  to  the 
"Secretary  of  War" — I  fear  too  soon,  for  the 
letter  was  unheeded — if,  indeed,  it  ever  reached 
him. 

I  now  appeal  to  you  on  behalf  of  my  heart- 
broken mother — that  she  may  receive  the  body  of 
her  son. 

You,  Sir,  can  understand  what  a  consolation  it 
would  be  to  an  aged  parent  to  have  the  privilege 
of  visiting  the  grave  of  her  child,  and  I  feel 
assured  that  you  will,  even  in  the  midst  of  your 
most  pressing  duties,  feel  a  touch  of  sympathy  for 
her — one  of  the  greatest  sufferers  living. 

May  I  not  hope  that  you  will  listen  to  our 
entreaties  and  send  me  some  encouragement — 
some  information  how  and  where  the  remains 
may  be  obtained? 

By  so  doing  you  will  receive  the  gratitude  of  a 
most  unhappy  family,  and  will — I  am  sure — be 
justified  by  all  right-thinking  minds  should  the 
matter  ever  become  known  to  others  than 
ourselves. 

I  shall  remain  in  Baltimore  two  weeks,  during 
which  time  I  could  send  a  trustworthy  person  to 
bring  hither  and  privately  bury  the  remains  in  the 
family  grounds,  thus  relieving  my  poor  mother  of 
much  misery. 

Apologizing  for  my  intrusion,  and  anxiously 
awaiting  a  reply  to  this — 

I  am.  Sir,  with  great  respect 

Yr  obt  servant 

Note  the  pathetic  tone  of  this  letter, 
with  its  suggestion  that  the  transaction 
might  not  ever  become  known  to  others, 
and  the  suggested  private  burial  in  the     |, 
family  grounds.  ^ 

On  February  8, 1869,  President  Andrew 
Johnson  pardoned  Dr.  Mudd,  who  had     j 
been    imprisoned    for   life    on    the    Dry     ^ 
Tprtuga$. 

Two  days  later,  Edwin  Booth  addressed 
the  President  in  the  following  confident 
terms: 


IT    WAS    BOOTH'S    BODY 


217 


Dear  Sir: 

May  I  not  now  ask  your  kind  consideration  of 
my  poor  mother's  request  in  relation  to  her  son's 
remains? 

The  bearer  of  this  is  a  sexton  of  Christ's  Church, 
Bahimore,  who  will  observe  the  strictest  secrecy 
in  this  matter — and  you  may  rest  assured  that 
none  of  my  family  desires  its  publicity. 

Unable  to  visit  Washington,  I  have  deputed 
Mr.  Weaver — in  whom  I  have  the  fullest  confi- 
dence— and  I  beg  that  you  will  not  delay  in 
ordering  the  body  to  be  given  to  his  care.  He 
will  retain  it  (placing  it  in  his  vault)  until  such 
time  as  we  can  remove  the  other  members  of  our 
family  to  the  Baltimore  Cemetery,  and  thus 
prevent  any  special  notice  of  it. 

There  is  also  (I  am  told)  a  trunk  of  his  at  the 
National  Hotel — which  I  once  applied  for,  but 
was  refused — it  being  under  seal  by  the  War 
Department — it  may  contain  relics  of  the  poor 
misguided  boy,  which  would  be  dear  to  his 
sorrowing  mother,  and  of  no  use  to  anyone. 
Your  Excellency  would  greatly  lessen  the  crushing 
weight  of  grief  that  is  hurrying  my  poor  mother  to 
her  grave  by  giving  immediate  orders  for  the  safe 
delivery  of  the  remains  of  John  Wilkes  Booth  to 
Mr.  Weaver,  and  gain  the  lasting  gratitude  of 

Yr.  obt.  Servt. 

Did  the  great  tragedian  know,  or  sur- 
mise, that  the  body  of  the  assassin  was  in 
some  not-to-be-whispered  way  linked  with 
the  fate  of  Dr.  Mudd? 

Did  he  understand  that,  with  Dr.  Mudd 
set  free,  John  Wilkes  Booth  with  his  broken 
right  leg  might  safely  repose  in  the  Balti- 
more Cemetery?  Or  is  the  tone  of  his 
last  letter  influenced  by  his  having  been 
told  that  the  request  would  now  be  hon- 
ored— during  the  interval  between  the 
signing  of  the  pardon  and  Mudd's  actual 
release,  in  early  March  of  that  year? 

The  third — and  by  far  the  most  com- 
pelling— bit  of  internal  evidence  is  found 
in  Wilkes  Booth's  own  diary,  written  dur- 
ing his  flight.  Dated  Friday,  April  21 
(but  not  necessarily  written  on  that  calen- 
dar date  of  course),  there  occurs  the  sen- 
tence which  has  perplexed  historians  for 
four-fifths  of  a  century:  "To-night  I  will 
once  more  try  the  river,  with  the  intention 
to  cross;  though  I  have  a  greater  desire  and 
almost  a  mind  to  return  to  Washington, 
and  in  a  measure  clear  my  name,  which  I 
feel  I  can  do." 

What  did  he  mean? 

The  puzzled  historians  take  it  as  a  vague 
hint  that  higher-ups  were  involved,  more 
responsible  than  he.  But  this  explanation 
explains   nothing.     How   would   it   clear 


his  name  to  profess  himself  the  tool  or  hire- 
ling of  others?  (lould  such  a  disclosure 
lift  the  "curse  of  Cain''  from  him,  or  save 
him  from  a  hangman's  noose? 

No.  The  meaning  of  the  passage  is 
this:  as  he  thought  of  what  he  had  got  him- 
self into,  it  occurred  to  his  feverish  mind  to 
claim  that  not  John  Wilkes  Booth,  but  a 
double,  an  impostor,  had  killed  the  Presi- 
dent. His  proof?  A  simple  one.  The 
man  for  whom  they  were  looking  had 
fallen  and  broken  his  left  leg.  It  was  now 
Friday;  Dr.  Mudd,  a  dozen-odd  miles 
away,  had  been  questioned  on  Tuesday 
(David  Herold,  or  Cox,  or  Jones,  could 
have  brought  Booth  word  of  the  activities 
in  Bryantown).  Booth  supposed  the 
Union  officers  must  be  seeking  a  fugitive 
with  a  broken  left  leg.  And  behold,  he 
had  a  broken  right  one ! 

True,  he  had  left  a  letter  of  confession, 
or  self-justification,  with  John  Matthews. 
Why  with  Matthews?  Because  he  was  in 
the  cast  of  "Our  American  Cousin,"  play- 
ing in  Ford's  Theater.  In  what  position 
had  Booth  placed  him?  If  poor  Matthews 
surrendered  the  letter  at  once  it  would  be 
at  the  price  of  breaking  his  pledged  word, 
betraying  his  friend,  and  (he  might  sup- 
pose) inflicting  injury  upon  the  great  and 
beloved  stage  family;  personal  honor  and 
personal  loyalties  forbade.  But  if  he  kept 
the  letter  until  morning  he  thereby  made 
himself  an  accessory  by  suppressing  evi- 
dence while  the  assassin  made  good  his 
escape.  The  fact  is  that  Matthews  burned 
the  letter.  He  could  not  do  what  Booth  asked 
of  him,  and  Booth  knew  he  could  not;  had 
known  all  along  that  that  letter  would  not 
be  made  public  unless  he  were  slain  by 
Lincoln's  guards.  When  Booth  com- 
plained in  his  diary  that  the  government 
would  not  permit  publication  of  what  he 
had  left  behind  he  meant  another  letter, 
the  one  which  he  had  left  with  John  S. 
Clarke  in  1864.  (It  was  because  of  the 
Clarke  letter  that  he  could  clear  himself 
only  "in  a  measure.") 

Huddled  over  his  diary,  the  murderer 
let  his  ever-vaulting  imagination  spin 
some  fanciful  dream  of  disclaiming  his 
crime.  (The  on-the-spot  identification 
of  the  assassin  had  been  uncertain;  his 
name  was  not  in  the  first  alarms.  "For 
days,"  says  a  biographer,  "the  Govern- 


218 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ment  did  not  know,  but  merely  suspected, 
that  Booth  was  the  man.  .  .  .")  But  no. 
He  could  not  risk  it,  or  he  could  not  resign 
the  imagined  *' glory"  of  his  deed. 

He  resumed  writing:  "I  do  not  repent 
the  blow  I  struck  ....  To-night  I  try 
once  more  to  escape  these  bloodhounds." 
And  at  the  very  end:  "I  must  fight  the 
course.     'Tis  all  that's  left  me." 

This  quotation  from  "Macbeth"  is  idle, 
unless  for  a  moment  John  Wilkes  Booth 
had  imagined  he  need  not  fight  the  course. 
He  used  it  as  the  final,  fine  flourish  because 
he  persuaded  himself  that  he  had  made  a 
choice  (of  course,  a  noble  one).  He  was 
not  a  poor,  hunted  felon,  but — in  his  own 
fancy — a  great  Player  striding  grandly  off 
Life's  Boards.  (Exit,  limping  on  a  broken 
right  leg.) 


D 


ID  Booth  die  a  suicide?  The  answer 
is  NO.  It  is  time  for  history  to 
judge  Booth  by  his  acts  and  not  his  words. 
The  man  in  Garrett's  barn  was  not  a 
figure  in  a  Greek  tragedy,  but  a  fugitive 
trying  to  palm  himself  ofT  as  a  Confederate 
straggler.  "Mad,  bad  Booth"  crying  de- 
fiance to  his  captors  was  the  actor's  last 
impersonation,  the  plotter's  last  stratagem. 
He  stalled,  hoping  they  would  fire  the 


barn;  indeed,  he  probably  insinuated  the 
suggestion  into  Lieutenant  Baker's  mind. 
If  they  would  build  the  fire,  he  would  leave 
in  its  ashes  his  incriminating  diary  and 
letter  of  credit  before  submitting  to  being 
searched  and  questioned. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  the  diary  was  not 
a  source  of  peril  to  Booth  when  he  wrote  in 
it.  He  was  not  then  in  immediate  danger 
of  capture;  he  was  not  being  "hunted  like  a 
dog  in  swamps,  woods"  as  he  theatrically 
wrote;  he  conceived  himself  free  to  return 
to  Washington  if  he  wished.  The  diary 
became  perilous  only  when  he  was  caught. 
It  could  then  be  destroyed  only  by  fire. 

But  he  never  got  a  chance  to  try  his 
scheme  of  evading  the  hangman's  noose 
on  the  grounds  that  Lincoln's  m^urderer 
had  a  broken  left  leg  while  he  had  a  broken 
right  one.  The  "half-crazed"  soldier  shot 
him,  and  the  authorities  found  themselves 
in  possession  of  a  corpse  which  didn't  seem 
to  fill  the  bill.  Hence  the  secrecy  and 
mystification  which  have  surrounded  his 
death  for  well-nigh  eighty  years. 

At  the  time  of  the  assassination  John 
Wilkes  Booth  was  painted  in  the  blackest 
colors;  later,  by  an  opposite  tendency,  as  a 
mere  mistaken  boy.  He  was  a  murderer 
and,  except  for  his  overmastering  ego  and 
exhibitionism,  a  very  clever  one. 


im 


THE    FIVE    FATAL    MISTAKES    OF 


THE    AXIS 


ALBERT     CARR 


IN  September,  1940,  the  Axis  had  won 
the  war.  Such,  at  least,  was  the  judg- 
ment of  many  if  not  most  military  ob- 
servers. Middle  and  western  Europe  had 
been  overrun  by  German  arms,  econom- 
ics, and  propaganda.  Russia  was  non-bel- 
ligerent. England  was  being  smashed 
from  the  air  by  the  full  might  of  the  earth- 
shaking  Luftwaffe.  Italian  troops  had 
pushed  into  Egypt.  In  Asia,  China  was 
slowly  weakening  under  the  steady  ham- 
mering of  Japan's  armies,  while  India  and 
the  Arab  states  threatened  to  blaze  into  re- 
volt against  British  rule.  The  sentiments 
of  the  American  people  and  Congress  were 
painfully  mixed;  industry  was'understand- 
ably  reluctant  to  convert  its  plants;  and  our 
war  production  was  in  consequence  a  puny 
thing,  representing  less  than  a  billion  dol- 
lars in  1940,  against  Germany's  nine  bil- 
lion. Of  the  neutral  press  only  a  small, 
prayerful  fraction  professed  hope  for  the 
Allied  cause. 

The  trend  toward  an  Axis  victory  in  that 
desolate  autumn  was  so  overwhelming 
that  its  reversal  must  stand  as  one  of  the 
great  prodigies  of  history.  To  Hitler  even 
now  that  reversal  must  seem  unbelievable. 
What  happened?  Where  did  the  all- 
embracing  Nazi  blueprint  of  world  con- 
quest go  awry? 

Military  leaders  and  production  experts 
in  England  and  America  have  probed  the 


mystery,  and  have  come  up  with  evidence 
that  the  Axis  made  five  major,  catastrophic 
mistakes  in  strategy;  and  that  it  was  these 
mistakes,  rather  than  action  originating 
with  the  Allies,  which  wiped  out  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  Fascist  powers  and  made 
possible  the  vast  offensive  of  the  United 
Nations. 

The  first  mistake  was  completely  un- 
spectacular. It  was  an  error  in  the  grand 
strategy  of  war  production,  committed  in 
Berlin  in  1939.  When  the  Nazis  planned 
their  1940  war-production  schedules  they 
failed  to  provide  enough  landing  craft  to 
permit  a  cross-Channel  invasion  of  Eng- 
land. In  other  respects,  as  matters  stood 
after  the  fall  of  France,  the  invasion  was 
considered  feasible  both  by  Nazi  and  Brit- 
ish tacticians.  The  then  undamaged  Ger- 
man air  force  was  capable  of  providing 
powerful  protection  against  the  guns  of 
England — if  the  large-scale  transport  of 
ground  personnel  and  motorized  equip- 
ment could  have  been  carried  out  quickly. 
That  "if"  stood  between  Hitler's  panzer 
army  and  English  soil  like  a  steel  wall. 
The  means  of  swift  sea  transport  were  lack- 
ing. In  the  summer  of  1 940,  while  a  mil- 
lion Nazi  fighting  men  lined  the.^-reiteh, 
Belgian,  and  Dutch  coasts,  sii^ng,"  "To- 
day we  march  on  England — to-irforrow  the 
whole  world,"  British  air  reconnaissance 


220 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


discovered  that  there  were  fewer  than  fifty 
troopships — and  these  small — in  the  mouth 
of  the  Scheldt  River,  then  one  of  the  few 
big  Low  Country  harbors  not  clogged 
with  war  debris. 

For  the  failure  to  foresee  the  landing- 
craft  problem  the  German  General  Staff, 
inexperienced  in  amphibious  warfare, 
shares  responsibility  with  Marshal  Goering, 
in  his  role  as  head  of  war  production. 
Goering  gave  four  other  major  production 
programs  priority  over  landing  craft  in 
1939  and  1940.  Himself  the  chief  pro- 
ponent of  the  theory  that  England  could  be 
conquered  from  the  air,  he  allowed  noth- 
ing to  interfere  with  plane  output.  Hitler 
and  the  General  Staff,  already  deep  in 
plans  for  the  attack  on  Russia,  called  for 
tanks  and  guns — always  tanks  and  guns. 
Meanwhile  Admiral  Raeder,  who  had 
promised  Hitler  to  starve  Britain  into 
submission  by  submarine  blockade,  per- 
suaded Goering  to  feed  the  submarine- 
production  program  with  materials,  facili- 
ties, and  manpower  at  the  expense  of  all 
other  types  of  naval  construction,  including 
invasion  craft. 

Enabled  by  the  collapse  of  France  to 
turn  his  attention  to  England  weeks  ahead 
of  schedule.  Hitler  made  a  desperate  at- 
tempt to  remedy  the  landing-craft  situa- 
tion. Freighters  and  fishing  boats  were 
seized  in  the  ports  of  the  conquered  na- 
tions; and  from  the  Danube,  eight  hun- 
dred miles  away,  commandeered  river 
barges  were  transported  overland  and 
made  ready  for  service.  But  rehearsals 
showed  that  ordinary  shipping  was  hope- 
lessly unsuited  to  the  crash  landings  es- 
sential in  assaults  on  defended  coastal 
positions.  And  the  river  barges  were  too 
slow;  most  of  them,  it  was  discovered, 
would  have  required  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  hours  to  make  the  crossing,  thus 
eliminating  any  chance  of  night  surprise 
and  creating  an  impossible  task  of  air 
cover,  even  for  the  swarming  Luftwaffe. 

Specially  constructed  craft  were  indis- 
pensable; and  steel  mills,  shipyards,  and 
machine  shops  throughout  Germany  were 
for  a  time  diverted  to  their  construction. 
But  as  our  own  authorities  know,  the  pro- 
duction of  landing  craft  is  a  formidable 
undertaking.  The  United  States  Navy 
has  found  it  necessary  to  develop  eleven 


specialized  types  of  ships  and  amphibious 
vehicles  to  carry  invasion  personnel,  tanks,^ 
trucks,  supplies,  and  equipment.     More- 
over, awesome  quantities  of  landing  craft 
are  required  by  a  big  modern  amphibious? 
army.     At  Dunkirk,  with  only  air  attack^ 
to  contend  against,  the  British  had  to  em-: 
ploy    over    900    miscellaneous    vessels  of: 
all  sizes  to  embark  335,000  men  without: 
equipment,    cramming    them    on    board' 
without  regard   to  plan  or  organization.' 
Even  with  troop-carrying  gliders  at  his^ 
command,  Hitler  needed  several  thousand  ! 
good-sized  landing  craft  in  order  to  send  1 
enough  mechanized  divisions  across  the  I 
Channel  to  gain  and  expand  important' 
bridgeheads.     Long   before   German   in-' 
dustry  could  meet  the  Fiihrer's  demand,  c 
the  shifting  pattern  of  the  war  had  de-: 
stroyed  Nazi  hopes  of  a  successful  invasion.  ^ 

II 

EVEN  after  this  lost  opportunity  Ger- 
many still  might  have  beaten  Eng- 
land to  her  knees  had  not  a  second  serious 
error  in  strategy  been  perpetrated — again 
with  Goering  as  chief  bungler.  In  1940 
his  Luftwaffe  almost  incredibly  failed  to 
concentrate  its  attacks  on  British  war  in- 
dustries, then  the  most  vulnerable  element 
in  England's  air  defense. 

Attacking  with  9,000  planes,  against 
fewer  than  3,000  British  fighters,  Goering 
unimaginatively  insisted  on  following  the 
blitz  pattern  which  had  succeeded  in 
Poland,  France,  and  the  Low  Countries. 
This  pattern  called  for  the  elimination  of 
resistance  by  the  RAF,  followed  by  sys- 
tematic and  unopposed  bombings  of  cities 
and  military  establishments,  until  British 
morale  should  have  broken.  But  the 
first  step  was  never  carried  through.  The 
British  hinged  their  defensive  strategy 
on  the  conservation  and  replacement  of 
planes  and  crews.  Dispersal  of  planes 
prevented  major  losses  when  airfields  were 
attacked,  while  in  combat  British  daring, 
skill,  and  superiority  in  quality  of  planes 
and  in  tactics  enabled  RAF  pilots  to  bring 
down  some  3,000  German  planes  between 
September,  1940,  and  May,  1941,  at  the 
cost  of  about  900  British  planes.  Every- 
thing depended  on  the  ability  of  the  RAF 
to  maintain  a  high  rate  of  attrition  of  the 


THE    FIVE    FATAL    MISIARES    OF    THE    AXIS 


221 


LuftwafTc,  to  the  point  where  German 
mass  raids  would  no  longer  be  feasible. 
Since  hundreds  of  England's  fighters  were 
always  out  of  service  owing  to  battle 
damage  or  the  need  for  overhaul,  the  loss 
in  combat  of  even  900  planes  might  have 
been  disastrous  to  the  RAF  had  not  a 
steady  trickle  of  replacements  kept  coming 
out  of  British  factories.  Again  and  again 
RAF  groups  which  were  down  to  their 
last  few  Spitfires  were  enabled  to  get  back 
into  the  fight  by  the  frenzied  arrival  of  a 
few  ships  hardly  off  the  assembly  line. 
For  months  during  England's  crisis,  plane 
factories  barely  managed  to  maintain  a 
survival  rate  of  production. 

In  August  of  1940  half  a  dozen  plants 
held  the  key  to  Britain's  Spitfire  output. 
A  single  Yorkshire  engineering  works  was 
turning  out  virtually  all  the  heavy  gears  for 
the  British  plane  industry.  Another,  not 
far  from  London,  made  a  large  share  of 
the  roller  bearings. 

The  location  of  these  factories  was 
unquestionably  known  to  the  German 
military  intelligence.  Had  they  been  sys- 
tematically bombed  British  fighter-plane 
production  could  have  been  brought  al- 
most to  a  standstill.  But  the  Yorkshire 
plant  was  never  raided,  and  the  roller- 
bearing  works  did  not  suffer  attack  until 
five  months  after  the  Battle  of  Britain  had 
begun.  Stubbornly  the  Nazis  held  to 
their  set  plan,  the  plan  of  the  Polish  blitz. 
Even  in  the  attack  on  Coventry  in  No- 
vember, 1 940,  the  focal  area  of  the  bomb- 
ings was  the  city's  commercial  center. 
Of  the  great  industrial  works  which  dot  the 
outskirts  of  Coventry  only  one  suffered 
damage  of  consequence,  and  that  was  in 
operation  again  within  a  few  weeks. 

Not  until  1941  did  the  Germans  modify 
their  air  strategy  and  attempt  to  strike  the 
British  war  effort  at  its  industrial  roots. 
Then  it  was  too  late.  The  destructive 
power  of  the  Luftwaffe  had  been  sharply 
reduced;  new  camouflaged  plants  had 
been  completed,  and  production  of  critical 
parts  widely  decentralized;  and  American 
Lend-Lease  was  functioning,  with  hun- 
dreds of  our  planes  supplementing  Brit- 
ish output.  The  lack  of  imagination  for 
which  Goering  is  notorious  even  in  Ger- 
many had  cost  Hitler  his  chance  to  knock 
England  out  of  the  air. 


Ill 


,UT  FOR  the  third  major  mistake  of  the 
Axis  Hitler  himself  is  directly  respon- 
sible, with  his  partner  Mussolini.  At  the 
very  time  that  the  Battle  of  Britain  was 
beginning,  the  envious  and  impatient  Duce 
wanted  to  win  glory  for  Italian  arms  by 
invading  Greece  at  once,  and  unsupported. 
Marshal  Badoglio  was  openly  against  the 
venture,  and  the  German  General  Staff 
was  skeptical.  But  Hitler,  who  could  not 
yet  guess  what  was  to  happen  to  the  Luft- 
waffe over  England,  was  jubilant  over  the 
tripartite  pact  of  Germany,  Italy,  and 
Japan,  which  had  just  been  signed.  He 
felt  a  melting  benevolence  for  his  erst- 
while mentor,  the  father  of  Fascism.  In- 
formation from  both  Italian  and  Swiss 
sources  leaves  little  doubt  that  at  the 
Brenner  Pass  meeting  of  October  4th 
Mussolini  broached  his  proposal  to  in- 
vade Greece,  and  Hitler  agreed  to  it. 

At  the  twelfth  hour,  harking  at  last  to 
the  forebodings  of  his  General  Staff,  the 
Fiihrer  is  said  to  have  attempted  to  post- 
pone the  invasion — without  avail,  for  by 
then  the  Italian  ultimatum  to  Greece  had 
gone  forth.  On  October  28th,  the  day  of 
the  ill-prepared  Italian  attack.  Hitler  and 
Ribbentrop,  conferring  in  Florence  with 
Mussolini  and  Ciano,  offered  congratula- 
tions with  such  enthusiasm  as  they  could 
muster,  and  proceeded  to  lay  plans  for 
military  and  political  moves  against 
Egypt  and  the  Near  East.  Later  of  course, 
when  the  folly  of  the  Grecian  campaign 
had  been  exposed  by  events,  the  Nazis  at- 
tempted to  sustain  the  legend  of  Hitler's 
infallibility  by  spreading  the  rumor  that 
Mussolini  had  acted  without  consulting 
him. 

Had  Mussolini's  Grecian  adventure  re- 
sulted in  nothing  more  than  the  rout  of  the 
Italian  armies,  the  loss  of  important  quan- 
tities of  equipment,  and  the  crumbling  of 
Italian  prestige,  the  disaster  would  have 
been  painful  enough.  But  the  effects  of 
the  defeat  reached  to  the  heart  of  Axis 
strategy.  For  it  upset  the  Axis  timetable 
in  the  Balkans  and  Egypt  by  crucial 
months,  and  cost  Hitler  his  only  chance  to 
drive  the  British  out  of  North  Africa. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  German 
General  Staff,  there  was  no  hurry  about 


222 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


invading  Greece.  So  long  as  the  little 
country  was  neutral,  and  within  the  Nazi 
sphere  of  economic  control,  she  was  cer- 
tain to  be  easy  prey  whenever  Germany 
chose  to  strike.  Far  more  critical  in 
strategic  importance  was  Egypt,  where  the 
British  were  weak  in  mechanized  power. 
It  was  a  military  truism  in  Berlin  that 
should  Egypt  fall  England  would  lose  her 
only  card  of  re-entry  to  Europe,  and  could 
be  out-trumped  everywhere  in  the  Near 
and  Middle  East. 

As  early  as  the  autumn  of  1940,  when 
hopes  of  an  invasion  of  England  were  fad- 
ing fast,  large  numbers  of  German  mech- 
anized troops  were  earmarked  for  an 
early  assault  on  the  British  defensive  posi- 
tions in  Egypt.  But  few  Nazis  arrived  in 
North  Africa  until  the  spring  of  1941. 
During  the  intervening  months  the  Italian 
collapse  in  Greece  forced  a  change  in  the 
German  plan.  With  the  Greeks  in  the 
war  and  fighting  valiantly,  Hitler  knew 
that  British  manpower  and  American 
materiel  were  certain  to  be  sent  to  their 
support  in  1941.  At  any  cost,  Hitler  felt 
it  necessary  to  prevent  England  from  gain- 
ing a  Continental  foothold  in  the  Balkans; 
while  for  his  own  prestige,  and  to  bolster 
Italian  morale,  he  must  go  to  Mussolini's 
aid.  As  soon  as  the  Italian  defeat  in  Greece 
was  evident,  powerful  Nazi  forces  had  to 
be  assigned  to  the  Balkans  at  the  expense 
of  the  Egyptian  campaign. 

The  British  in  Egypt,  hardly  better 
equipped  than  the  Italians,  saw  an  oppor- 
tunity and  took  the  offensive;  and  there 
began  the  seesaw  battle  of  North  Africa 
which  enabled  England  to  keep  the  Axis 
forces  in  play  until  the  weight  of  American 
tanks  could  make  itself  felt  at  El  Alamein. 
In  effect.  Hitler's  light-hearted  gesture  to 
Mussolini  at  the  Brenner  Pass  shattered 
the  German  dream  of  taking  Alexandria, 
Cairo,  and  Suez,  of  gaining  access  to  the 
Indian  Ocean  and  breaking  the  British 
hold  on  Mohammedan  Asia. 


IV 

EVEN  worse  was  to  come  to  the  Axis 
f  when  in  1941  the  famed  German 
military  intelligence  proved  itself  unable 
to  penetrate  the  secrets  of  Russian  war  in- 
dustry.    In  June  of  that  year,  when  the 


invasion  of  Russia  began,  the  German 
High  Command,  according  to  statements 
in  the  Reich's  military  press,  knew  to  the 
last  bolt  the  productive  capacity  of  the 
Soviet  war  factories,  so  well-informed 
were  the  Nazi  agents  there.  The  truth 
was  that  the  core  of  the  German  intelli- 
gence system  in  Russia  had  been  shat- 
tered in  the  great  Soviet  purge  of  the  mid- 
dle 1930's.  Such  spies  as  Germany  still 
had  in  Russia  after  1939  were  few  in  num- 
ber and  without  access  to  real  war  secrets. 
Anxious  to  make  agreeable  reports  to 
headquarters,  these  men  sought  desper- 
ately for  crumbs  of  information.  Certain 
Russian  figures,  it  now  appears,  were  per- 
mitted "to  leak  out"  and  were  seized  upon 
by  Nazi  agents  for  the  edification  of  the 
Wilhelmstrasse. 

According  to  statements  by  captured 
Nazi  officers,  the  German  General  Staff 
was  guilty  of  grotesque  underestimates  of 
Russian  tank,  plane,  and  gun  production. 
In  the  first  three  months  of  the  war  Rus- 
sia, by  her  own  admission,  lost  7,000  tanks, 
8,900  large-caliber  cannon,  and  5,300 
planes.  German  experts  calculated  that 
Soviet  reserves  of  materiel  were  diminish- 
ing so  rapidly  that  no  effective  defense 
against  the  panzer  armies  and  the  Luft- 
waffe would  be  possible  after  six  more 
months  of  fighting. 

Actually,  Russian  factories — especially 
the  factories  east  of  the  Urals,  some  of 
them  so  huge  that  they  startle  even  Ameri- 
can eyes — were  able  to  send  an  ever- 
swelling  stream  of  fighting  machines  to  the 
front,  where  they  were  reinforced  by 
American  Lend-Lease  tanks  and  trucks. 
Added  to  great  Soviet  strategy,  and  to  the 
raw  courage  of  the  Red  armies  and  civil- 
ians, these  machines  brought  about  the 
debacle  of  the  Nazi  forces  in  Russia.  The 
Germans  were  unprepared  for  the  fierce 
Russian  resistance  before  Moscow  in  the 
autumn  of  1941 — a  resistance  built  large- 
ly upon  unsuspected  reserves  of  newly 
manufactured  equipment;  and  they  were 
shocked  by  the  resurgence  of  Russian  of- 
fensive strength  at  Stalingrad  and  there- 
after. Hitler's  reliance  on  the  Nazi  In- 
telligence to  provide  the  factual  basis  for 
his  famous  "intuitive"  strategy  in  Russia 
led  Germany  into  the  most  ruinous  cam- 
paign in  military  history. 


THE    FIVE    FATAL    MISTAKES    OF    THE    AXIS 


223 


T,o  THESE  four  terrific  blunders  the 
Japanese  added  the  fifth  and  most 
disastrous  of  all  on  December  7,  1941,  by 
overestimating  the  importance  of  dread- 
nought superiority  in  modern  naval  war- 
fare. 

Traditional  Japanese  naval  strategy  re- 
gards battleship  supremacy  as  indispen- 
sable to  long-range  naval  offensives.  It 
values  cruisers  and  planes  primarily  for 
sudden  striking  power,  as  a  means  of  in- 
flicting sufficient  damage  to  keep  an  en- 
emy from  interfering  by  sea  with  Japan's 
land  actions.  The  planners  at  Tokyo  did 
not  anticipate  that  American  cruisers  and 
carriers  could  provide  task  forces  sufficient 
to  hold  a  base  like  Midway  against  a 
superior  fleet,  or  to  cover  invasion  of  a  de- 
fended position  like  Guadalcanal.  They 
believed  that  a  successful  surprise  blow  at 
Pearl  Harbor  would  put  the  United  States 
on  the  defensive,  confine  our  fleet  to 
waters  this  side  of  Hawaii,  and  permit 
them  to  cut  the  south  Pacific  shipping 
lane?  at  will,  thus  preventing  strong 
American  support  of  the  approaches  to 
Australia. 

Conceivably  Hawaii  might  have  been 
taken  immediately  after  Pearl  Harbor  by  a 
full-strength  naval  attack;  but  the  out- 
come of  such  a  venture  was  dubious,  and 
the  Japanese  saw  no  need  to  risk  their  own 
capital  ships.  The  Emperor's  strategists 
believed  that  Japan's  naval  position  had 
been  secured  and  that  her  land  expansion 
southward  and  in  China  could  not  be  chal- 
lenged by  a  major  power;  and  they  were 
satisfied. 

The  Nazis,  on  their  part,  went  along 
readily  with  the  Pearl  Harbor  plan.  At 
the  end  of  1941  the  positions  both  of  Eng- 
land and  of  Russia  were  increasingly  de- 
pendent on  American  shipments  of  food 
and  weapons.  In  German  eyes  the  Battle 
of  the  Atlantic  would  be  decisive,  and  they 
seemed  to  be  within  measurable  distance 
of  winning  it.  Any  action  that  diverted 
American  shipping,  supplies,  naval  strength, 
and  above  all,  public  opinion,  to  the  other 
side  of  the  world  was  felt  to  be  of  such 
value  as  to  justify  other  risks. 

It  did  not  particularly  alarm  the  Nazis 


that  America  would  be  brought  into  the 
war.  They  considered  that  by  the  time 
wc  were  prepared  for  action  in  Europe 
their  position  would  be  impregnable.  As 
they  saw  the  future,  wc  were  bound  to  be 
drawn  into  the  conflict  sooner  or  later,  and 
it  was  held  in  Berlin  that  the  danger  to 
Hawaii  and  the  West  Coast  would  domi- 
nate American  war  planning.  Hitler  is 
said  to  have  told  the  leaders  of  the  Nazi 
party,  immediately  after  Pearl  Harbor, 
that  public  opinion  in  the  United  States 
would  shift  away  from  the  European 
theater  and  force  a  curtailment  of  aid 
to  England  and  Russia;  and  that  while 
German  U-boats  smashed  Atlantic  traffic 
to  England  and  Murmansk,  Japanese  sub- 
marines would  harry  the  Indian  Ocean 
routes  to  India  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  re- 
ducing Lend-Lease  to  triviality. 

Hitler's  expectation,  in  fact,  came  nearer 
to  fulfillment  than  many  Americans  even 
now  realize.  Powerful  elements  in  the 
public,  press.  Congress,  the  Army  and 
Navy,  and  the  civil  government  felt  that 
we  had  no  choice  but  to  concentrate  our 
full  effort  on  preparations  for  a  defensive 
war  in  the  Pacific,  and  all  the  personal 
force  of  the  leaders  of  the  American  global 
strategy  had  to  be  exercised  to  prevent  us 
from  falling  into  the  Nazi  trap. 

Once  this  danger  had  passed,  Japan's 
error  in  naval  planning  was  swiftly  ex- 
posed. At  Midway,  in  the  Coral  Sea,  and 
at  the  Solomons  they  learned  that  battle- 
ship superiority  was  not  enough.  For  the 
sponsors  of  the  Pearl  Harbor  attack  that 
was  a  terrible  revelation.  One  of  them. 
Admiral  Yamamoto,  who  the  Japanese 
claim  was  struck  down  in  action,  accord- 
ing to  some  reports  actually  committed 
hara-kiri. 

Pearl  Harbor  hurt  and  shocked  us  but 
it  neither  forced  a  cessation  of  large-scale 
aid  to  our  allies,  as  Germany  hoped,  nor 
prevented  us  from  waging  offensive  war  in 
the  Pacific,  as  Japan  hoped;  while  its  im- 
pact, as  the  world  has  learned,  released 
our  vast  power  for  total  war  in  all  theaters. 

On  the  day  of  Pearl  Harbor — fifth 
great  strategic  error  of  the  Axis — Germany, 
Italy,  and  Japan  were  already  doomed, 
but  did  not  know  it. 

Now  they  know  it. 


OUR    HEALTH    IN    WARTIME 


LOUIS    I.    DUBLIN 


As  statistician  of  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Company,  Dr.  Dublin  has  at  his  disposal 
the  mortality  data  on  thirty  million  Americans  and  Canadians  and  this  enables  him  to  estimate  the 
national  health  record  with  some  precision  long  before  the  national  statistics  are  compiled.  His 
statements  covering  1943  are  therefore  not  only  authoritative  but,  in  a  sense,  a  news-beat.  His 
analysis  of  foreign  health  conditions  is  based  on  the  best  available  sources  of  information,  carefully 
weighed  for  their  credibility. — The  Editors 


UR  civilian  health  is  a  fighting 
weapon,  just  as  surely  as  are  tanks 
and  planes.  In  this  our  third  year 
of  war  the  nation  is  highly  dependent  upon 
that  weapon.  Conditions  have  arisen 
which  might  menace  our  American  health 
seriously.  Millions  of  our  people  have 
moved  to  war-production  centers  and  are 
living  under  crowded  and  difficult  condi- 
tions. Homes  have  been  broken  up  as 
their  members  have  left  to  join  the  armed 
forces.  Thousands  of  women  and  older 
persons  not  used  to  production  pressure 
have  for  the  first  time  entered  industry 
and  are  working  in  high  gear,  many  in 
night  shifts  and  with  long  overtime  hours. 
Homes  and  factories  have  suffered  from 
fuel  shortages.  Doctors,  nurses,  and  hos- 
pital attendants  in  large  numbers  have 
been  called  to  the  colors,  leaving  often 
only  a  skeleton  group  to  carry  on  local 
medical  services  which  the  war  has  made 
more  exacting  than  ever.  Under  such 
difficult  circumstances,  how  well  has  our 
national  health  been  maintained?  And 
how  have  war  conditions  affected  the 
health  of  our  allies,  and  of  our  enemies, 


most  of  whom  have  been  under  intense 
pressure  much  longer  than  we? 

So  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned 
the  picture  is  extraordinarily  good.  The 
sum  total  of  our  vital  statistics,  of  medical 
reports,  and  of  factory  records  shows  that 
the  health  of  our  civilian  population  is 
continuing  month  after  month  at  a  high- 
ly satisfactory  level.  The  death  rate  in 
1942  (10.4  per  thousand)  was  the  lowest 
in  our  history.  In  1943  the  rate  was  a 
little  higher,  but  the  rise  was  not  serious; 
we  have  achieved  a  mortality  rate  as  good 
as  that  in  some  of  the  best  years  before  the 
war.  With  men  and  women  working 
harder  and  longer,  and  with  all  types  of 
medical  facilities  reduced,  there  could  be 
no  better  indication  of  the  continued 
vigor  of  our  people. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  unac- 
customed war  strains  on  the  population 
would  bring  increased  illness  in  their  wake. 
It  is  in  wartime  that  some  of  the  world's 
most  devastating  epidemics  have  taken 
place.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  in  the  clos- 
ing months  of  the  First  World  War,  the 
worst    influenza    pandemic    of   all    time 


OUR    HEALTH    IN    WARTIME 


225 


added  its  toll  of  death  to  that  of  the  battle- 
fields. Its  ravages  proved  much  more 
serious  than  the  battle  casualties.  In  our 
ovvn  country  it  caused  well  over  500,000 
deaths,  in  contrast  to  our  loss  of  53,000 
men  from  enemy  action.  I  was  in  Rome 
in  October,  1918,  in  connection  with  a 
Red  Cross  mission,  and  can  well  remember 
how  each  day  so  many  died  from  influenza 
that  it  was  impossible  to  recruit  enough 
able-bodied  men  to  bury  the  dead  in- 
dividually. War  has  rightly  been  called 
the  best  friend  of  disease. 

It  is  gratifying  therefore  to  record  that, 
although  we  have  been  in  active  combat 
for  a  longer  time  than  in  the  First  World 
War,  we  have  as  yet  experienced  no  se- 
vere epidemic,  although  as  these  lines  are 
being  written  the  spread  of  colds  and 
grippe  is  causing  some  concern.  Last 
year,  it  is  true,  we  did  have  a  minor  flurry 
of  cerebrospinal  meningitis.  This  is  a 
disease  which  flares  up  in  wartime  in 
army  camps  and  navy  training  stations 
and  then  spreads  widely  to  the  civilian 
population.  Nowhere  are  the  extraordi- 
nary advances  which  medicine  has  made 
in  the  past  generation  better  exemplified 
than  in  the  control  of  this  infection. 
During  the  First  World  War  it  killed  35 
to  40  out  of  every  100  American  soldiers 
and  sailors  who  were  stricken.  To-day, 
thanks  to  the  sulfa  drugs,  less  than  4  out  of 
100  soldiers  who  acquire  the  disease  suc- 
cumb to  it.  Our  whole  civilian  popula- 
tion has  also  been  greatly  benefited  by  the 
drugs.  Sulfa  therapy  has  revolutionized 
the  treatment  of  meningitis  and  reduced 
the  frequency  of  its  complications. 

These  miracle-working  sulfa  drugs  have 
opened  up  new  vistas  of  life  conservation  in 
other  fields  as  well.  They  have  been  par- 
ticularly eflfective  in  the  treatment  of  many 
of  the  streptococcal  infections  and  of  the 
pneumonias  due  to  bacteria.  Only  ten 
years  ago  one  out  of  every  four  people  who 
contracted  pneumonia  died  of  it;  within 
the  past  five  years  the  introduction  of  the 
sulfa  drugs  has  cut  its  death  rate  by  half. 
The  sulfa  drugs,  are  to  be  credited  also  in 
some  degree  with  the  present  all-time  low 
death  rate  from  appendicitis.  This  dis- 
ease formerly  took,  a  high  toll  among  young 
people — the  very  group  upon  whom  falls 
the  chief  burden  of  fighting  to-day. 


War  conditions  have  always  provided 
fertile  soil  for  the  spread  of  tuberculosis. 
During  the  four  years  of  the  First  World 
War,  for  example,  the  remarkable  gains 
of  the  previous  decades  were  wiped  out  in 
many  of  the  warring  countries.  We  too 
suffered  a  setback  in  our  control  of  tuber- 
culosis. In  this  war  the  figures  present  a 
heartening  contrast,  for  we  have  so  far 
come  through  virtually  unscathed.  In 
1943 — our  second  war  year — the  death 
rate  from  tuberculosis  scored  a  new  low, 
about  42  per  100,000  of  population,  which 
was  about  three  per  cent  below  the  previ- 
ous minimum.  Only  in  areas  such  as  the 
Pacific  Coast,  where  shortages  in  housing 
and  medical  facilities  are  most  critical, 
has  the  death  rate  from  tuberculosis  risen 
perceptibly.  We  have  therefore  more 
than  held  our  hard-won  gains  thus  far. 
The  continuing  downward  trend  of  the 
disease  is  now  bringing  it  to  the  point 
where  one  can  foresee  its  virtual  elimina- 
tion from  the  life  of  our  people. 

Meanwhile  the  birth  rate  of  the  country 
has  increased,  temporarily  at  least.  Over 
three  million  babies  were  born  in  1943, 
more  than  in  any  previous  year  of  our  his- 
tory. And  this  new  generation  of  Ameri- 
cans is  getting  off  to  a  good  start  in  life: 
in  spite  of  the  addition  of  millions  of  moth- 
ers to  our  work  forces,  the  low  infant  mor- 
tality rates  which  have  prevailed  in  recent 
years  are  being  generally  maintained. 
Our  young  people  have  also  been  extraor- 
dinarily safeguarded,  so  that  American 
children  still  remain  about  the  healthiest 
in  the  world.  The  control  which  has 
been  gained  over  the  communicable  dis- 
eases of  childhood  has  continued  un- 
abated. Diphtheria  has  been  virtually 
eliminated  as  a  public  health  problem. 
Measles,  whooping  cough,  and  scarlet 
fever  are  no  longer  serious  causes  of  child 
mortality.  Modern  health  departments 
have  apparently  been  able  to  continue 
successfully  their  work  of  checking  these 
childhood  diseases  as  well  as  those  due  to 
defective  sanitation,  such  as  typhoid  fever, 
streptococcal  throat  infections,  etc.  In 
addition  they  have  conducted  effective 
personal  hygiene  and  nutrition  cam- 
paigns which  have  helped  to  build  up  child 
health  to  a  high  level. 

One  of  the  surprises  of  the  war  years  has 


226 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


been  the  continued  improvement  in  the 
saving  of  mothers  in  childbirth.  In  spite 
of  the  increased  birth  rate  and  the  crowd- 
ing of  hospitals  and  diminution  of  other 
medical  and  nursing  facilities,  the  move- 
ment to  safeguard  expectant  mothers  has 
continued  to  grow,  in  fact  it  has  func- 
tioned even  more  effectively.  The  ma- 
ternal death  rate  is  now  at  its  minimum, 
being  only  about  two  deaths  in  each  thou- 
sand births,  a  figure  about  one-third  what 
it  was  only  ten  years  ago.  Here  too  the 
sulfa  drugs  have  proved  wonderfully  po- 
tent by  their  control  of  infections  in  child- 
birth. In  addition,  our  medical  and 
nursing  professions,  to  their  great  credit, 
have  carried  on  their  prenatal  and  obstet- 
rical work  effectively  in  the  face  of  many 
obstacles. 

Another  satisfactory  feature  of  the  home 
front  in  these  war  years  has  been  the 
marked  reduction  in  the  number  of  fatal 
accidents.  With  so  many  green  workers 
engaged  in  war  work,  with  blackouts  and 
other  unaccustomed  strains,  the  accident 
mortality  might  well  have  risen  appre- 
ciably. When,  in  1941  and  1942,  the  fig- 
ures for  occupational  deaths  showed  an  in- 
crease, medical  authorities  seemed  to  be 
confirmed  in  their  fear  that  the  trend 
would  parallel  that  of  the  First  World  War 
and  that  still  higher  mortalities  might  be 
expected  as  war  production  increased. 
Fortunately  this  has  not  happened.  In- 
dustry launched  an  effective  safety  cam- 
paign on  a  national  scale.  As  a  result  the 
1943  rate  for  occupational  deaths  was  vir- 
tually at  prewar  levels.  It  is  rather  in 
our  own  homes  that  deaths  from  accidents 
now  constitute  the  most  formidable  prob- 
lem— yet  a  problem  which  can  be  met. 
Wartime  restrictions  on  the  use  of  auto- 
mobiles have  of  course  cut  down  motor 
vehicle  fatalities  enormously.  I  estimate 
that  only  23,000  such  deaths  occurred  in 
1943,  as  against  40,000  in  1941. 

These  are  some  of  the  favorable  ele- 
ments in  the  health  picture  of  the  country 
at  war.  In  contrast,  there  have  been 
some  unfavorable  ones.  Early  last  year 
there  was  a  serious  outbreak  of  virus 
pneumonia,  a  form  which  does  not  respond 
to  sulfa  drug  treatment.  This  had  the 
effect  of  perceptibly  raising  the  total  mor- 
tality from  pneumonia.     It  was  a  source 


of  serious  concern  for  a  while  to  see  this 
death  rate,  which  had  been  declining 
for  years,  reverse  its  trend  and  return  to 
the  prewar  level.  Some  authorities  were 
afraid  that  this  rise  in  pneumonia  might 
be  a  precursor  of  a  serious  epidemic 
of  influenza.  Subsequently,  the  situation 
with  reference  to  respiratory  disease  im- 
proved; but  again  late  in  the  year,  as  men- 
tioned earlier,  it  has  taken  a  disquieting 
turn. 

In  addition  there  appears  to  be  an  in- 
crease in  the  mortality  from  the  diseases 
of  middle  life  and  of  old  age.  The  medi- 
cal and  public  health  professions  have  not 
as  yet  proved  as  successful  in  meeting  the 
serious  disease  problems  of  old  age  as  in 
meeting  those  of  youth.  The  diseases  of 
the  heart  and  arteries  and  other  so-called 
degenerative  diseases  are  recording  higher 
death  rates  than  ever  before.  But  this 
bald  statement  calls  for  interpretation.  To 
a  large  extent  the  upward  trend  in  these 
diseases,  which  has  continued  for  a  good 
many  years,  merely  reflects  the  increasing 
average  age  of  the  population.  More- 
over, doctors  with  their  better  diagnostic 
tools  are  now  more  likely  to  discover  the 
true  nature  of  obscure  ailments  and  are 
more  often  recording  these  diseases  cor- 
rectly on  their  medical  records  and  death 
certificates.  But  there  also  remains  the 
fact  that  our  present  scarcity  of  medical 
and  nursing  personnel  and  the  overcrowd- 
ing of  our  hospitals  under  the  stress  of  war 
have  contributed  to  some  of  this  increased 
mortality.  In  wartime  these  conditions 
of  middle  life  cannot  claim  first  attention. 
Here  then  is  a  medical  situation  for  which 
we  may  require  a  more  satisfactory  pro- 
gram as  the  war  proceeds.  After  peace  is 
attained  this  field  must  receive  the  atten- 
tion which  its  great  importance  deserves. 


II 


WE  MAY  then  say  that,  all  in  all,  the 
wartime  health  picture  in  our 
country  looks  very  satisfactory.  The  out- 
look immediately  ahead  is  good,  and  while 
prediction  is  always  hazardous,  there  ap- 
pears to  be  nothing  in  the  disease  situation 
within  the  country  at  this  time  which 
would  lead  us  to  expect  any  serious  set- 
back in  the  nation's  health.     This  is  no 


OUR     HEALTH    IN    WARTIME 


227 


mere  accident  or  stroke  of  good  luck.  It 
is  rather  the  fruit  of  our  prewar  eflforls. 

Over  a  long  period  we  have  enjoyed 
extraordinarily  high  standards  of  living. 
Happily  these  have  been  little  affected 
during  the  war  years.  Our  medical  pro- 
fession moreover  has  made  consistent 
progress  and  our  medical  facilities— hos- 
pitals, clinics,  and  laboratories — have 
been  brought  to  high  levels,  perhaps  the 
highest  in  the  world.  They  are  serving  us 
well  in  the  war  years.  Our  health  depart- 
ments have  likewise  grown  to  maturity. 
The  strength  of  the  public  health  move- 
ment in  America  is,  to  be  sure,  largely  con- 
centrated in  our  cities,  but  more  recently 
our  rural  health  organization  has  under- 
gone a  rapid  development  also.  Nearly 
2,000  of  our  3,000  counties  now  have 
health  units  manned  by  full-time  public 
health  officers.  What  is  most  encourag- 
ing is  the  fact  that  the  personnel  of  these 
local  units  are  technically  trained  people 
who  follow  exacting  standards.  The  pub- 
lic health  profession  has  found  its  place  in 
American  life. 

All  of  these  services,  whether  medical, 
sanitary,  or  welfare,  have  continued  to 
function  efficiently  in  the  face  of  restric- 
tions imposed  by  the  war.  They  have 
safeguarded  the  people  under  stress  and 
strain.  They  have  shown  great  resource- 
fulness in  marshaling  our  social  forces  to- 
ward co-operative  action.  All  over  the 
country  we  find  intensive  efforts  to  make 
more  effective  use  of  the  professional  serv- 
ices which  have  not  been  channeled  into 
the  war  effort.  The  day  nurseries,  the 
schools,  the  hospitals,  and  the  medical 
facilities  in  industry  have  worked  more 
closely  together  for  the  benefit  of  civilians. 
Certainly  the  average  housewife  has  had 
her  part  in  the  health  picture  brought 
home  to  her  as  never  before  through  her 
local  defense  organization,  the  Red  Cross 
training  units,  and  the  home  nursing 
classes.  The  war  has  brought  us  together 
and  has  integrated  the  varied  and  powerful 
voluntary  services  for  which  we  in  America 
have  been  famous. 

Some  of  the  very  restrictions  imposed 
upon  us  have  heightened  our  interest  in 
sound  living.  Although  food  rationing 
has  restricted  our  diets  it  has  also  balanced 
them  much  better.     Each  vitamin  has  be- 


come as  familiar  to  the  American  news- 
paper reader  as  the  map  of  Italy.  The 
popular  interest  in  nutrition  is  now  ex- 
pressed on  billboards,  over  the  air,  and  at 
well-nigh  any  family  dinner  table  through- 
out the  country.  As  a  result  of  rationing, 
the  nation  is  developing  careful  habits  of 
food  planning  and  enjoying  a  fairer  dis- 
tribution of  the  available  food  supply. 
Overeating,  which  so  often  accompanies 
diabetes  and  other  physical  breakdowns, 
is  becoming  less  prevalent,  with  con- 
current benefit  to  the  national  health. 
There  are  thus  definite  compensations  in 
terms  of  the  public  welfare  for  the  very 
deprivations  which  the  war  has  put  upon 
us. 

With  peace  in  the  offing,  we  can  look 
forward  to  an  enrichment  of  our  health 
program.  Our  country  has  been  fortu- 
nate above  all  others  in  remaining  physi- 
cally untouched.  Institutions  will  not 
need  to  be  rebuilt  as  those  in  Europe  must 
be.  Our  medical  men  will  come  back 
from  the  war — many  of  them  with  added 
skills — anxious  and  ready  to  go  back  to 
their  accustomed  tasks.  In  many  cases 
they  will  find  their  practice  gone  and  their 
communities  greatly  changed.  Economic 
necessity  and  their  experience  with  mili- 
tary medicine  will  lead  them  to  ask  many 
questions,  among  others:  ''What  kind  of 
medical  service  shall  we  render  and  how 
shall  it  be  paid  for?"  Many  of  them  will 
for  the  first  time  have  seen  the  medical 
setup  in  England  and  on  the  Continent, 
where  social  forms  of  medicine  have  been 
in  operation  for  many  years.  The  success 
of  such  co-operative  efforts  as  Blue  Cross 
hospital  plans  and  the  prepayment  group 
medical  services  in  industry,  which  have 
been  stimulated  greatly  by  the  war,  will 
bring  home  to  many  physicians  the  de- 
sirability of  expanding  group  services 
wherever  that  is  possible.  And  the  mil- 
lions of  returned  soldiers  and  sailors  who 
have  seen  how  good  medical  care  can  be 
on  a  group  basis  will  not  be  content  with 
less  when  they  return  to  their  homes.  In 
the  meantime  the  active  movement  in 
Canada  toward  the  establishment  of  a  na- 
tional health  service  and  the  discussions 
here  of  the  Beveridge  Plan  will  have  left 
their  mark  on  our  medical  thinking.  It 
is  inevitable  that  more  attention  will  be 


228 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


paid  to  expanding  our  social  security  laws 
and  to  providing  medical  service  on  pre- 
payment plans  for  the  great  mass  of  our 
people. 

The  physicians  who  return  from  war 
duty  will  likewise  be  familiar  with  new 
techniques  and  remedies.     They  will  have 
at  their  disposal  powerful  curative  drugs 
which  will  be  made  increasingly  available 
for  public  use.     Thus  penicillin,  which  for 
certain  conditions  has  proved  even  more 
efficacious  than  the  sulfa  drugs,  will  come 
into  daily  medical  use.     It  is  safe  to  say 
that  when  this  and  other  new  substances 
are  produced  in  quantity  and  their  quali- 
ties are  recognized  some  of  the  more  seri- 
ous diseases  of  to-day  will  be  relegated  to 
the  limbo  now  occupied  by  such  former 
scourges  of  the  Western  world  as  smallpox, 
typhoid  fever,  cholera,  and  yellow  fever. 
Postwar  medical  care  will  be  better  also 
because  of  wartime  developments  in  the 
use  of  blood  plasma,  and  in  surgery  and 
anesthesia.     On  the  public  health  front, 
moreover,  there  will  be  an  equal  readiness 
to  go  forward,   with  the   United   States 
Public  Health  Service  keen  to  take  leader- 
ship in  guiding  the  national  movement. 
But  before  we  can  afford  to  be  com- 
placent about  our  national  health  there 
will  be  many  problems  to  be  solved.     For 
one  thing,  there  will  be  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  men  returning  from  the  tropics 
bringing  back  with  them  a  Pandora's  box 
of  diseases  which  at  present  are  either  non- 
existent or  of  minor  consequence  in  our 
country.     Malaria  will  again  become  a 
disease  of  national  importance.     We  shall 
be  compelled  to  carry  out  an  extensive 
program  of  curing  the  veterans  and  pre- 
venting the  spread  of  their  tropical  infec- 
tions   to    the    civilian    population.     The 
campaign   against   tuberculosis   will   un- 
doubtedly  be   intensified    to   bring   that 
problem  to  a  successful  close;  we  must 
concentrate  on  our  Negro,  Indian,  and 
Mexican  populations,  where  the  disease  is 
still   rampant.     We    shall    have   learned 
enough  about  the  control  of  the  venereal 
diseases  to  continue  the  excellent  work 
launched  by  the  military  agencies.     The 
national  nutrition  campaign  should  con- 
tinue in  full  swing. 

Our  postwar  health  program  will  be 
vitally  concerned  with  the  large  measure 


of  disability  from  the  diseases  of  middle 
life  and  old  age.  These  present  extraor- 
dinary opportunities  for  research  as  well 
as  for  improved  therapeutic  measures. 
We  have  scarcely  touched  this  field. 
Cancer  presents  an  enormous  challenge. 
In  the  field  of  heart  disease  and  the  de- 
generative conditions  there  is  likewise 
much  to  be  done.  Already  basic  research 
has  shown  some  of  the  causes  involved  in 
the  premature  breakdown  of  the  physical 
system.  Isolated  experiments  are  show- 
ing us  how  to  treat  some  of  these  diseases  to 
prevent  deterioration  and  to  restore  indi- 
viduals to  working  condition.  All  of  this 
is  in  the  offing  and  gives  promise  of  health 
achievement  for  the  nadon  not  dreamed  of 
by  those  who  conceived  the  public  health 
program  a  generation  ago. 


Ill 

ris  heartening  to  note  that  the  British, 
who  are  so  close  to  the  actual  theater 
of  war,  are  also  enjoying  good  health  con- 
ditions.    Not   long   ago   England's   mor- 
tality trends  gave  cause  for  alarm.     Now, 
after  four  years  of  fighting,  her  death  rate 
is  back  to  prewar  levels,  while  her  birth 
rate  has  increased  to  the  highest  point  since 
1928.     Child  health  has  shown  great  im- 
provement over  the  dark  days  of  1940- 
1941,  and  both  infant  and  child  mortality 
figures  are  now  at  the  lowest  leveJs  in  the 
country's  history.     All  this  is  in  striking 
contrast  with  conditions  in  the  First  World 
War,  when  the  health  situation  in  England 
showed  gradual  and  serious  deterioranon. 
The  recent  trend  of  tuberculosis  is  an- 
other indication  of  Britain's  sound  status. 
In  the  first  and  second  years  of  the  conflict, 
food  restrictions,   longer  hours  of  work, 
evacuations,  crowding  in  bomb  shelters, 
severe  winter  weather,  and  the  return  to 
their  homes  of  many  tuberculous  patients 
under  sanatorium  treatment,  all  contrib- 
uted to  a  substantial  increase  in  the  num- 
ber of  tuberculosis  deaths  in  England.     In 
1942  however  there  was  a  sharp  reversal 
in  this  trend,  and  by  last  year  mortality 
from  the  disease  had  dropped  to  the  pre- 
war level.     Women  and  children,  among 
whom  the  rise  in  tuberculosis  early  in  the 
war  was  greatest,  have  now  shown  definite 
improvement  in  this  regard. 


OUR    HEALTH    IN    WARTIME 


229 


I'lic  tough-fibcrcd  British  have  appar- 
ently benefited  from  their  strict  system  of 
food  control.  Wartime  rationing  and  the 
planned  feeding  of  large  numbers  of  chil- 
dren in  schools  and  of  workers  in  factories 
have  produced  a  people  better  nourished 
than  ever  before.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that 
I'^nglish  children  are  showing  a  better  rate 
of  growth  than  those  of  the  past  generation. 
The  average  English  twelve-year-old  to- 
day is  more  than  two  inches  taller  and 
about  a  dozen  pounds  heavier  than  his 
parents  were  at  the  same  age.  Thus 
I'.ngland,  though  in  her  fifth  year  of  fight- 
ing, has  like  us  a  major  asset  in  the  state  of 
her  national  health.  In  England  too  the 
prospect  for  the  months  ahead  is  good,  es- 
pecially since  her  problem  of  food  supply 
has  been  largely  solved  through  the  break- 
ing of  the  submarine  blockade.  The  only 
cloud  on  the  horizon  is  an  influenza  out- 
break which  began  in  early  November 
and  still  continues  at  the  time  of  this 
writing. 

In  contrast  with  the  favorable  condi- 
tions here  and  in  Great  Britain,  the  civil- 
ian health  picture  in  the  belligerent  and 
occupied  countries  on  the  European  con- 
tinent is  dark  indeed.  No  one  knows  just 
how  bad  the  situation  is,  because  the  col- 
lection of  vital  statistics  has  been  sharply 
curtailed,  along  with  the  breakdown  of 
health  services  generally.  In  some  cases 
all  we  can  go  on  are  the  reports  of  more  or 
less  competent  observers.  Germany  has 
sufTered  less  than  her  satellites  and  the 
countries  she  has  occupied/  The  Nazis 
have  made  good  their  threat  that  the  Ger- 
mans would  be  the  last  to  go  hungry;  they 
have  seized  food,  medical  supplies,  cloth- 
ing, and  fuel  from  all  over  the  Continent. 
Even  so,  there  is  evidence  of  serious  de- 
terioration in  the  health  of  German  civil- 
ians, at  least  of  those  residing  in  cities.  A 
marked  rise  in  urban  death  rates  occurred 
in  1942,  particularly  am.ong  infants,  young 
children,  and  adolescents.  Infant  mor- 
tality has  increased  significantly  in  the 
past  year  or  two.  This  contrasts  with  the 
decline  to  a  record  low  for  England  and 
Wales  in  the  same  period.  The  German 
birth  rate  has  fallen  sharply  and  may  in 
fact  now  be  approaching  the  lowest  levels 
recorded  in  the  First  World  War. 

The  recent  intensive  bombinsfs  of  Ger- 


man cities  have  probably  greatly  acceler- 
ated the  unfavorable  trends  in  the  German 
health  situation,  and  have  served  also  to 
undermine  the  morale  of  the  people,  itself 
a  factor  in  health.  Not  only  have  un- 
known thousands  been  killed  outright,  but 
the  number  of  injured  has  added  greatly 
to  the  burden  on  the  already  overtaxed 
medical  facilities.  In  addition,  municipal 
health  and  sanitary  services  have,  in  part 
at  least,  been  disrupted,  while  the  large- 
scale  destruction  of  houses  has  caused  in- 
creased overcrowding  with  its  attendant 
dangers.  It  is  significant  that  cases  of 
typhus,  which  were  extremely  rare  in  pre- 
war Germany,  were  by  1943  numbered 
in  the  thousands.  Present  conditions  in 
German  cities  render  their  inhabitants 
more  susceptible  than  ever  to  the  spread  of 
this  and  other  epidemic  diseases  as  the  war 
proceeds.  Competent  medical  observers 
who  have  recently  returned  from  Germany 
report  that  the  civilian  food  ration  is  now 
fax  below  subsistence  level  and  is  progres- 
sively getting  worse. 

In  France  general  health  conditions 
have  been  much  worse  than  in  Germany. 
The  vitality  of  the  French  people  has 
undoubtedly  been  seriously  undermined 
through  semi-famine  conditions,  aggra- 
vated by  the  lack  of  clothing,  shelter,  and 
fuel.  The  fact  that  soap  is  almost  im- 
possible to  secure  makes  sanitation  more 
difficult  and  accelerates  the  spread  of  dis- 
ease. Even  in  1 940,  food  rations  in  Paris 
were  well  below  the  amount  needed  for 
maintenance  of  health  and  strength,  and 
the  food  situation  has  certainly  not  im- 
proved. The  diet  of  Marseilles  children 
in  1 942  contained  only  1,500  calories  a  day, 
and  that  of  children  in  refugee  camps  only 
900,  instead  of  the  minimum  daily  require- 
ment of  over  2,000.  It  is  not  surprising 
then  that  French  mortality  is  considerably 
higher  than  before  the  war,  especially  from 
tuberculosis.  In  Paris  alone,  tuberculosis 
deaths  increased  by  40  per  cent  in  the  two 
years  of  German  occupation  from  1940  to 
1942.  Infant  mortality  has  risen,  while 
the  birth  rate  has  fallen  so  low  that  deaths 
exceed  births  by  a  large  margin.  The 
birth  rate  must  continue  at  low  levels  as 
long  as  the  Germans  continue  to  strangle 
France  by  keeping  millions  of  young 
Frenchmen  in  prison  camps. 


230 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


The  full  toll  of  famine  and  disease  in  the 
rest  of  Europe  is  not  known.  Yet  such 
fragmentary  reports  as  come  through 
neutral  Sweden  or  S|witzerland  indicate 
disastrous  conditions  and  the  number  of 
births  has  fallen  so  sliarply  that  in  many 
countries  besides  France  the  birth  rate  is 
now  lower  than  the  death  rate.  In  the 
long  run  this  would  mean  serious  de- 
population. 

Even  in  the  satellite  countries  of  eastern 
Europe  civilian  health  conditions  have 
changed  markedly  for  the  worse.  These 
countries  have  been  exploited  almost  as 
much  as  the  occupied  ones.  Thus  it  is 
notable  that  partly  because  of  German 
"purchases"  and  partly  because  facili- 
ties for  transportation  and  distribution 
were  diverted  to  military  uses,  there  have 
been  actual  bread  shortages  in  Rumania, 
one  of  the  rich  granaries  of  Europe.  The 
official  figures  show  no  increase  in  death 
rates  up  to  1941,  but  their  accuracy  is 
open  to  question.  To  some  extent  the 
country  may  of  course  have  benefited 
from  the  German  military  health  regime, 
designed  primarily  for  the  protection  of 
Axis  troops.  A  distinct  sign  of  deteriora- 
tion in  the  sanitary  conditions  however 
is  seen  in  the  rise  in  the  number  of  typhus 
cases  to  the  highest  levels  in  years.  The 
birth  rate  in  Rumania,  one  of  the  most 
prolific  countries  of  Europe,  has  fallen 
sharply. 

By  far  the  worst  sufferers  of  the  war  have 
been  Polish  and  Greek  civilians  and  those 
in  the  Nazi-occupied  Russian  provinces. 
Large  sections  of  the  populations  of  these 
areas,  especially  city  dwellers,  have  suf- 
fered from  actual  famine,  and  food  short- 
ages little  less  stringent  have  existed  in 
other  regions.  Millions  have  been  de- 
prived of  their  homes  and  forced  into  hard 
manual  labor,  while  insufficiently  fed, 
clothed,  and  sheltered.  Conditions  have 
been  farther  aggravated  by  the  disorganiz- 
ing effects  of  mass  migrations.  An  ex- 
ample of  the  frightful  impact  of  war  and 
famine  is  the  estimate  that  fewer  than  one  in 
twenty  of  Greek  infants  and  children  born 
since  1940  survive  to-day.  Again,  in 
Polish  ghettos  civilian  death  rates  after 
two  years  of  German  occupation  rose  ten- 
fold. Unquestionably  those  remaining 
are  dying  off'  even  more  rapidly  to-day. 


It  is  hardly  necessary  to  elaborate  on  the 
plight  of  the  Jews  under  Nazi  domination. 
To  the  millions  of  these  people  bare  sur- 
vival is  a  bitter  struggle.  Health,  as  we 
speak  of  it,  is  to-day  utterly  beyond  their 
reach. 

A  redeeming  feature  in  devastated  Eu- 
rope is  the  reported  achievement  of  Rus- 
sia's public  health  organization.  In  the 
unoccupied  sections  of  that  country  sur- 
prisingly high  standards  have  been  main- 
tained. Public  health  precautions  have 
been  regarded  as  a  military  measure  and 
serious  sanitary  violations  have  been  pun- 
ishable by  death.  In  the  factories  the 
sickness  rate  rose  in  the  first  year  of  the 
war;  but  the  next  year  the  number  of  in- 
dustrial clinics  was  increased  and  daily 
health  inspection  was  installed,  and  the 
sickness  rate  dropped.  In  the  occupied 
areas,  as  we  have  noted,  conditions  were 
extremely  bad,  but  in  spite  of  insuperable 
difficulties  the  health  organization  has 
speedily  restored  sanitary  services  in  the 
areas  which  have  been  wrested  back  from 
the  Nazi  armies.  In  an  unbelievably 
short  time  Russian  health  workers  re- 
paired a  great  part  of  the  damage  done 
by  the  Germans  to  health  facilities — hos- 
pitals, clinics,  baths,  and  laundries — and 
gave  treatment  to  the  large  number  of  the 
sick  and  injured  civilians  left  in  these  areas. 
Vigorous  measures  have  succeeded  in 
stamping  out  epidemic  diseases  which 
came  with  the  German  occupation. 

IV 

THE  frightful  increases  in  civilian  mor- 
tality in  Europe  have  occurred  despite 
the  fact  that  so  far  there  have  been  no 
widespread  epidemics.  It  is  true  that  the 
general  incidence  of  typhus  fever  has 
grown  in  eastern  Europe  and  that  there 
have  been  localized  outbreaks  of  the  dis- 
ease in  the  Balkans,  in  Spain,  and  in  North 
Africa.  Moreover,  there  is  a  constant 
source  of  danger  in  people  weakened  by 
famine,  who  would  be  easy  prey  for  any 
of  a  number  of  infectious  diseases.  If  a 
major  epidemic  got  a  start  it  would  be 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  control  it. 
It  is  highly  probable  that  it  would  sweep 
through  these  populations,  building  up 
virulence,  and  that  it  might  then  extend 


OUR    HEALTH     IN    WARTIME 


231 


lis  ravages  ihron^h  the  rest  of  the  world. 

It  IS  clear  therefore  that  in  the  postwar 
period  all  nations  must  stand  together  for 
the  preservation  of  global  health.  Wc  in 
America  have  a  permanent  stake  in  it. 
We  cannot  isolate  our  own  well-being. 
Epidemics  have  a  way  of  crossing  bounda- 
ries and  disregarding  national  borders. 
When  we  consider  that  after  the  war  no 
place  on  earth  will  be  more  than  sixty 
hours  of  air  travel  from  New  York  it  is 
plain  that  we  cannot  expect  to  remain  well 
if  sickness  rages  in  other  lands.  With 
men  and  women  arriving  by  plane  from 
the  tropics  or  arctic  lands,  we  shall  have  to 
deal  with  strange  diseases,  perhaps  un- 
known in  our  own  population. 

We  are  thus  dependent  upon  the  sound 
health  of  other  nations,  and  its  mainte- 
nance will  be  a  postwar  necessity.  To 
right  the  present  disastrous  conditions  will 
undoubtedly  take  at  least  a  generation. 
In  fact  a  large  proportion  of  the  surviving 
peoples  of  the  occupied  countries,  espe- 
cially the  children,  will  bear  permanently 
the  efTects  of  the  overwhelming  hardships 


they  have  experienced.  If  marching  ar- 
mies left  their  mark  on  civilian  life  in  the 
last  war,  the  story  is  being  repeated  with 
far  greater  intensity  in  this  one.  There 
is  before  us  an  immense  job  of  rehabilita- 
tion which  will  require  the  co-ordinated 
action  of  all  of  the  powers  of  the  world. 
This  is  the  justification  and  this  the  pro- 
gram of  the  United  Nations  Relief  and 
Rehabilitation  Administration.  We  arc 
fortunate  that  this  organization  has  al- 
ready begun  to  prepare  a  complete  plan 
and  to  assign  a  quota  of  responsibility  to 
each  country  that  can  help  in  postwar  re- 
lief work.  An  integral  part  of  the  scheme 
is  an  international  medical  commission 
with  facilities  to  serve  all  nations  and  with 
a  carefully  planned  campaign  to  reach  the 
war-torn  peoples  most  efTectively.  Only 
through  such  joint  action  can  the  spread  of 
disease  be  checked  and  the  health  of  all 
nations  restored.  We  have  been  so  for- 
tunate in  our  own  wartime  experience  that 
we  can  w^ell  afford  to  lend  our  skills  and 
our  resources  toward  the  success  of  this 
vital  effort. 


CARIBBEAN    COMMAND 


Americans  in  Battle — Mo,  9 


FLETCHER     PRATT 


iHE  was  a  seventy-foot  cabin  cruiser, 
intended  for  polite  parties  down  the 
bay  with  cocktails  and  Hght  laughter 
under  the  awning  on  the  fantail.  The 
Philadelphia  Navy  Yard,  to  which  she  was 
turned  over  for  conversion,  was  smothered 
in  big  jobs  on  battleships  and  cruisers 
damaged  in  the  war  on  the  Atlantic  or 
fitting  new  for  the  struggle  in  the  Pacific. 
They  gave  her  to  the  second-string  me- 
chanics, who  somewhat  insecurely  at- 
tached a  .50-caliber  machine  gun  for- 
ward, installed  two  depth  charges  (all  she 
could  carry)  aft,  and  slapped  a  coat  of 
warpaint  on  her.  In  April,  1942,  when 
submarines  were  sinking  ships  all  down  the 
coast  against  the  loom  of  the  city  lights 
and  were  beginning  to  sift  through  the 
passes  into  the  Caribbean,  she  was  com- 
missioned a  warship  of  the  U.  S.  Navy  and 
turned  over  to  a  very  junior  lieutenant 
with  bright  new  insignia  of  rank. 

His  name  was  Cliff  Collins  and  hers 
TP279,  from  which  she  was  called  a 
"Yippee."  Her  crew  consisted  of  ten 
boys  fresh  from  boot  camp  who  had  never 
seen  water  in  anything  bigger  than  a 
bathtub,  a  fat  veteran  chief  bosun's  mate, 
and  a  good  machinist.  With  this  equip- 
ment she  started  down  the  inside  route, 
engines  wheezing.  At  Charleston  they 
broke  down;  the  dockyard  people  hauled 
her  out  on  a  marine  railway  and  clucked 


apprehensively  as  they  did  what  they 
could  for  her.  They  told  her  skipper 
that  she  might  do  for  one-day  coastal  pa- 
trols but  she  had  better  not  go  more  than 
five  miles  out  as  she  was  totally  unsea- 
worthy. 

Collins  did  not  inform  his  crew  of  this 
warning  till  they  were  at  sea.  They  had 
already  learned  through  scuttlebutt,  which 
is  the  Navy  grapevine,  that  TP219  was  to 
be  part  of  a  convoy  taking  a  big  floating 
repair  shop  eleven  hundred  miles  directly 
across  an  ocean  full  of  submarines  to  San 
Juan,  Puerto  Rico,  and  none  of  them 
wished  to  miss  the  chance  of  really  getting 
into  the  war.  That  is,  none  but  a  some- 
what rococo  youth  who  had  somehow 
slipped  through  the  enlistment  net  and 
who,  after  remarking  that  he  could  not 
make  any  money  aboard  this  hooker,  went 
over  the  hill  never  to  be  seen  again  by 
Yippee  219,  leaving  behind  him  twenty 
decks  of  skillfully  marked  cards.  These 
introduced  an  interesting  variation  into 
the  games  that  kept  them  all  from  going 
crazy  during  the  next  days. 

They  had  hardly  left  Charleston  before 
the  convoy  was  struck  by  a  typical  Hat- 
teras  gale.  The  convoy  consisted  of  the 
repair  ship,  a  tug  for  it,  a  big  converted 
yacht,  and  another  Yippee  of  slightly  more 
ample  proportions  than  219.  On  the 
second  day  of  the  storm  the  other  Yippee 


CARIBBEAN  ClOMMAND 


233 


could  take  It  no  longer  and  turned  back. 
She  radioed  that  night  that  her  rudder 
cable  had  snapped  and  both  her  propellers 
had  been  broken  by  the  pounding  seas. 
The  yacht  left  the  convoy  to  get  her  to 
safety. 

Everybody  aboard  219  was  violently 
seasick;  they  could  keep  no  fire  and  cook 
no  food.  The  ship  pounded  so  that  on  one 
occasion  Collins  was  pitched  through  the 
upper  half  of  the  bridge  door  and  saved 
only  because  the  lower  half  held.  Anyone 
who  could,  slept  on  deck,  lashed  down. 
Nobody  dared  create  an  opening  for  wa- 
ter to  enter  the  hull  by  lifting  a  hatch  long 
enough  to  go  below,  but  everyone  could 
hear  the  fragments  of  their  crockery  and 
glassware  grinding  themselves  to  powder 
against  the  silver  down  there.  The  ship 
did  not  carry  enough  water  to  drink  for 
such  a  voyage,  to  say  nothing  of  washing. 
She  had  four  days'  less  fuel  than  would  be 
sufficient  for  the  journey,  and  by  night 
had  to  hitch  to  the  repair  ship  for  a  tow, 
casting  loose  to  patrol  round  her  during 
the  day.  Her  forecastle  planking  was 
weak;  the  winches  tore  out  at  the  first  tow, 
leaving  jagged  holes. 

Off  San  Juan  the  weather  somewhat 
abated  and  the  converted  yacht  caught  up 
with  this  singular  convoy.  That  day  they 
sighted  a  sub  on  the  surface  some  distance 
away,  but  she  ducked  down  v>^hen  the 
escorts  ran  toward  her  and  they  pushed  on. 
They  found  themselves  In  the  base  port 
of  Caribbean  Command.  There  the  ex- 
hausted crew  of  TP219  slept  the  clock 
round  while  Collins  went  to  report  to 
Comcarib,  VIce-Admlral  John  Hoover. 


II 

HE  WAS  a  big  man  with  a  long  straight 
nose  and  a  sharp  jaw,  known  as 
"Genial  John,"  which  is  a  descriptive 
name  only  by  synecdoche.  Those  who 
have  seen  him  with  his  son  or  at  parties  be- 
fore the  war  say  he  can  be  genial  enough; 
In  the  office  of  the  Caribbean  Command 
he  was  volcanic,  both  as  to  energy  and 
ejected  sulphuric  matter.  Officers  keeping 
the  dead  watch  from  four  to  eight  In  the 
morning  or  the  dog  watch  before  It  tell  of 
the  telephone  ringing  and  a  voice,  "This  Is 
the  Commandant.    Get  me — "     His  abil- 


ity to  absorb  facts  was  legendary,  his  mem- 
ory prodigious.  His  favorite  remark  was, 
"What  makes  it  do?"  and  twenty  minutes 
after  asking  the  question  he  would  be  tell- 
ing (correedy)  how  the  arrangement  could 
be  improved.  It  is  said  that  one  of  our 
greatest  leaders  looked  at  the  dispatch 
announcing  Pearl  Harbor  with  the  re- 
mark, "If  John  Hoover  had  been  there 
this  never  would  have  happened." 

There  was  enough  to  make  him  volcanic 
at  this  time,  June,  1942.  San  Juan  had 
been  a  naval  district  command,  the  tenth, 
embracing  the  Caribbean  shores  west  to 
Curagao,  east  to  the  Guianas,  north  to 
Cuba — a  district  command,  which  Is  a 
kind  of  housekeeping  assignment,  its  prin- 
cipal job  being  to  look  after  yards,  docks, 
and  the  provisioning  of  ships  bound 
through  toward  more  important  tasks. 
It  has  few  ships  of  its  own  except  tugs  and 
water  barges,  no  planes  unless  the  district 
Includes  also  a  training  command.  In 
February  the  district  had  become  a  naval 
frontier,  that  is,  a  combat  area,  by  official 
fiat;  but  In  February  also  the  submarines 
announced  their  presence  by  sinking  the 
Lady  Hawkins  with  all  those  women  and 
children,  and  John  Hoover  still  had  the 
equipment  of  a  district  rather  than  of  a 
frontier. 

What  could  they  give  him?  Far  in  the 
Pacific  Singapore  had  fallen,  abdafloat 
was  fighting  with  hopeless  gallantry  in  the 
Java  Sea,  at  any  moment  Australia  might 
be  Invaded,  Pearl  Harbor  Itself  was  hardly 
safe  with  the  wrecked  battleships  rising 
from  the  mud.  The  German  submarines 
were  concentrating  their  attack  on  tank- 
ers; they  clearly  would  not  neglect  the 
concentration  that  had  to  form  round  the 
oil  fields  of  Maracaibo  and  the  refineries 
at  Curagao;  but  the  best  that  could  be 
spared  for  the  Caribbean  Command  were 
Yippees,  a  handful  of  planes,  and  such 
help  as  the  Army  could  render.  This  was 
not  inconsiderable  since  the  Army,  with 
its  narrower  responsibilities,  had  from  the 
days  of  the  destroyer-base  deal  regarded 
the  islands  as  the  outguard  of  the  Canal 
and  had  been  working  enthusiastically  on 
Its  landing  strips  and  hangars. 

But  in  those  darkest  months  of  the  war 
the  big  fast  Army  planes,  Flying  Fortresses 
and  B24s,  were  also  needed  to  halt  the 


234 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Japanese  rush.  All  the  Antilles  Air  Com- 
mand (the  Army  unit)  could  bring  to  bear 
were  groups  of  old  B18s — respectable  ma- 
chines but  slow,  of  shoft  range,  not  well 
armed.  The  command  was  not  even 
co-ordinated  with  that  of  the  Navy  until 
the  establishment  of  the  sea  frontier. 
Working  out  methods  of  operation  was  not 
the  least  task  Genial  John  Hoover  had  to 
face. 

Nor  the  greatest.  The  two  services,  so 
different  in  their  equipment,  organization, 
and  method,  were  at  least  manned  by 
Americans  with  a  common  military  herit- 
age and  a  common  ability  to  understand 
such  phrases  as  "clean  up  hitter"  or 
"raise  the  ante,"  which  are  of  more  mili- 
tary utility  than  one  might  think.  The 
newly  formed  Caribbean  Command  con- 
tained a  handful  of  British  corvettes  that 
had  no  such  associations.  It  included 
one  or  two  vessels  of  the  Dutch  Navy,  oper- 
ating under  a  strange  language  and  cus- 
toms. It  was  presently  joined  by  ships 
from  a  Brazilian  Navy  which  up  to  this 
time  had  been  chiefly  remarkable  for  the 
brilliant  papers  written  by  officers  who 
seldom  got  out  of  sight  of  shore. 

All  these  ships  had  to  operate  not  only 
from  Puerto  Rico,  the  least  Americanized 
of  the  islands,  but  also  from  a  series  of 
harbors  and  airports  under  foreign  flags, 
where  they  came  in  contact  with  colonials 
fiercely  jealous  of  their  small  sovereign- 
ties, determined  to  impress  their  little 
identities  on  the  Colossus  of  the  North. 

Add  that  neutral  shipping  constantly 
sifted  through  the  area  with  its  latent 
possibilities  of  espionage  and  sabotage. 
Add  that  the  command  included  Mar- 
tinique, with  the  problems  presented  by 
its  dubious  allegiance,  the  cruisers  and  the 
carrier  that  lay  there,  and  the  American- 
built  fighters  aboard  the  latter. 

Merely  setting  up  the  command  in  fact 
required  a  whole  series  of  diplomatic 
agreements  that  would  have  taken  years 
in  peace,  and  now  to  be  made  under  the 
pressure  of  war,  with  the  sinkings  mount- 
ing as  the  Germans  followed  the  logical 
strategy  of  running  from  the  completer 
Atlantic  coast  patrols  to  an  area  where 
there  was  practically  no  defense.  When 
Yippee  219  arrived  they  were  already  not 
far  short  of  a  ship-a-day  average.     The 


orders  were  to  patch  up  the  holes  in  219's 
deck,  fit  her  with  new  winches,  and  send 
her  down  to  Trinidad. 


r 


III 

T  WAS  one  of  the  three  sector  bases 
under  which  Admiral  Hoover  had 
organized  his  sea  frontier.  Each  had  its 
headquarters  at  a  focal  point  with  a  rear 
admiral  in  charge — one  for  the  northern 
passes  around  the  foot  of  Cuba,  under 
Rear  Admiral  Weyler  at  Guantanamo; 
one  for  the  refineries  themselves  at  Cu- 
rasao, with  Rear  Admiral  Robinson,  who 
brought  the  Marblehead  home  from  Java 
when  nobody  thought  it  could  be  done; 
one  for  Trinidad,  under  Rear  Admiral 
OUendorf,  to  cover  the  southern  issues 
from  the  Caribbean. 

When  rP219  arrived  the  place  held  a 
typical  island  port  that  had  gone  to  sleep 
since  the  close  of  the  great  boom  in  cocoa; 
a  landing  strip  from  which  the  Army 
planes  took  off;  a  maze  of  bulldozers  and 
contractors'  lumber  round  a  new  base 
just  building;  a  cove  with  a  new  dock  to 
which  the  little  Yippee  tied  up  while  her 
skipper  went  ashore  to  report  to  the  escort 
vessel  administrator;  and  an  office  which 
called  itself  headquarters  for  the  sector. 

The  office  was  being  organized  from  the 
top  down  and  it  furnished  an  example  of 
unified  command — the  first  of  its  kind 
in  the  war.  Admiral  OUendorf  was  the 
head;  all  orders  were  issued  in  his  name. 
The  heart  was  the  "crystal-gazer's  board," 
a  big  map  on  the  wall  of  a  room  like  the 
one  in  Eastern  Sea  Frontier  Headquarters 
in  New  York  (which  was  described  by 
Lieutenant  Thompson  in  Harper'' s  for  Oc- 
tober, 1942),  on  which  were  pinned  little 
symbols  for  ships  moving  through  the 
area,  for  planes  available  or  in  movement, 
and  for  submarines.  All  day  long  officers 
watched  these  symbols  as  reports  of  sink- 
ings and  contacts  and  radio  intercepts 
came  to  them,  studying  each  individual 
U-boat  till  they  learned  its  skipper's  hab- 
its and  mental  patterns. 

"Some  of  them  were  awful  good,  one  in 
particular.  We  could  predict  two  months 
ahead  when  he'd  come  around  again  and 
we  knew  some  convoy  would  lose  three  or 
four  ships.     We've  missed  him  since  De- 


CARIBBEAN   COMMAND 


235 


cember,  and  as  we  had  a  drfinito  sinking  in 
the  area  where  he  then  was,  we  think  he's 
gone  now.  There  was  another  though 
who  pulled  right  out  of  the  area  if  a  plane 
sighted  him,  and  one  who  would  surfaee 
every  night  to  have  a  long  conversation 
with  home." 

(Ft  is  characteristic  of  Admiral  Hoover 
that  when  his  staff  wanted  to  set  up  a 
similar  board  at  general  headquarters  he 
replied,  nonsense;  he  could  keep  track  of 
every  ship  in  the  Caribbean  in  his  head 
and  make  the  necessary  deductions — proved 
he  could  do  it  too.  The  staff  won  in  the 
end  by  pointing  out  that  he  was  the 
only  magician  in  San  Juan  and  in  war 
there  is  always  a  chance  that  any  one  man 
may  become  a  casualty.) 

From  this  board  information  passed 
through  a  control  officer,  an  Army  man, 
who  assigned  units  to  give  air  cover  and 
surface  cover  to  ships  moving  through  the 
area.  Most  of  these  ships  in  those  days 
had  sailing  orders  to  Trinidad  only;  even 
their  captains  were  ignorant  of  their  ulti- 
mate destination.  There  they  stated  their 
needs  in  food,  fuel,  repairs,  and  waited  to 
be  made  up  into  convoys. 

The  officer  in  charge  of  supplies  and  re- 
pairs was  British  Navy.  He  not  only  had 
to  meet  outrageous  requests  like  that  for 
five  thousand  galvanized  buckets  before 
to-morrow  morning,  but  also  during  most 
of  1942  to  repair  a  long  succession  of  vessels 
hit  by  torpedoes  or  driven  beyond  the 
capacity  of  old  engines  and  hulls.  There 
was  little  shop  equipment  and  no  labor  but 
natives,  who  formed  the  interesting  habit 
of  breaking  tools  so  they  could  be  paid 
without  having  to  work  for  it.  Nobody 
knows  how  he  did  the  job. 

The  officer  directing  the  making  up  of 
convoys  and  the  hours  of  their  sailing  was 
American  Navy;  escorts  were  furnished  by 
another  American  Navy  officer,  who  took 
anything  available  down  to  such  fantastic 
combinations  as  a  U.  S.  destroyer,  a 
Dutch  gunboat,  and  a  couple  of  British 
motor-torpedo  boats. 

In  the  air  the  convoys  were  covered 
by  equally  strange  mixtures,  Army,  Navy, 
and  Marine  Corps  planes,  sometimes  all 
at  once  working  under  the  orders  of  a  co- 
ordinating officer  who  might  belong  to 
any  of  the  three. 


IV 


THIS  was  the  administralivc  setup  in 
which  TP219  was  one  of  the  units  on 
the  firing  line.  Her  twelve-man  crew 
was  profoundly  unconscious  of  this  back- 
ground. 

The  island  of  Trinidad  is  shaped  like  a 
capital  U  lying  on  its  side,  with  two  long 
arms  reaching  toward  it  from  Venezuela  to 
enclose  the  Gulf  of  Paria,  large  as  a  Great 
Lake.  The  issues  north  and  south  from 
that  gulf  are  called  bocas.  By  July  the 
Germans  were  so  well  aware  of  the  slight 
protection  we  had  that  they  were  bringing 
their  submarines  right  into  the  bocas. 
There  would  be  a  pillar  of  flame  in  the 
night,  visible  even  from  shore,  and  a 
shock  like  the  sudden  tropic  thunder; 
TP219  would  be  ordered  out  to  pick  up 
survivors. 

There  were  thirty-five  from  the  first 
ship,  almost  as  soon  as  she  arrived  on  the 
station;  fifty-five  from  the  second,  includ- 
ing an  indestructible  Army  colonel  who 
had  been  brought  back  from  the  East  be- 
cause a  doctor  said  his  heart  could  not 
stand  the  shock  of  war.  Some  of  these 
survivors  were  burned,  some  were  injured, 
some  were  women,  and  room  for  all  had 
to  be  found  on  the  deck  of  the  craft 
that  was  already  crowded  by  her  normal 
crew. 

There  was  the  sailor  of  an  armed  guard 
who  had  been  trapped  under  a  gun  mount 
when  a  torpedo  explosion  threw  it  across 
his  leg  and  had  been  carried  actually  un- 
der the  surface  before  the  explosion  of  a 
second  torpedo  threw  it  off  again.  There 
v/ere  men  who  had  been  picked  up  by 
ships  which  themselves  had  been  torpe- 
doed before  they  could  reach  shore  with 
the  survivors.  In  those  early  days  all  the 
winning  was  on  the  German  side;  they  did 
not  even  have  to  use  the  wolf-pack  tech- 
nique of  the  north  Atlantic. 

One  submarine  would  lie  outside  the 
bocas  and  warn  whatever  other  lay  nearest 
the  route  of  a  convoy — which  was  almost 
certain  to  lose  some  ships. 

All  over  the  Caribbean  there  were  simi- 
lar scenes  during  that  disastrous  season,  at 
the  passages  round  Cuba  and  Santa 
Domingo  and  off  Curagao  itself,  where 
one  U-boat  shelled  the  oil  refineries  and 


236 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


another  torpedoed  the  big  gunboat  Erie^  * 
one  of  the  best  vessels  in  the  little  defen- 
sive fleet. 

There  was  trouble  even  in  the  harbors, 
many  of  which  amongi:he  islands  are  not 
proper  harbors  at  all,  but  open  road- 
steads; submarines  slipped  up  at  night  to 
fire  torpedoes  at  ships  as  they  lay  along 
the  docks.  It  is  always  hard  for  Ameri- 
cans to  believe  that  they  have  insufficient 
means  to  solve  any  given  problem,  but  as 
this  year  of  decision  slid  downhill  toward 
fall,  with  the  sinkings  continually  rising. 
Genial  John  Hoover  was  refusing  all  invi- 
tations and  working  far  into  the  night, 
and  the  Caribbean  was  becoming  the 
most  dangerous  of  all  seas. 

It  is  impossible  to  assign  a  definite  mo- 
ment at  which  the  upturn  began.  There 
are  too  many  elements  concerned.  Was 
it  July?  A  squadron  of  PBYs,  the  giant 
seaplanes,  arrived  that  month,  their  pilots 
just  out  of  training  school  and  green  as 
grass.  "Send  them  down  to  Trinidad," 
said  John  Hoover  and  had  to  be  argued 
with  by  his  air  officer,  who  pointed  out 
that  these  lads  had  not  even  had  their 
gunnery  practice  yet.  (Hoover  gave  him 
just  eight  days  to  get  them  ready.)  With 
the  arrival  of  these  big  bombers  that  could 
stay  out  all  night,  sinkings  in  the  bocas 
ceased;  TP219  could  be  an  escort  craft 
again — at  least  to  some  distance  out, 
where  the  old  grim  business  of  picking  up 
survivors  recommenced. 

In  July  also  a  more  northerly  flight 
recorded  the  first  submarine  kill  accepted 
as  definite  under  the  hard  rules  of  the 
Navy,  where  the  saying  goes  that  "you 
must  bring  back  the  captain's  hat  and  his 
left  arm  to  prove  it.''  The  plane  picked 
up  a  sub  by  night  and  dropped  a  flare. 
The  sub  submerged  so  quickly  that  by 
the  time  she  turned  it  was  gone,  but  the 
light  showed  a  second  black  silhouette  on 
the  water,  her  bombs  damaged  it,  and  the 
Canadian  corvette  Oakville  came  up  to 
cut  the  U-boat  in  two. 

Yet  July  showed  the  sinkings  rising  in 
an  unbroken  curve.  Would  August  be 
the  key  date?  In  August  the  PBYs  were 
joined  by  new  squadrons.  The  net-layers 
began  to  come,  those  craft  with  the  double 

*  But  the  Erie  did  not  go  down;  they  got  her  on 
the  beach  and  saved  her. 


projecting  bows  that  caused  them  to  be 
called  "praying  mantises."  They  pro- 
tected the  anchorages.  A  squadron  of 
Lockheed  Hudsons  arrived  from  the  Brit- 
ish Coastal  Command,  with  pilots  who  had 
three  years  of  war  and  submarine  hunting 
under  their  belts  and  who  could  add  to 
the  Carib  Command  that  element  of  old 
experience  it  had  been  lacking. 

But  they  were  pilots  from  the  north, 
used  to  long  runways  in  flat  country  and 
to  cool  temperatures.  They  had  acci- 
dents in  the  short  mountain-island  landing 
strips;  they  burned  out  harnesses  by  not 
opening  their  ventilators  widely  enough; 
and  throughout  August  the  sinkings  rose. 

Perhaps  September?  More  depth- 
charge-type  bombs  became  available  in 
September;  up  to  then  many  had  been 
merely  land-type  bombs  with  the  sharp 
nose  set  in  an  improvised  concrete  base  to 
make  it  sink  faster.  Now  there  began  to 
be  incidents  like  that  of  the  submarine 
caught  on  the  surface  north  of  the  islands. 
One  depth  charge  lit  under  her  tail  and 
hoisted  it.  Whether  it  damaged  her  will 
never  be  known,  for  the  second  struck  on 
her  deck  just  forward  of  the  conning  tower 
and  lodged  there,  not  going  off.  The 
U-boat  dived;  when  she  reached  the  depth 
for  which  the  charge  had  been  set  it  did 
go  off  and  blew  her  all  to  pieces. 


SEPTEMBER  saw  also  the  swarmings  of 
the  SCs.  There  had  been  some  be- 
fore but  now  they  came  in  quantity,  the 
wooden  110-footers,  outgrowths  of  the 
famous  little  ships  that  Loring  Swasey  of 
Boston  designed  for  the  Allied  govern- 
ments in  the  last  war.  The  new  SCs  had 
numbers  running  up  into  four  figures; 
they  were  manned  by  college  boys  and 
soda  jerkers  and  plow  hands,  who  led  a 
life  quite  as  rugged  as  that  aboard  Yippee 
219  and  loved  every  minute  of  it.  On 
an  SC  the  crew's  compartment  is  in 
the  forepeak,  marvelously  crowded,  with 
bunks  in  tiers  of  three,  and  only  one 
washbasin  for  twenty-four  men — a  sensible 
economy  since  the  ship  cannot  in  any  case 
carry  enough  water  for  washing.  Officers 
and  crew  eat  together,  the  same  meals, 
the  heads  waiting  till  their  men  have  fin- 


CARIBBEAN    COMMAND 


;37 


ishcd  and  using  the  same  tables;  for  al- 
though there  is  a  wardroom  on  an  SC, 
food  can  be  brought  to  it  only  by  a  mess 
attendant  who  performs  a  miracle  of  bal- 
ance as  he  carries  a  tray  with  one  hand 
while  he  uses  the  other  to  help  himself  up 
a  vertical  8-foot  steel  ladder  which  reels  as 
much  as  72  degrees  from  perpendicular 
with  the  movement  of  the  ship. 

And  they  do  move;  good  God  how  they 
move!  Every  SC  man  has  to  learn  in  his 
first  few  days  the  trick  of  never  taking  a 
step,  never  standing,  sitting,  or  lying  with- 
out gripping  something  with  one  hand  to 
keep  from  breaking  his  bones  against  the 
opposite  bulkhead.  It  is  said  that  the  SC 
men  have  developed  prehensile  toes  to 
hold  themselves  in  bed  at  night;  and  the 
tale  is  told  in  the  Caribbean  of  an  SC 
that,  having  picked  up  a  lone  survivor 
from  his  life  raft,  speeded  up  to  join  her 
convoy.  ''Sir,"  said  the  shipwrecked 
mariner,  "would  you  mind  just  putting 
me  back  on  that  raft  with  a  few  provisions?" 

Probably  they  turned  him  down  because 
there  were  no  provisions — or  water.  The 
SC  of  the  Second  World  War  is  Diesel- 
powered  and  thus  has  cruising  range  suffi- 
cient to  take  her  across  an  ocean;  but  it  is 
built  into  a  craft  that  was  designed  in  the 
First  World  War  to  use  gasoline  engines 
and  so  was  not  meant  to  go  out  of  sight 
of  land. 

The  Caribbean  SCs  were  assigned  to 
missions  on  the  basis  of  their  fuel  capacity, 
not  their  other  characteristics.  They  had 
to  be;  the  need  was  for  ships  that  could 
cover  convoys  clear  across  the  island  sea, 
from  Panama  to  Guantanamo,  from  Trini- 
dad to  New  Orleans.  So  the  SC  sailors 
ate  sandwiches  instead  of  meals — when 
there  was  any  bread,  they  having  no 
ovens.  They  washed  in  teacups  when 
they  washed  at  all,  they  clung  to  stan- 
chions till  their  coracoid  processes  pulled 
out,  and  they  sowed  the  Caribbean  with 
depth  charges  till  the  Wood's  Hole  men 
recorded  with  astonishment  that  the  sea 
life  of  the  ocean  was  being  changed,  the 
whales  and  blackfish  seeking  safer  waters. 

In  September  the  submarines  suffered 
more  than  they  had  since  the  beginning  of 
the  war;  but  so  did  the  shipping  they 
were  attacking,  and  the  calendar  swung 
round  the  corner  into  October. 


The  amount  of  time  it  takes  to  "fleet  in" 
a  ship  as  a  fully  efficient  unit  of  war  is 
directly  in  proportion  to  her  size,  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  size  implies  a  greater 
complication  of  equipment  and  a  greater 
number  of  men  who  must  learn  one  an- 
other's habits  and  reactions  to  the  spoken 
word.  (The  more  important  half  of  any 
military  order  is  never  uttered.)  Along 
with  the  SCs  the  PCs  began  to  come  to 
the  Caribbean;  by  October  they  were 
in  flood.  Fundamentally  they  were  SCs 
grown  up  to  conditions  of  the  ocean  and 
the  Second  World  War. 

They  were  sea-keeping  vessels  in  the 
true  sense,  with  sound  gear  and  secret 
gear,  an  armament  that  would  keep  any 
submarine  under,  and  speed  enough  to  let 
them  patrol  the  flanks  of  fast  convoys;  as 
heavy  and  strong  as  some  of  the  destroyers 
of  the  last  war.  They  were  not  heavy 
enough  to  be  comfortable  ships;  even  the 
skipper  had  a  cabin  only  about  six  feet 
square,  and  the  clinging-monkey  act  of  the 
SCs  was  still  necessary  to  preserve  a 
whole  head. 

But  they  were  bigger,  more  powerful. 
They  could  run  long  convoys,  if  not  with 
the  comfort  of  a  peacetime  Caribbean 
cruise,  at  least  without  subjecting  the  men 
to  the  continual  struggle  for  existence  im- 
posed by  the  SCs.  They  were  also  numer- 
ous; the  fate  of  TP219  bears  testimony  to 
that.  In  October  or  November  she  ceased 
to  be  a  combat  vessel  and  was  relegated  to 
towing  targets  for  battle  practice  by  PCs 
and  planes. 

The  PCs  and  their  men  are  worth  a 
glance  as  t-hey  lie  in  their  harbors,  waiting 
for  orders  at  one  of  their  section  bases. 
There  is  a  dock,  or  maybe  two  at  the  shore, 
with  no  great  depth  of  water,  a  number  of 
PCs  nesting  beside  the  dock,  and  off  at  one 
flank  a  bathing  beach  with  a  few  bright- 
colored  bathhouses.  A  bulldozer  is  still 
improving  the  background  of  the  beach, 
a  bulldozer  borrowed  from  the  Army  and 
never  returned.  (No  PC  man  has  any 
morals  as  far  as  equipment  is  concerned; 
the  anchor  watch  is  considered  to  be  for 
the  purpose  of  keeping  other  PC  men  from 
steaHng  guns  for  their  own  ships.)  Be- 
hind the  dock  a  few  low,  camouflaged 
buildings  fade  off  into  a  high  wall  of  jungle 
and  there  are  other  buildings  among  the 


;38 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


trees.  Aside  from  the  necessary  hospital, 
office,  and  barracks  these  buildings  are 
mainly  for  recreational  purposes,  since  the 
base  is  probably  miles  by  a  winding  and 
difficult  road  from  the  nearest  town,  and 
the  only  amusement  to  be  found  there  is 
the  attentions  of  coffee-colored  ladies  with 
low  morals  and  a  high  venereal  rate. 

There  is  a  beer  garden,  there  are  proba- 
bly slot  machines:  the  movie  is  surprisingly 
up  to  date;  the  ship's  service  store  sells 
locally  made  jewelry  and  probably  silk 
stockings  and  perfumes  not  obtainable  in 
the  States,  in  addition  to  toothpaste  and 
Coca-Cola,  fountain  pens  and  watches. 
There  is  sports  equipment  for  the  asking 
and  every  kind  of  reading  matter  but 
newspapers.  In  the  beer  garden,  loung- 
ing on  the  beach  or  at  the  ship's  service 
store,  trying  to  solve  the  mystery  of  open- 
ing a  coconut,  one  meets  the  PC  men — a 
new\  insouciant  race. 

"Well,  w^e  were  going  along  as  nice  as 
anything  when  zing,  that  tanker  blew  up 
right  in  front  of  our  eyes.  Thirteen  sur- 
vivors, ha  ha." 

'Tf  you  didn't  get  any  contact  it  could 
have  been  one  of  those  acoustic  mines." 

"Did  you  hear  about  the  skipper  of  that 
sub  we  picked  up  on  the  last  trip  down? 
There  isn't  much  room  below  on  a  PC,  so 
the  boss  used  to  let  him  come  up  half  an 
hour  a  day  for  air.  The  first  day  we 
caught  up  with  the  convoy  and  we  were 
right  in  the  middle  of  about  forty  ships. 
He  looked  around  and  two  big  tears  came 
out  on  his  cheeks.  'Ach,  I  should  haf 
mine  boat!'  he  said."     (Laughter.) 

"The  one  we  caught  was  different.  He 
wouldn't  speak  at  all  for  about  four  days, 
and  then  it  came  out.  It  seems  he  had 
seen  that  PBY  that  was  after  him  and  rung 
his  engine  room  for  full  speed  ahead  on 
both  engines.  Well,  the  pilot  dropped  his 
bombs  a  little  short,  but  the  Heinie  engi- 
neer gave  his  skipper  full  speed  astern  on 
both  till  he  backed  right  into  the  bombs. 
He  was  the  maddest  German  you  ever 
saw." 

Their  conversation  was  shop:  they  were 
young,  gay,  hard  to  a  degree  that  would 
dumfound  Axis  philosophers  accustomed 
to  thinking  that  American  civilization  had 
run  out  into  silk  sheets  and  cocktail  par- 
ties; they  were  irreverent,  intolerant. 


"Vic  Lazotta  lost  a  man  on  our  last 
trip.  Fell  off  the  fantail  and  there  was  a 
contact  reported  up  ahead  so  he  wouldn't 
turn  back." 

"He  was  right." 

"'When  we  get  through  with  these  subs 
\ve  ought  to  go  back  to  the  States  and 
clean  up  a  few  civilians.  Some  of  those 
strikers  .   .   ." 

They  played  peculiar  practical  jokes,  as 
when  a  very  senior  British  officer,  new  to 
the  area,  was  invited  for  cocktails  at  the 
club  on  shore.  At  the  door  half  a  dozen 
young  Americans  solemnly  removed  their 
shoes  and  left  them  in  line,  assuring  the 
Briton  that  because  of  our  contact  with 
Mohammedans  in  the  Philippines  it  had 
become  a  national  habit  with  us  in  the 
tropics. 

They  were  even  insubordinate;  which 
is  not  to  justify  but  to  describe  the  attitude 
of  young  men  in  uproarious  physical 
health,  for  whom  the  ordinary  compul- 
sions of  civilian  life  had  lost  their  force, 
who  had  but  a  smgle  focus  of  interest. 
There  had  been  nothing  resembling  them 
since  the  seamen  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  like . 
whom  they  were  ready  to  sail  to  the  ends  . 
of  the  earth  and  to  fight  the  devil  on  the 
steps  of  hell.  They  did  fight  down  the  i 
submarines  on  the  doorsills  of  the  Carib- 
bean. 

VI 

THE  Story  of  how  they  did  it  will  re- 
main an  episodic  and  disconnected 
series  of  incidents,  appreciable  only  in  the 
mass.  From  that  standpoint  it  is  clear 
that  October  was  a  month  of  attack  and 
counterattack,  with  the  advantage  as 
heavily  on  the  side  of  the  offensive  as  in 
the  land  operations  of  the  war.  To  the 
cargo  carrier  assailed  by  a  submarine,  to 
the  U-boat  surrounded  by  PCs,  only  one 
resource  was  possible — flight.  How  long 
this  might  have  endured  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing;  but  by  the  end  of 
October,  1942,  the  great  convoy  for  Casa- 
blanca was  already  on  the  seas  and  the 
strategic  offensive  had  been  wrested  from 
the  Germans.  The  subs  had  to  defend 
the  coast  of  Europe. 

Not  that  they  abandoned  the  Carib- 
bean. There  was  even  some  evidence 
that  the  biggest  U-boats,  the  boldest  cap- 


CARIBBEAN   COMMAND 


239 


tains,  and  most  experienced  crews  were 
assigned  to  that  theater.  But  by  the  end 
of  November  Genial  John  Hoover  knew 
that  he  was  winning  his  war.  PCs  and 
destroyers  continued  to  come  down  from 
the  north,  but  the  big  gain  was  in  the  air 
arm. 

For  instance,  there  was  the  day  when  a 
squadron  of  B24  Liberators  arrived  with 
their  immense  range  and  heavy  bomb 
loads.  Farther  out  at  sea  than  the  planes 
of  the  Carib  Command  had  ever  before 
ventured  they  found  a  group  of  subs 
holding  a  convention  on  the  surface  and 
shot  them  up  so  badly  that  few  ever 
reached  the  Caribbean  and  some  never 
went  back  to  Germany.  The  story  of  the 
squadron  that  we  shall  here  call  PBM 
Squadron  244  sums  up  this  third  period 
of  the  Caribbean  Command,  as  that  of 
7'P219  does  the  earlier  periods. 

The  squadron  came  down  from  its 
training  base  in  December,  making  the 
flight  in  easy  stages,  for  the  pilots  were  all 
new  except  the  squadron  commander,  a 
veteran  from  the  carriers  who  had  been  at 
Coral  Sea.  They  were  young,  energetic, 
impatient — cut  from  the  same  cloth  as  the 
PC  men.  It  was  hard  to  keep  them  from 
violent  eflort  in  the  tropical  sun;  they 
grumbled  about  the  slow^ness  of  beaching 
crews,  the  amount  of  time  that  had  to  be 
spent  in  censoring  mail.  (The  enlisted 
men  got  to  saving  this  trouble  by  an  in- 
genious device — they  would  write  a  letter 
starting  "Dearest  Irene:  Down  here  I 
often  think  of  how  much  I  love  you  and — " 
then  cut  out  the  sheet  down  to  the 
signature.) 

Their  hours  were  irregular  and  fantas- 
tic. Most  often  they  were  on  night  pa- 
trol, since  a  PBM  can  take  off  at  twilight 
and  keep  the  air  till  dawn,  with  the  crew 
frying  eggs.  There  was  no  home  leave, 
no  getting  away  from  the  station.  It  was 
hot.  Once  in  half  a  dozen  patrols  this 
would  happen: 

There  is  something  dark  down  in  the 
water.  It  must  be  a  sub,  for  the  pilot's 
briefing,  hastily  consulted,  shows  no  Al- 
lied vessel  in  the  area.  "Action  sta- 
tionsj"  says  the  pilot  over  the  interphone; 
all  through  the  plane  men  move  swiftly 
and  their  muscles  tighten.  The  big  ma- 
chine swoops.     A  flare  is  released  like  a 


blazing  star;  the  plane  banks  round  on 
one  wing  in  a  sharp  curve.  As  the  hori- 
zon tilts  to  vertical  all  hands  strain  their 
eyes  to  see  what  the  flare  has  thrown  up. 
The  chances  are  it  is  one  of  the  little 
schooners  in  which  trade  is  conducted 
among  the  islands,  or  a  steamer  so  fast 
that  she  is  allowed  to  dispense  with  con- 
voy. 

Once  and  again  an  indisputable  sub- 
marine is  silhouetted  against  the  glare, 
already  tilting  down  under  the  black 
water  as  the  plane  turns  back  to  bomb. 

There  is  only  this  one  chance  to  hit  her, 
the  U-boat  will  be  gone  the  second  time 
round,  the  dead  black-and-white  illumi- 
nation and  the  tricky  angle  have  thrown 
the  pilot's  sense  of  depth  perception  off. 
Even  if  he  hits,  only  the  most  fantastic 
luck  will  enable  him  to  return  by  day- 
light and  find  proof  of  the  enemy's  de- 
struction. 

Or  this:  A  plane  of  244  ran  out  to  the 
region  where  it  was  to  furnish  night  escort 
to  a  big  tanker.  As  she  approached 
something  was  picked  up  on  the  water, 
broad  off  the  tanker's  bow.  A  PC  giving 
cover,  thought  the  pilot,  and  the  next 
moment  the  matter  was  confirmed  as  a 
searchlight  from  the  unknown  caught 
him  in  its  beam.  He  turned  to  run  down 
past  the  tanker  and  it  occurred  to  him — 
why  should  a  PC  light  up  the  ocean  that 
way  instead  of  making  recognition  sig- 
nals? He  swung  back  .  .  .  just  in  time 
to  see  searchlight  and  all  disappear  be- 
neath the  surface  as  the  submarine  that 
had  been  making  an  approach  on  the 
tanker  dived  for  safety. 

The  war  of  the  PBMs  by  night  was 
thus  carried  on  in  secret  and  in  ignorance 
of  the  results  except  that  the  statistics 
showed  a  steady  falling  off  in  sinkings. 
Then  the  submarines  started  to  shoot, 

VII 

THIS  may  be  taken  as  more  a  reflection 
of  the  wider  war  than  a  result  of 
Caribbean  operations.  Escort  carriers  were 
on  the  Atlantic;  the  U-boat  that  followed 
the  classic  method  of  diving  at  the  sight 
of  an  Allied  plane  had  to  take  home  a 
full  torpedo  locker,  and  Grossadmiral 
Donitz  was  as  capable  as  anyone  of  realiz- 


240 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ing  that  a  strategy  which  aims  only  to 
evade  the  enemy's  strength  must  ulti- 
mately fail.  But  the  cause  did  not  matter 
to  the  pilots  of  244  or  to  any  others  in 
the  Caribbean  Command.  All  they  knew 
was  that  by  the  spring  of  1943  a  sub- 
marine caught  on  the  surface  would  stay 
there,  fighting  back  with  guns  both  nu- 
merous and  well  handled. 

Tales  of  these  contacts  drifted  in  from 
the  other  stations.  A  B24  came  home  to 
its  base  in  the  Guianas  in  such  shape  that 
her  tail  dropped  off  as  she  taxied  down 
the  field.  Then  one  of  244's  own  planes, 
just  at  dawn,  with  a  heavy  haze  and  rough 
sea  below,  picked  up  a  sub.  Conditions 
were  ideal  for  diving  escape,  but  this 
U-boat  did  not  dive.  The  pilot  ran  in  on 
the  submarine,  firing  his  guns  and  drop- 
ping bombs;  down  below  the  enemy 
looked  like  a  spouting  whale,  little  white 
pufTs  of  smoke  coming  out. 

The  whole  plane  shook  as  though  she 
were  coming  apart.  The  turret  gunner 
reported  she  had  been  hit,  there  was  a  big 
hole  between  one  engine  and  the  hull  that 
must  have  been  made  by  cannon  shell, 
and  they  could  not  raise  the  tail  gunner  on 
the  interphone,  so  he  must  have  been  hit 
too.  (They  found  later  that  he  was  dead.) 
The  pilot  circled  back,  banking  steeply  to 
give  the  turret  gunner  a  shot,  then  laid  the 
rest  of  his  bombs,  but  could  not  see  the 
result  in  that  weather  and  with  the  pound- 
ing sea.  The  passage  through  the  middle 
of  the  ship  was  full  of  blood  and  two  or 
three  men  were  being  given  first  aid  as  the 
plane  soared  off  for  home.  When  they 
got  the  ship  in,  the  beaching  crew  counted 
two  hundred  and  sixty-four  holes  in  her! 

All  through  the  early  summer  this  ex- 
perience was  repeated  with  variations  by 
every  squadron  in  the  Caribbean  Com- 
mand. It  was  a  summer  of  furious  battles, 
fought  at  whirlwind  speed  with  losses  on 
both  sides,  but  with  the  advantage  to  us; 
for  one  submarine  against  one  plane  is  a 
ruinous  exchange  and  even  one  submarine 
for  four  or  five  is  a  very  poor  one.  In  June 
Allied  headquarters  announced  that  daily 
for  two  weeks  a  U-boat  had  been  sent 
down. 

Meanwhile  Squadron  244  was  gaining 
cohesion  and  precision,  becoming  a  Navy 
fighting  unit  with  that  nonchalant  per- 


formance which  belongs  to  veterans;  pre- 
paring, though  they  did  not  know  it,  for 
the  big  test: 

Back  at  the  base  a  radio  flash  came  in  a 
little  after  noon — "Submarine  sighted  on 
surface;  am  attacking"  with  the  position 
some  200  miles  out.  The  ready  plane  was 
ordered  to  the  spot,  the  remainder  of  the 
squadron  was  summoned  and  prepared, 
Army  control  was  alerted.  The  big  board 
showed  a  blimp  near  the  spot;  it  was  con- 
tacted by  radio  and  ordered  in.  The 
duty  destroyer  raised  steam  and  prepared 
to  sail.  While  these  preparations  were  in 
train  came  a  second  radio — ''Submarine 
damaged.  We  have  no  damage  nor  casu- 
alties." A  jubilant  excitement  ran  through 
the  control  room.  Then  static;  then  the 
radio  again,  with  a  jumble  of  incompre- 
hensible signals  ending  with  " — going 
down." 

The  excitement  and  pleasure  died  back 
at  the  base.  There  were  few  words,  and 
those  in  low  tones,  till  a  call  came  through 
from  the  second  plane.  She  had  sighted 
the  sub.  It  was  still  on  the  surface  with 
the  conning-tower  hatch  open,  apparently 
too  damaged  to  submerge.  The  Germans 
aboard  it  were  solid  stufT;  they  were  stick- 
ing to  their  guns  with  no  sign  of  giving  up. 
Now  a  third  plane  was  on  hand  with  a 
young  lieutenant  named  Crockett,  who 
directed  the  growing  attack  from  the  sky 
by  voice  radio,  as  though  he  were  admiral 
of  a  fleet.  Back  at  the  base  they  hooked 
up  a  loudspeaker  on  the  battle  frequency. 
"It  was  like  listening  to  the  World  Series. 
You  could  hear  him  order  in  one  plane 
after  another,  sometimes  two  together, 
telling  them  what  angle  to  take  and  how  to 
watch  the  glide." 

All  afternoon  the  battle  went  on.  The 
blimp  came;  she  was  too  vulnerable  to 
make  those  close-in  diving  attacks,  but 
Crockett  found  a  use  for  her  by  hanging 
her  in  the  sky  as  a  traffic  tower  for  planes 
to  home  on,  saving  time  and  valuable 
gasoline  to  them.  "When  you  see  the 
blimp  turn  left  and  go  two  miles.  There's 
your  submarine."  The  U-boat  had  dead 
men  on  deck  now  and  in  the  intervals  of 
the  attack  they  were  carrying  wounded 
below.  She  fought  on;  a  man  from  a 
plane  that  arrived  late  tells  what  he  saw: 

"We  went  to  battle  stations  just  after  we 


CARIBBEAN    COMMAND 


241 


left  the  base.  It  was  about  18.30;  twilii^ht 
was  beginning  to  fall  when  we  passed  the 
blimp  and  made  the  sub.  We  could  sec 
her  firing  in  nice,  short  bursts  as  we  made 
our  run  in.  They  were  good.  I  was  up 
ill  the  con.  All  of  a  sudden  the  whole 
plane  was  full  of  holes  and  bullets.  I  saw 
the  Lieutenant  collapse  into  the  controls 
and  he  must  have  squeezed  his  pickle  as 
he  did  so,  because  the  depth  charges 
dropped  and  they  were  short.  Eddie 
and  me,  we  got  him  out  of  there  and  into 
an  aft  compartment  where  we  put  tour- 
niquets on  both  arms  and  gave  him  an 
injection  of  morphine,  but  he  died  on  us. 
I  got  to  hand  it  to  Eddie;  he  was  hit 
right  through  the  gut  but  he  stayed  on  the 
bomb  panel  and  when  we  made  the 
second  run  he  gave  it  to  them  good  with 
those  demolition  bombs.  We  never  knew 
he  was  hurt  till  he  fell  down  getting  out  of 
the  plane  after  we  got  home  and  we  didn't 
have  any  right  to  get  there  either  with  her 
shot  up  like  that." 

That  was  at  twilight.  It  must  have 
been  on  the  next  run  that  Lieutenant 
Crockett  noted  that  some  of  the  German 


guns  were  silent  and  a  man  on  the  sub's 
deck  let  off  at  him  with  a  Very  pistol. 
He  figured  they  must  be  low  on  ammuni- 
tion and  he  sent  an  Army  bomber  to  join 
the  attack,  but  the  twilight  beat  him  to 
it;  by  the  time  the  bomber  reached  alti- 
tude the  tropic  night  had  closed  in  and 
she  could  not  bomb  effectively.  Crockett 
had  to  return;  Lieutenant-Commander 
Jester  relieved  him,  and  with  the  Army 
bomber  aiding,  patrolled  the  area  all 
night,  waiting  for  light  to  make  a  sure 
attack. 

At  about  eleven  o'clock  they  lost  trace 
of  the  sub  and  thought  she  had  sub- 
merged on  them.  She  had,  all  right; 
when  the  destroyer  came  sliding  across  the 
red  sea  of  dawn  all  she  found  beneath  the 
waiting  planes  was  a  handful  of  wounded 
Germans  on  rubber  rafts. 

That  was  in  August,  In  September 
came  the  Quebec  conference,  when  Roose- 
velt and  Churchill  announced  that  ninety 
U-boats  had  been  sunk  in  as  many  days. 
The  pests  vanished  from  the  Caribbean. 
They  may  come  back;  but  they  had 
better  not. 


TH 


E  Easy  Chair  '^ermrd'D^iM 


A  VIRTUOUS  convention  forbids  Mr. 
Chamberlain  and  me  to  discuss 
.  in  Harper^s  Magav-ne  books  that 
are  pubHshed  by  Harper  «&  Brothers.  *  It 
handicaps  me  this  month,  for  I  want  to 
line  up  some  recent  books  on  American 
history  and  two  of  them  bear  the  imprint 
of  that  austere  firm.  I  should  like  to  get 
out  on  a  limb  and  predict  that  one  of  these 
is  going  to  get  the  Pulitzer  Prize — and 
record  my  opinion  that  it  ought  not  to. 
The  other  one — I  won't  name  it  but  you 
might  look  up  Mr.  Gerald  Johnson's 
latest  book — is  delightful  from  the  first 
page  to  the  last  and  the  convention  has  got 
to  go  hang  because  I  have  to  make  a  point. 
A  lot  of  things  are  being  freely  said  about 
the  American  people  these  days  that  would 
have  got  their  authors  lynched  in  the 
reviews  a  few  years  back,  as  for  instance 
that  our  democratic  government  is  not  so 
bad,  that  our  civilization  is  not  altogether 
degraded,  that  on  the  whole  we  need  not 
hang  our  heads  in  shame  over  what  we 
have  done  about  such  matters  as  freedom, 
social  justice,  the  individual,  and  the  com- 
munity. Imbued  with  this  newness  Mr. 
Johnson,  who  lives  in  Baltimore  but  ap- 
parently takes  no  warning  from  what 
happened  there  to  the  Sixth  Massachusetts 
on  April  19,  1861,  nonchalantly  commits  a 
heresy.  He  notifies  us  that  he  had  two 
grandfathers  square  in  the  path  of  William 
Tecumseh   Sherman.     He  then  remarks 


*  Mr.  DeVoto  is  in  error.  Mr.  Chamberlain  is 
not  so  circumscribed.  We  decided  a  year  or  two 
ago  that  it  was  unnecessary  for  an  honest  reviewer 
to  handicap  his  readers  by  omitting  any  mention  of 
books  published  by  what  is,  after  all,  one  of  the 
leading  American  publishing  firms.  We  evident- 
ly forgot  to  tell  Mr.  DeVoto  that  the  ban  was 
off. —  The  Editors 


that  Uncle  Billy  was  "a  highly  civilized 
and  even  considerate  conqueror."  My 
point  is,  1943  was  a  lively  year  in  the 
writing  of  American  history. 

Since  Mr.  Chamberlain  has  already 
dealt  with  it,  I  am  not  going  to  discuss 
Charles  A.  Beard's  The  Republic,  It  is  a 
distinguished  book,  profound,  witty,  and 
very  wise.  To  read  it  is  a  heartening 
experience,  an  excellent  wartime  tonic  for 
those  who  care  deeply  about  the  United 
States.  It  ought  to  get  the  Pulitzer  Prize 
(and  the  Loubat  Prize  and  any  similar 
ones  whose  committees  may  be  deliberat- 
ing) but,  perched  at  the  end  of  my  limb,  I 
predict  that  it  will  not.  I  can  be  per- 
suaded to  explain  why.  Mr.  Beard's 
book  is  fascinating  to  the  general  reader,  it 
freely  and  repeatedly  expresses  historical 
judgments,  it  has  literary  form,  and  it  is 
written  with  notable  grace  and  charm. 
Singly  none  of  those  attributes  would 
disqualify  it,  probably,  but  together  they 
gravely  transgress  the  guild  spirit  of  pro- 
fessional historians. 

Nevertheless  I  am  not  entering  it  for  the 
Easy  Chair  Occasional  Award  in  Ameri- 
can History.  The  principles  which  deter- 
mine that  award  are  arbitrary,  even 
capricious,  and  this  year  the  committee  of 
one  has  been  influenced  by  the  considera- 
tion that  it  might  call  to  your  attention 
some  books  which  you  might  otherwise 
have  missed.  Mr.  Arthur  M.  Schlesinger, 
the  president  of  the  American  Historical 
Association,  did  his  colleagues  a  service  by 
reviving  a  question  of  Hector  St.  John 
Crevecoeur's,  "What  then  is  the  Ameri- 
can, this  new  man?"  and  in  1 943  a  number 
of  writers  undertook  to  answer  it.  Some 
excellent  books  resulted.     Mr.  Johnson's 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


243 


book  supplies  an  extremely  interesting 
answer.  So  do  Mr.  Hamilton  Basso's 
Mainstream  and,  notably,  Mr.  James 
Truslow  Adams's  The  American,  The  com- 
mittee of  one  has  taken  into  account  the 
fact  that  the  reviews  have  directed  you  to 
them,  however,  and,  meeting  in  executive 
session  with  professional  historians  ex- 
cluded, has  decided  to  split  the  award. 
It  goes  to  Joseph  Kinsey  Howard's 
Montana:  High,  Wide  and  Handsome  and 
Logan  Esarey's  posthumously  published 
The  Indiana  Home.  The  committee  also 
formally  reports  that  the  most  stirring  bit 
of  historical  writing  in  1 943  was  Mr.  Roy 
P.  Basler's  article  in  the  January  issue  of 
the  South  Atlantic  Qjiarterly,  ''Concerning 
Lincoln  and  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence." 

WELL  over  a  hundred  million  Ameri- 
cans need  to  be  told  the  facts  of  life 
about  the  section  of  their  country  called  the 
Intermountain  West.  Some  of  those  facts 
are  desperately  hard  and  Mr.  Howard  has 
chosen  to  approach  them  at  their  most 
desperate,  in  Montana.  What  are  they? 
Three  are  more  important  than  all  the 
rest:  that  the  natural  resources  of  the  West 
have  been  both  ruthlessly  and  stupidly 
exploited,  that  they  have  mostly  been 
exploited  for  the  benefit  of  other  sections, 
and  that  in  consequence  the  plundered 
province  has  always  been  constructively 
bankrupt  and  sometimes  actually  bank- 
rupt. Since  the  phrase  ''dust  bowl" 
entered  the  national  consciousness  there 
has  been  some  general  realization  of  that 
last  fact;  there  has  even  been  some  under- 
standing that  the  bankruptcy  of  any  State 
or  section  endangers  all.  Mr.  Howard's 
book  is  written  in  the  knowledge  that  the 
national  consciousness  has  got  to  move  on 
from  the  effect  to  its  causes. 

He  was  right  to  choose  Montana. 
Throughout  the  West  absentee  ownership 
has  channeled  wealth  out  of  the  com- 
munities that  produced  it,  but  the  system 
has  reached  its  intolerable  perfection  in 
Montana.  Throughout  the  West  land 
and  power  and  minerals  have  been  cash 
crops,  and  unspeakable  stupidity,  waste, 
corruption,  and  Cynicism  have  sometimes 
gone  into  the  harvesting  of  them,  but 
nowhere  so  intensively  as  in   Montana. 


Elsewhere  in  the  West  there  have  been 
tragically  unintelligent  land  use,  destruc- 
tion of  vital  wealth,  contempt  of  human 
rights,  purchase  of  men  and  obliteration  of 
men  who  would  not  sell  out,  servile  accept- 
ance and  futile  rebellion,  but  all  this  has 
become  most  critical  in  Montana.  That 
is  Mr.  Howard's  history:  what  these  things 
have  been,  how  they  came  about,  what 
they  have  done  to  men  and  land — and  the 
efforts  that  have  been  made  to  arrest  and 
repair  the  damage.  He  tells  his  story 
well.  It  is  only  lately  that  books  of  this 
kind  have  been  attempted;  as  a  Westerner 
I  try  to  read  them  all,  and  I  know  of  no 
other  that  has  so  much  realism  as  his,  so 
much  soundness,  so  much  breadth,  or  so 
much  understanding. 

His  principal  themes  are  the  range  land, 
mining,  water,  water  power,  conservation, 
and  community  planning.  He  is  no  dead- 
pan historian;  he  has  time  and  temper  not 
only  for  the  violence  of  Montana  history 
but  for  its  violent  colors  as  well,  the  humor, 
the  legends,  the  fantasia  of  the  last  frontier 
turning  into  the  modern  commonwealth. 
There  are  plenty  of  good  stories  but  they 
never  persuade  him  away  from  his  pur- 
pose. He  takes  us  from  the  Plains 
Indians  (and  I  think  he  is  a  touch  roman- 
tic about  their  adaptation  to  the  land)  and 
the  buffalo  down  to  the  present  war.  He 
gives  us  the  cattle  kingdom,  when  first  (if 
we  disregard  the  buffalo  hunters)  the 
process  of  destroying  natural  resources  was 
set  in  motion — by  overgrazing,  sequestra- 
tion of  water  rights,  forced  use  of  the 
national  domain,  and  inequitable  combi- 
nation. He  gives  us  the  collapse  of  that 
gaudy  kingdom,  the  first  agonizing  dis- 
location of  Montana  life.  He  follows  it 
with  the  most  terrible  story  of  all,  the 
breaking  of  the  arid  soil,  the  conversion  of 
grazing  country  to  farms,  the  killing  of  the 
grass,  the  down  curve  of  the  rainfall  cycle, 
the  blowing  away  of  the  land,  the  blasting 
of  human  life.  And  it  is  good  to  find  him 
paying  tribute  to  John  Wesley  Powell,  the 
great  prophet  of  the  arid  West,  who  in 
1878  foretold  most  of  what  has  happened 
since  then  and  much  that  has  probably  got 
to  happen  still. 

He  gives  us  also  the  mines,  the  left  wing 
of  Price's  army  in  the  gold  fields,  the 
vigilantes,   and  especially  copper.     And 


244 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


most  especially,  the  wars  of  the  copper 
kings  and  the  triumphs  of  "the  Company." 
If  you  don't  know  what  the  Company  is, 
stranger,  it  is  the  Arnalgamated  Copper 
Company  (later  the  Anaconda),  and  it  has 
usually  maintained  a  niore  thoroughgoing 
ownership  of  Montana's  wealth,  govern- 
ment, and  inhabitants  than  any  other 
corporation  has  ever  been  able  to  maintain 
in  any  other  State.  It  has  gutted  an 
American  commonwealth  on  behalf,  if  not 
of  its  stockholders  at  least  of  its  manipu- 
lators, through  many  years.  Its  history  is 
spectacular  but  not  lovely;  Mr.  Howard 
tells  it,  naming  names.  He  then  moves  on 
to  a  more  suave  and  polished  monopoly,  a 
combination  of  power  companies  which  is 
now  arguing  in  the  courts  that  neither  the 
State  nor  the  Federal  government,  still  less 
the  individual  rancher  to  whom  water 
means  survival,  has  any  right  to  the  rivers 
of  Montana  which  the  holder  of  dam  sites 
need  respect. 

Finally  Mr.  Howard  describes  the  slow 
mastery  of  lessons  taught  by  decay  and 
failure,  and  the  attempts,  slowly  gathering 
momentum,  to  fulfill  John  Wesley  Powell's 
vision — to  make  the  land  live  rather  than 
die,  to  build  a  society  that  may  have 
decent  security  and  dignity  in  accord  with 
the  conditions  set  by  nature,  to  correct 
folly  and  restore  social  health.  It  is  a 
moving  story,  one  which  involves  the 
future  of  us  all.  He  ends  on  two  ominous 
notes:  that  this  war  endangers  all  plans 
and  that,  even  if  they  survive  it,  there  are 
possibilities  of  conflict  between  local  and 
Federal  plans  which  could  conceivably 
end  in  a  new  frustration  or  a  new  kind  of 
absentee  exploitation.  .  .  .  Whoever  you 
are,  wherever  you  live,  even  if  you  believe 
that  the  South  is  our  number  one  economic 
problem,  Mr.  Howard's  book  comes  close 
home  to  you  and  you  would  do  well  to 
read  it  forthwith. 

Montana  is  published  on  the  open 
market  but  you  will  have  to 
scramble  to  get  hold  of  The  Indiana  Home^ 
since  it  exists  only  in  a  limited  private 
edition  made  by  some  pupils  of  Dr.  Logan 
Esarey  in  honor  of  their  teacher.  It  is  an 
unpretentious  book,  in  form  little  more 
than  the  author's  notes  for  some  lectures 
on  the  history  of  Indiana.     But  it  is  warm 


with  the  humor  and  understanding  of  an 
exceedingly  wise  man,  it  has  the  tang  of  the 
individual  way  of  life  for  which  there  has 
never  been  any  descriptive  word  but 
"Hoosier,"  and  it  is  the  best  account  of 
how  life  was  lived  on  the  frontier  of  the 
Old  Northwest  that  I  have  ever  read — and 
I  have,  I  think,  read  all  the  good  ones. 

The  book  is  the  story  of  the  cabin  in  the 
clearing,  and  that  cabin  is  one  of  the  im- 
mortal American  symbols.  It  begins  with 
the  destitute  forest  Indians — and  remarks 
that,  on  the  way  to  exterminating  them, 
the  white  man  incidentally  improved  their 
lot.  It  brings  the  Americans  to  Indiana 
and  comes  down  to  the  1850's  or  there- 
about, when  the  complete  farm  and  farm 
economy  were  achieved  and  obviously,  to 
Dr.  Esarey's  taste,  a  high  peak  of  human 
happiness  was  achieved  with  them.  Al- 
together without  pedantry  but  with  the 
mastery  of  a  man  who  has  given  a  lifetime 
of  love  and  labor  to  the  subject,  he  dis- 
cusses the  people,  the  soils,  the  trees,  the 
crops,  the  techniques,  the  handicrafts, 
the  economy,  the  sports,  the  superstitions, 
and  the  mores  of  the  pioneer  society.  He 
is  neither  doctrinaire  nor  controversial,  he 
has  no  thesis,  he  is  interested  solely  in 
describing  how  the  Middle  West,  and 
specifically  Indiana,  established  and  main- 
tained a  way  of  life  in  the  wilderness.  But 
he  can  hew  his  way  through  a  cliche  when 
he  meets  one.  Thus  in  a  sentence  or  two 
he  demolishes  a  favorite  myth  of  deplorers, 
that  the  ignorant  pioneers  destroyed  the 
forests.  They  did  not  destroy  the  forests, 
they  merely  burned  some  trees  to  make 
fields  and  cut  down  other  trees  for  use. 
The  clearing  of  farms  and  the  establish- 
ment of  Midwestern  agriculture  hardly 
scratched  the  great  forests.  Not  even  the 
first  generation  of  industry  and  the  build- 
ing of  railroads  seriously  impaired  them. 
They  disappeared  only  when  the  rise  of  the 
petroleum  industry  converted  oak  trees  to 
barrel  staves  by  the  billion.  Or  again,  he 
points  out  that,  however  v/e  may  enjoy  the 
stories  of  Daniel  Boone,  Simon  Kenton, 
Lewis  Weitzell,  George  Rogers  Clark,  and 
William  Henry  Harrison,  we  ought  also  to 
bear  in  mind  that  not  one  of  them  was  able 
to  make  a  home  for  himself  in  the  forest. 
The  property  of  all  of  them,  he  points  out, 
with  that  of  Lincoln  and  Wayne  added  for 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


245 


good  measure,  would  not  have  equaled  in 
value  one  good  quarter-section  of  Indiana 
farm.  He  suggests  tiiat  the  ordinary  men 
and  women  who  gave  value  lo  the  wilder- 
ness are  worthy  of  attention. 

Mostly  those  people  came  by  Cumber- 
land Gap  and  had  themselves  ferried 
across  the  Ohio.  In  the  main  they  were 
English,  Dutch,  Scotch,  Irish,  or  Scotch- 
Irish — but  all  of  them  were  Americans. 
They  had  been  living  in  the  forest  for 
about  a  century  when  they  reached  In- 
diana, and  they  had  developed  a  superb 
technique.  Dr.  Esarey  thinks  that  the 
English  tended  to  be  the  best  clearers  of 
land  and  founders  of  business,  that  the 
Dutch  were  by  far  tlie  best  farmers,  and 
that  the  Scotch  and  Irish  probably  had  the 
best  time.  They  came  on  foot,  or  with  a 
horse  or  two,  or  with  at  most  a  wagon  and 
a  few  tools.  They  were  poor.  Their 
only  wealth  was  their  labor.  They  built 
a  commonwealth  and  remade  the  nation. 

A  large  part  of  those  achievements  is 
implicit  in  the  homely,  concrete  details 
of  Dr.  Esarey's  book.  Methods  of  clear- 
ing land,  methods  of  breaking  and  culti- 
vating soil,  the  calendar  of  wild  and  culti- 
vated crops,  the  building  of  cabins,  the 
enlargement  and  enrichment  of  fields,  the 
management  of  farm  animals,  the  routine 
of  log-rollings  and  corn-shuckings,  such 
handicrafts  as  tanning  and  carding  and 
spinning — this  is  the  page-by-page  stuff  of 
his  georgic.  What  tree  was  most  useful 
to  the  pioneers?  (Thei  tulip.  Our  Hoo- 
sier  democrat  remarks  that'  the  sycamore 
was  the  aristocrat  of  the  forest  and  like  all 


aristocrats,  he  says,  it  was  useless.)  How 
did  you  make  an  ash  hopper,  what  was  it 
used  for,  why  was  it  indispensable?  If 
you  were  a  mite  sensitive  about  sa.ssafras 
tea,  what  did  you  use  to  thin  your  blood 
after  a  winter  of  living  on  biled  beans  and 
salt  pork?  What  were  the  trials  and 
utilities  of  geese?  What  did  you  use  for 
dyes,  medicines,  or  weather  signs?  How 
many  hoop  poles  could  a  skilled  woodsman 
cut  per  day,  how  many  rails  could  he  split? 
You  probably  don't  know — do  you  even 
know  what  rails  were  used  for?  You 
ought  to  know  and  you  can  find  out  in 
The  Indiana  Home. 

It  is  a  small  book  but  I  hope  I  suggest 
that  it  is  rich  and  delightsome.  It  is  more 
than  that.  For  Dr.  Esarey  also  answers  the 
question  which  so  many  of  his  colleagues 
undertook  to  answer  in  1 943.  He  also  has 
said  something  important  about  the 
American,  this  new  man.  This  new  man 
had  been  changed  on  his  way  to  the  Old 
Northwest,  and  the  conquest  of  the  forest, 
the  bringing  in  of  the  Indiana  home, 
changed  him  further.  He  was  altered, 
increased,  set  in  a  new  form,  and  the 
effects  of  those  changes  are  with  us  still. 
It  would  be  sagacious  of  you  to  get  hold  of 
Dr.  Esarey's  book,  by  theft  if  necessary, 
for  it  will  deepen  your  understanding  of 
the  American  inheritance.  Furthermore, 
like  Mr.  Beard's  book,  it  is  heartening  and 
reassuring  in  these  dark  days.  Finally,  it 
is  fascinating  reading,  the  most  fascinating 
comment  on  America  that  I  found  in  1943, 
a  year  that  was  unusually  rich  in  books 
that  undertook  to  explain  us  to  ourselves. 


PUBLIC  LIBRARY. 


PREPARATION   FOR   INVASION 


C.     LESTER    WALKER 


T 


^||-N|HE  logistics  of  a  large  modern  in- 
vasion— by  which  is  meant  the  art 
of  getting  several  hundred  thousand 
men  with  several  hundred  thousand  dif- 
ferent items  of  equipment  to  a  particular 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface  with  split- 
second  accuracy  at  a  particular  time 
— approach  the  unbelievable.  The  im- 
mensity and  complexity  of  the  job  to  be 
done  in  advance  of  the  expedition  are 
staggering.  And,  incidentally,  a  careful 
study  of  the  preparations  which  have  had 
to  be  made  for  our  campaigns  in  North 
Africa  and  elsewhere  helps  to  explain  the 
requirements  for  an  invasion  of  western 
Europe. 

The  logistics  for  any  campaign  start  at 
the  top,  and  such  was  the  case  for  North 
Africa.  You  must  decide  first  where  to 
attack,  and  in  this  instance  the  United 
Nations  Joint  Staffs  made  the  decision. 
The  conferences  were  held  early  in  the 
summer  of  1 942  and  the  date  for  simulta- 
neous invasion  at  three  (later  increased  to 
twelve)  different  places  on  the  North 
African  coast  was  fixed.  Our  first  troops 
would  sail  in  October.  In  the  interim, 
roughly  sixteen  weeks,  here  was  the  job 
that  had  to  be  done: 

First,  the  General  Staff  must  formulate 
the  plan  of  operation — the  how  of  doing 
the  job.  In  dozens  of  War  Department 
offices  dozens  of  majors  and  colonels  and 
generals  must  confer  and  reconfer,  discuss 
and  rediscuss,   day  after  day  and  night 


after  night.  In  the  second  place,  the 
General  Staff  must  decide  on  the  forces: 
their  numxbers  and  what  kind.  It  must 
fix  the  proportion  of  ground  troops,  of  air 
troops,  and  of  service  forces,  and  it  must 
determine  the  intricate  and  vitally  im- 
portant breakdown  of  each.  Of  the 
ground  forces,  for  instance,  how  many 
must  be  anti-aircraft,  how  many  of  the 
armored  force?  The  proportions  must 
be  nicely  calculated  to  fit  the  type  of 
country  invaded  and  the  kind  of  fighting 
planned. 

Then  there  is  the  question  of  what  serv- 
ice troops  should  be  taken  to  maintain 
the  combat  battalions.  This,  in  the 
North  African  planning,  meant  estimating 
just  how  many  railway  units  would  be 
necessary  to  operate  Moroccan  railroads, 
how  many  engineer  units  would  be  neces- 
sary 10  bridge  the  rivers,  how  many  medi- 
cal units  to  see  to  the  wounded.  The 
War  Department  General  Staff  must  then 
pick  the  exact  units  which  will  go,  and 
must  note  where  in  this  country  they  are 
to  be  taken  from. 

All  this,  however,  is  merely  part  of  the 
job.  The  problem  of  getting  equipment 
and  supplies  has  had  to  be  considered  in 
every  stage  of  the  planning.  For  the 
North  African  landings  every  soldier  took 
with  him  over  fifty  items  of  personal  equip- 
ment, from  his  bayonet  to  his  burlap  in- 
nersoles.  There  were  390  different  kinds 
of  clothing.     The  Signal  Corps  alone  re- 


PREPARATION    FOR    INVASION 


247 


quired  10,000  separate  items — radios,  tel- 
ephones, wire.  Tiic  Medical  Corps  had 
68,000  items;  the  Engineers  had  100,000 
— everything  from  bridges  to  well-diggers 
and  locomotives.  And  for  Ordnance — 
tanks,  guns,  ammunition,  spare  parts — it 
was  necessary  to  provide  250,000  different 
types  of  articles  or  materiel.  The  gasoline 
required  was  eighty  times  that  for  a  like 
number  of  troops  of  the  last  war:  for  the 
divisions  that  were  landed  in  Africa  the 
amount  was  4,200,000  gallons  a  week! 
The  food  for  the  expedition  weighed  20,- 
000,000  pounds;  the  clothing  and  equip- 
ment, 37,000,000  pounds.  Each  soldier 
required  five  times  as  much  equipment  as 
in  the  First  World  War;  and  the  total 
number  of  separate  kinds  of  items  for  this 
one  invasion  ran  to  over  700,000! 

WHILE  hundreds  of  officers  and  their 
assistants  at  thousands  of  desks  all 
over  the  country  are  setting  to  work  at  the 
stupendous  task  of  procuring  all  these 
things,  another  section  of  the  Army  is 
working  on  the  transportation  problem. 
When  the  time  comes  there  must  be  plenty 
of  trucks,  trains,  and  ships.  Roughly  six 
cubic  (ship's)  tons  of  equipment  must  be 
delivered  for  every  soldier  sent  overseas  in 
this  invasion,  and  another  ton  of  food, 
clothing,  and  ammunition  must  follow 
each  month.  There  will  come  nights 
when  tens  of  thousands  of  soldiers  must 
be  shifted  great  distances.  "On  these 
same  nights,"  in  the  words  of  General 
Somervell,  ''heavy  freight-  trains  laden 
with  raw  materials  must  rush  toward 
industrial  plants,  while  others  loaded  with 
finished  tanks  and  guns  and  planes  must 
hurry  to  ports  of  embarkation."  Tens  of 
thousands  of  freight  cars  and  motor  trucks 
will  be  needed  for  this  movement,  but  the 
numbers  are,  within  limits,  a  predictable 
requirement,  with  a  predictable  available 
supply.  The  problem  is  relatively  simple 
compared  with  the  question  of  ships.  It 
is  the  ships  which  raise  a  particular  night- 
mare. Vessels  of  sufficient  tonnage  must 
be  assembled  at  the  right  port  at  the  right 
time. 

To  do  the  job  the  officers  in  charge  of 
transportation  must  build  up  what  they 
call  a  "bank  account  of  ships."  So  for 
weeks  they  will  eagerly  check  shipyard 


production  and  scan  their  convoy  sched- 
ules. They  are  aware  that  this  will  be 
the  largest  transoceanic  invasion  in  his- 
tory, requiring  more  than  twice  as  much 
shipping  per  man  as  was  required  in  the 
last  war.  They  must  get  together  hun- 
dreds of  ocean-going  ships,  by  a  specific 
date.  And  they  all  know  that  any  one  of 
five  dozen  contingencies  can  prevent  their 
being  there. 

II 

IN  THE  logistics  of  this  invasion,  or  any 
invasion,  the  work  of  the  Army  Service 
Forces  bulks  large.  It  is  the  Army  Serv- 
ice Forces  which  get  the  stuff  for  invasion 
and  get  it  there,  whether  the  place  be 
Attu,  or  New  Guinea,  or  the  coasts  of 
Germany. 

Look,  for  a  moment,  at  just  one  of  the 
jobs  that  must  be  done  by  the  Quarter- 
master Corps  (which  in  turn  is  just  one 
branch  of  Army  Service  Forces) :  research. 
For  North  Africa  its  test-and-experiment 
services  enabled  American  soldiers  to  be 
provided  with  equipment  such  as  was 
never  seen  in  an  invasion  before.  There 
were  waterproof  rifle  covers  of  plastic — 
transparent,  and  pliable,  so  a  man  could 
get  at  the  trigger  without  taking  the  cover 
off.  There  were  anti-bacterial  water-pu- 
rifying pills,  and  follow-up  pills  to  correct 
the  taste;  goggles  with  one  set  of  glasses 
for  sun  and  one  for  sand;  sulfa-drug  pow- 
ders in  a  shaker- top  box;  polaroid-coated 
light  bulbs  to  cut  down  the  glare  in  our 
Sherman  tanks;  bricks  of  food — twenty 
dozen  eggs  in  a  bar  the  size  of  a  cigarette 
carton,  mashed  potatoes  for  a  hundred 
men  in  a  block  no  bigger  than  a  portable 
typewriter.  Soldiers  carried  unsmashable 
plastic  water  canteens.  The  lifeboats  had 
Bibles  in  waterproof  vinyl  covers  (the  same 
used  for  pistols!)  which  would  float  them 
in  the  sea. 

The  clothes-delousing  bags,  with  the 
ampoules  of  methyl  bromide  gas  to  do  the 
job  inside  them  in  thirty  seconds  flat,  were 
a  story  of  laborious  research  in  themselves. 
Methyl  bromide  boils  at  40  degrees  Fah- 
renheit, and  therefore  would  burst  an 
ordinary  container.  QMC  developed  a 
small  toughened  glass  ampoule  large 
enough  to  take  care  of  the  expansion,  and 
set  most  of  the  biggest  drug  manufacturers 


248 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


In  the  country  to  work  on  it.  Seventy- 
five  per  cent  of  the  capacity  of  the  ampoule 
was  left  for  expansion,  and  most  of  the 
manufacturing  operations  had  to  be  per- 
formed in  dry  ice. 

For  invasion  force  J  in  the  South  Pa- 
cific, Quartermaster  Corps  researchers 
provided  non-melting  butter,  mosquito 
gloves,  hunting  knives  that  double  as 
hammers,  ponchos  of  rosin-waterproofed 
nylon,  insect-repellent  salves,  unrottable 
nylon  bootlaces,  and  jungle  hammocks 
which  were  chemically  treated  against 
mildew  and  water  and  had  a  false  bottom 
to  fend  off"  insects  and  cold. 

Ground  troops  in  the  Arctic  go  equipped 
with  folding  skis  with  rustless  hinges.  For 
fliers  there  is  a  cold-weather  coverall 
which  zips  from  head  to  foot  so  that  the 
pilot  can  shed  it  in  a  hurry.  A  specially 
medicated  "chapstick"  prevents  lip-crack- 
ing snowburn.  A  "mountain  ration"  that 
can  spend  the  day  under  water,  or  a 
month  at  a  temperature  of  60*^  below, 
feeds  four  men  three  meals  (of  soup,  meat, 
cereal,  vegetables,  fruit,  dessert,  and  cof- 
fee) and  weighs  only  twelve  pounds. 

None  of  these  invasion  items  just  hap- 
pened, and  none  of  them  was  developed 
over  a  week-end.  All  of  them  are  the 
result  of  the  work  of  hundreds  of  tech- 
nicians preparing  for  invasion — in  scores 
of  experiment  and  testing  laboratories, 
over  no  one  will  ever  know  how  many 
months  and  days. 

OR  TAKE  the  amount  of  work  and  in- 
genuity involved  in  getting  "un- 
gettable"  materials.  At  one  time  mica 
was  scarce.  It  goes  into  radio  equipment, 
and  radio  equipment  aplenty  goes  with 
invasion.  Special  planes  were  sent  by 
the  Air  Transport  Command  to  India  with 
Ames  dials,  the  gages  that  measure  the 
thinness  of  mica  slivers,  and  routine  flights 
were  established.  On  one  flight  when 
General  Styer,  Chief  of  Staff,  Army  Serv- 
ice Forces,  flew  back  from  India,  his  plane 
was  loaded  with  all  the  mica  it  could  hold. 
Similarly,  if  a  manufacturer  in  Middle- 
town  or  Emporia  or  Keokuk  is  stuck  for 
critical  materials,  x\SF  has  to  move  moun- 
tains and  comb  the  forty-eight  States.  "I 
can't  meet  the  deadline  on  those  metal  tent 
poles,"  one  manufacturer  wailed  one  day. 


"Pve  made  eighty-seven  long  distance 
calls  [he  had!]  and  I  can't  get  suitable 
steel  tubing.  Nowhere !"  In  such  a  case 
the  ASF  trouble-shooters  have  to  go  right 
back  to  the  factory  and  the  boss's  elbow. 
The  fishing-rod  manufacturers,  it  was  sug- 
gested, might  have  some  frozen  brass  tub- 
ing. Telephone  calls  were  put  through 
at  once,  although  it  was  an  hour  when 
the  manufacturers  would  undoubtedly  be 
snoring  in  their  beds.  But  brass  tubing 
was  found — if  the  WPB  would  release  it. 
The  Army  arranged  that;  but  then  special 
stamping  dies  were  necessary.  These 
would  take  four  weeks  to  make,  and  the 
finished  tent  poles  must  be  shipped  in 
three  weeks.  It  was  decided  that  old  dies 
remade  might  do,  and  men  from  the 
nearest  Quartermaster  depot  scoured  the 
second-hand  die  markets  and  found  them. 
Then — out  of  the  blue — the  manufac- 
turer's supply  of  aluminum,  which  was 
also  part  of  the  tent  poles,  ran  out.  And 
there  was  no  aluminum.  It  was  tied  up 
tight  because  of  thirty-  to  sixty-day  ad- 
vance allotments.  A  QMG  man  then 
strolled  into  a  factory  where  an  aluminum- 
working  job  was  going  on.  Chips  and 
peelings  were  flying  off"  the  cutters  like 
snow.  "Mr.  Jones,"  remarked  the  Quar- 
termaster's man  to  the  plant  owner, 
"just  have  your  boys  sweep  up  this  scrap 
for  me,  will  you?"  Melted  down,  it  was 
just  enough  for  the  tent  poles — and  they 
were  shipped  on  time. 

EVEN  the  problems  of  invasion  pack- 
aging have  taken  months  of  planning 
and  the  work  of  thousands  of  hands  and 
minds.  Combat  maintenance  equipment 
for  the  men  of  the  North  African  campaign 
had  to  be  packaged  in  individual  seventy- 
pound,  one-man  loads.  Each  package 
then  had  to  be  waterproofed.  Gasoline, 
usually  supplied  by  the  tankerload,  had  to 
be  put  into  cans  and  drums.  In  the 
invasion  some  of  the  gasoline  was  de- 
livered by  throwing  five-gallon  cans  into 
the  water  and  floating  them  ashore,  air 
space  being  of  course  left  for  buoyancy. 

To  save  precious  shipping  space  the 
Quartermaster  packaging  experts  devised 
a  way  of  baling  clothes,  instead  of  boxing 
them,  which  takes  40  per  cent  less  room. 
Toilet   paper   no   longer   invades   enemy 


PREPARATlOiN    FOR    IxMVASIOX 


249 


country  in  rolls,  but  Is  compressed  flat  into 
60  per  cent  of  former  space.  By  dehydrat- 
ing and  compressing,  beef,  milk,  eggs, 
vegetables,  and  fruit  are  packaged  so  as 
to  occupy  52  to  85  per  cent  less  room.  In 
twelve  months  our  ti'oops  will  use  400,000,- 
000  pounds  of  this  "repackaged"  food, 
from  which  enough  water  has  been  ex- 
tracted to  represent  a  saving  in  cargo  space 
equivalent  to  two  hundred  5,000-ton  in- 
vasion ships. 

When  the  Marines  first  landed  on  Gua- 
dalcanal they  found  many  of  their  tele- 
phone, flashlight,  and  searchlight  batteries 
dead.  Moisture  had  ruined  them.  The 
Signal  Corps  then  laid  down  new  and. 
unheard-of  packaging  specifications  for 
thirty-six  different  kinds  of  dry  batteries, 
and  the  Quartermaster  Corps  had  to  work 
and  deliver.  Each  battery  must  come  in 
a  sealed  bag.  The  bag  must  be  lami- 
nated: a  layer  each  of  kraft  paper,  of  lead 
foil,  of  cellophane,  of  bond  paper.  The 
four  must  be  bonded  together  with  ther- 
moplastic adhesives  and  asphaltic  sealers. 
The  bags  must  be  deterioration-proof 
through  40  to  150  degrees  Fahrenheit, 
must  be  heat-sealed,  and  must  not  leak 
after  twenty-four  hours'  submersion.  Each 
must  stand  a  severe  drop  test — eight  times 
on  the  corners,  on  concrete.  Further, 
each  battery,  in  each  sealed  bag,  must  be 
packaged  in  a  standard  carton  inside  a 
wooden  shipping  case  inside  which,  in 
turn,  there  must  be  a  waterproof  liner. 
All  a  little  complicated,  perhaps,  and  a 
lot  of  things  for  a  lot  of  people  to  plan  and 
check  and  remember — but  typical  of  the 
procurement  role  in  any  preparation  for 


mvasion. 


HOWEVER,  it  is  the  process  of  procure- 
ment which  seems  to  carry  off  the 
prize  for  complexity.  To  get  some  idea, 
suppose  we  look  at  a  part  of  the  operation 
of  procurement  in  one  Quartermaster  de- 
pot. Take  the  case  of  the  tentage  for  an 
invasion: 

The  Quartermaster  Corps  depot  at  Jef- 
ferson ville,  Indiana,  procures  all  duck  and 
webbing  for  the  entire  Army.  Under  this 
heading  it  must  supply  for  Sicily  or  Nor- 
way or  the  South  Seas  these  items:  large 
wall  tents,  post  command  tents,  assembly 
teutSj  pyramidal  tents,  small  wall  tents. 


hospital  ward  tents,  shelter  half-tents, 
storage  tents;  as  well  as  pistol  belts,  can- 
teen covers,  magazine  belts,  cartridge 
belts,  and  haversacks.  To  do  the  job  the 
JefTcrsonville  Quartermaster  Corps  organ- 
ization has  set  up  within  itself  a  sub-organ- 
ization known  as  the  Duck  and  Webbing 
Pool.  D&WP  has  learned  that,  for  sweet 
expedition's  sake,  it  must  supply  its  can- 
vas-goods fabricators  not  only  with  duck 
and  webbing  but  also  with  very  nearly 
every  necessary  raw  material.  Another 
sub-organization  at  the  depot  administers 
this  phase:  the  Material  Control  Section. 
It  handles  over  475  different  raw  mate- 
rials, a  shortage  of  any  one  of  which  could 
stop  tentage  production  in  a  dozen  plants 
overnight.  Further,  the  requirements  of 
an  invasion  schedule  prevent  any  back- 
logging  of  raw  materials.  So  they  have 
to  be  ordered  shipped  direct  from  hun- 
dreds of  producers  to  hundreds  of  manu- 
facturers, and  kept  track  of  day  by  day, 
with  the  inevitable  extra  complications 
that  are  bound  to  arise.  When,  finally, 
the  various  agencies  of  the  Army  want  the 
tentage  for  their  invasion  forces  (and 
likely  as  not  in  a  devil  of  a  hurry)  they 
forward  a  requisition  to  the  Pool.  Jeffer- 
sonville  will  then  ship  from  inventory  at 
the  depot.  Or,  just  to  complicate  things 
a  little  more,  it  may  also  have  to  order 
direct  from  the  mills  or  the  finishers. 

This  depot  stores  27,000  separate  items, 
and  fabricates  an  additional  500.  There 
are  25  Quartermaster  Corps  depots  in  the 
continental  United  States.  Not  all  per- 
form the  same  number  and  kind  of  ac- 
tivities as  Jeff  ersonville,  but  they  do  most 
of  them.  Multiply  the  Jeffersonville  fig- 
ures by  25  and  you  get  a  rough  idea  of  the 
logistics  of  invasion  in  terms  of  procure- 
ment alone. 

ccirjuT  the  complexity  of  everything 
[3  doesn't  do  us  in  much,"  a  QMC 
colonel  said  to  me,  "it's  the  rush  orders 
and  the  emergencies  that  make  us  hop." 
And  then  he  told  me  of  some.  How  an 
order  came  through  for  10,000  delousing 
bags  ten  days  before  the  North  African 
invasion.  How  the  Quartermaster  Corps 
telephoned  and  telephoned,  and  delivered 
the  10,000  in  the  ten  days.  How — again 
for  Africa — they  were  asked  to  produce 


250 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


special  sacks  of  waterproof  sateen,  bonded 
with  rubber  and  vulcanized  at  the  seams, 
for  landing  sensitive  equipment  in  rough 
seas.  All  rush!  Invasion  date  round 
the  corner !  The  Quartermasters  designed 
five  sizes  of  sacks,  -n vented  the  bonding 
cement,  manufactured,  and  delivered — in 
two  weeks. 

Another  occasion  when  the  Quarter- 
master men  were  working  madly  against 
time  was  that  of  a  job  for  South  Pacific 
invasion  forces.  Several  small  manufac- 
turers had  orders  for  jungle  packs  and 
canvas  machete  sheaths,  with  delivery 
date  the  most  important  requirement.  As 
the  deadline  date  drew  near  QMG 
maintained  daily  contact  with  each  manu- 
facturer. Deliveries  of  the  packs  and 
sheaths  to  port  of  embarkation  began, 
but  on  the  day  before  deadline  it  was 
patent  that,  barring  magic,  there  would 
be  a  shortage.  The  Quartermasters  tele- 
phoned every  manufacturer  and  said, 
"Orders  absolutely  must  be  shipped  by 
midnight  to-night."  They  were.  But  one 
maker  had  a  narrow  squeak.  He  could 
not  convince  the  railroad  that  his  ship- 
ment had  higher  priorities  than  food. 
This  was  a  stopper,  since  a  refrigerator 
car  was  the  only  one  available.  The 
manufacturer  insisted  the  car  be  put  on 
his  siding.  At  11:58  that  night  he  was 
treated  to  a  telephone  call  from  the  local 
railway  agent.  "They're  on  their  way, 
Larry,"  the  agent  reported  triumphantly, 
"packed  in  ice." 

Ill 

ONCE  invasion  supplies  are  on  the  way — 
iced  or  not — the  chief  responsibility 
passes  to  the  men  of  the  Army  Transporta- 
tion Corps.  On  their  work  the  fate  of  the 
invasion  timetable  hangs.  They  must 
have  ships  at  the  port,  and  keep  loaded 
trucks  and  freight  trains  moving  in,  all  on 
time-clock  scheduling,  and  empty  trucks 
and  cars  moving  out,  with  shuttlelike 
perfection.  For  heaven  help  an  invasion 
plan  if  traffic  clogs  as  it  did  in  our  last  war. 
Then  the  port  of  New  York  was  so 
congested  that  freight  cars  were  backed  up 
solid  to  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania.  Some 
cars  stood  loaded,  on  track,  for  nine 
months;  ships  for  France  had  to  take  the 
stuff  any  way,  just  as  it  came. 


Now  it  is  different.  By  painstaking 
planning  and  administration  the  men  of 
the  Army's  Transportation  Corps  have 
worked  out  a  system  which  can  handle 
any  invasion  demands.  Not  a  single  em^ 
barkation  port  has  been  congested.  "Sic- 
ily," one  officer  remarked  to  me,  "just 
took  the  norm2d  flow  of  traffic  to  handle — - 
no  special  pickup."  Credit  for  this  goes, 
if  anywhere  especially,  to  the  section 
known  as  Holding  and  Reconsignment, 
which  has  a  system  of  strategically  placed 
storage  depots,  each  within  easy  rail  dis- 
tance from  a  port  of  embarkation. 

These  depots  possess  every  facility  for 
the  rapid  receiving  and  dispatching  of 
freight.  For  instance,  they  have  a  special 
frog  truck  which  puts  carload  lots  into  a 
warehouse  as  a  unit.  Suppose  certain 
ships  are  scheduled  to  load  for  invasion 
at  Hampton  Roads.  Rail  traffic  begins 
to  converge  on  the  port.  Then  some- 
thing happens.  Ships  due  to  arrive  are 
delayed  by  storm.  The  incoming  freight 
trains  have  got  to  be  stopped  or  the  port 
will  be  hopelessly  jammed.  In  the  Pen- 
tagon Building,  in  Washington,  officers  of 
the  Transportation  Corps  and  their  as- 
sistants get  to  work.  "Diversion  notices" 
go  out  to  the  railroads.  Every  freight 
car,  the  continent  across,  which  is  headed 
for  Hampton  Roads  may  be  diverted  to  a 
Holding  and  Reconsignment  depot. 

Sometimes  these  rerouters  will  divert 
as  many  as  300  cars  into  H&R  without  a 
ripple.  Sometimes  they  will  screen  out 
hundreds  of  particular  cars  on  hundreds 
of  tracks  all  over  the  Union.  Probably 
the  most  famous  instance  was  the  way 
they  got  the  tanks  that  stopped  Rommel. 
One  ship  of  a  convoy  of  six  to  Egypt, 
loaded  with  the  latest  Shermans,  was  lost. 
This  was  a  crippling  blow,  and  another 
vessel  was  called  in  to  take  on  duplicate 
tanks.  The  tanks  were  scattered  in  290 
freight  cars  all  round  the  country.  They 
were  located  and  given  a  "red  ball  freight" 
clear  track  right  into  the  port  of  embar- 
kation. The  substitute  vessel,  a  fast  ship, 
arrived  in  Egypt  with  the  original  convoy, 
and  the  tanks  were  dispatched  to  the  desert. 
"They  were  responsible,"  General  Mont- 
gomery has  said,  "for  the  defeat  of  Rom- 
mel, and  their  arrival  two  hours  later 
would  have  been  too  late." 


PREPARATION    FOR    INVASION 


251 


EVEN  preparation  for  railroading  in  a 
country  to  be  invaded  takes  an  un- 
uspcctcd  amount  of  elaborate  and  long- 
angc  planning.     For  months  before  our 
roops  sailed  our  Army  railroad  men  were 
Icsigning  special  locomotives  for  North 
Africa    and    Sicily    (blueprinting    at    the 
amc  time  new  models  for  Brazil,  Jamaica, 
^ucrto  Rico,  and  Russia).     One  engine 
vas  made  especially  for  Dakar — for  haul- 
ng  peanuts.     The  railway  engineers  de- 
dgned  and  built  special   cars.     For   the 
;tretch  from  Casablanca  to  Tunisia  a  ''well 
:ar''  was  created,  a  sort  of  kangaroo  affair 
to  carry  a  different-gage  engine  in  it  to 
the  Moroccan  border.     An  "autorailer" 
was  made  which  changed  flanged  wheels 
for  pneumatic  tires  and  ran  on  the  desert. 
The  engineers  wrestled  for  months  with 
the   problem    of   how    they    would    ship 
freight    cars    and    locomotives    in    large 
quantities.     The  former  were  finally  put 
aboard  ship  knocked  down.     Locomotives 
were  at  first  carried  on  deck  and  only  four 
to  a  ship.     Then  ways  were  devised  of 
sending  them  on  top  of  oil  tankers,  by 
using  a  new  type  of  superstructure  called 
a  "mechano  deck.''     On  the  regular  cargo 
boats  specialists  struggled  with  the  com- 
plications  of  enlarging  the   hatches.     A 
ship  to  Africa  could  then  take  in  and  nest 
away  as  many  as  thirty  locomotives  in  its 
hold.     Special  rails  had  to  be  ordered  to 
go  with  the  invasion  ships,  and  hundreds 
of  bridge  sections  of  bolted-together  gird- 
ers.    For  weeks  ahead,  railway  battalions 
were  being  trained  in  how  to  run  the  na- 
tive engines  on  the  other  side. 

Intelligence  officers  spent  months  just 
collecting  information.  A  myriad  of  mi- 
nute details  about  roads  and  railroading 
in  the  country  to  be  invaded  had  to  be  got 
together.  Bridge  capacities  had  to  be 
known.  The  percentage  of  all  grades. 
The  condition  of  track.  The  number  of 
native  freight  cars  available.  The  track 
gages.  Even  the  fuels  that  could  be  got 
hold  of  and  used  in  emergencies — like 
cork,  which  was  used  once.  The  clear- 
ance of  every  tunnel  in  Sicily  was  known 
to  the  inch  before  our  troops  landed. 

'HiLE   all  this  fact-gathering  went 
on,  Army  Service  Forces  agencies 
were  arranging  to  assemble  and  load  the 


ship^  All  must  be  got  to  the  right  port 
at  the  right  time  and  loaded  in  the  right 
way.  For  the  initial  North  African  land- 
ings, ships  were  "assault  loaded,"  so  that 
first  things  came  out  first  with  the  infantry, 
and  tanks  and  guns  often  rode  on  deck. 
But  loadings  for  Sicily,  and  for  our  first 
landings  in  the  Southwest  Pacific,  were 
not  assault  loadings,  but  were  either  ''unit 
loadings"  (the  men  going  with  all  their 
equipment  on  one  ship),  or  "convoy  load- 
ings" (distribution  being  made  through- 
out the  convoy),  or  "commercial  loadings" 
(permitting  every  nook  and  cranny  to  be 
crammed). 

"Always,"  remarked  a  Transportation 
officer  to  me,  ''the  loading  and  the  nature 
of  invasion  cargo  increases  the  amount  of 
work  to  be  done.  So  many  trucks,  for  in- 
stance— which  are  terrible  to  stow.  And 
it  kills  us  to  send  a  ship  semi-filled.  In 
the  Sicily  invasion  we  loaded  trucks  into 
the  hold  and  then  built  false  decks  over 
them  and  loaded  another  layer  of  trucks 
on  top." 

You  can  add  to  all  these  pre-invasion 
tasks  the  upsetting,  unexpected  emer- 
gency. Imagine  that  right  in  the  middle 
of  things  a  special  convoy  is  wanted  right 
away!  Then  many  an  Army  Service 
Forces  section  has  to  handle  its  logistics  at 
top  speed.  As  an  actual  instance,  here  is 
a  paraphrased  version  of  a  cable  sent  one 
day  from  General  Somervell,  in  Algiers 
with  General  Eisenhower,  to  General  Styer 
in  Washington: 

Dispatch  on  special  convoy  .  ;  .  the  following. 
;  .  .  This  shipment  is  of  special  urgency  and 
represents  a  vastly  increased,  chance  of  victory  in 
the  desperate  battle  that  is  expected  to  come. 
No  obstacle  will  be  permitted  to  interfere  with 
the  shipment  as  directed.  Notify  War  Shipping 
Administration  of  the  urgency  of  the  matter  and 
obtain  their  co-operation  in  spotting  ships  at 
earliest  practical  date.  Notify  Navy  that  Ad- 
miral King  has  agreed  to  furnish  the  necessary 
escort  ships  for  this  move.  .  .  .  Filler  cargo  will 
be  selected  from  existing  priorities.  ...  In 
addition  to  existing  priorities  the  items  listed 
below  are  of  outstanding  importance  and  are  to 
be  given  overriding  priorities  over  anything  in- 
dicated to  you  up  to  the  present. 

The  requisitions  listed  among  other 
things  such  heavy  materiel  as  freight  cars, 
locomotives,  Ordnance  and  Signal  Corps 
items,  dump  trucks,  heavy  tractors,  trail- 
ers, and  thousands  of  trucks. 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Within  twenty-four  hours,  when  Army 
Service  Forces  was  furiously  at  work  on 
the  job,  this  reply  went  to  Africa: 

-  ^ 
Concerning  your  important  communications 
.  .  .  progress  is  bein^  made  on  arrangements 
for  special  convoy.  Navy  will  provide  escorts. 
WSA  has  nominated  vessels.  It  is  expected 
that  all  equipment  listed  or  suitable  substitutes 
for  a  few  items  will  be  available.  .  .  .  The 
ball  is  rolling  and  time  is  tight,  but  we  expect  to 
meet  date  and  will  not  let  you  down.  However, 
if  you  want  Pentagon  Building  shipped,  please 
allow  more  time.  Above  has  been  repeated  to 
Ike.— Styer 

IV 

ND  then,  finally,  one  day  the  troops 
must  move.  The  job  has  all  been 
planned  weeks  ahead,  and  the  Army's 
Chief  of  Traffic  Control,  in  his  office  in  the 
Pentagon  Building,  is  ready  for  it.  He 
advises  the  Association  of  American  Rail- 
roads, whose  special  Army  offices  are  just 
down  the  corridor.  There,  massed  bat- 
teries of  teletype  machines  begin  to  tap 
out  orders  routing  the  trains  and  schedul- 
ing their  arrival  times. 

The  trains  must  not  arrive  too  late  nor 
too  soon.  As  they  roll,  from  every  State 
in  the  nation,  the  Chief  keeps  close  track 
of  them.  Every  morning  at  seven  o'clock 
an  officer  lays  on  his  desk  a  Daily  Car 
Situation  Report,  which  tells  him  the 
whereabouts  of  every  troop  train  on  every 
railroad  line  in  the  country.  There  are 
now  hundreds  of  them,  all  converging  on 
the  port  of  embarkation  for  sailing  day. 

The    reception    and    handling    of   the 


troops  has  all  been  planned  by  ASF  long 
ago.  The  men  are  assigned  to  barracks. 
Inspectors  go  over  their  equipment  with 
them,  issue  new  equipment  where  neces- 
sary, and  special  items  for  invasion.  The 
doctors  of  the  Medical  Corps  put  them 
through  a  final  physical  checkover.  At 
last  they  are  marched  to  the  waiting 
ships  and  go  aboard.  As  each  soldier 
steps  on  deck  logistics  supplies  a  finishing 
touch  of  detail.  A  card  with  the  soldier's 
name  on  it  is  handed  to  him.  It  instructs: 
"You  will  go  to  Deck  Four,  Compartment 
D,  Berth  One." 

When  the  ship  is  filled  and  the  last 
soldier  on,  she  casts  off,  swings  into  the 
stream,  and  proceeds  to  her  allotted  place 
beside  other  ships,  each  at  its  own  pre- 
designated  anchorage,  to  wait  for  the 
escorts. 

PREPARATION  for  invasion  is  now  com- 
plete.    If    anyone    has    bungled,    if  > 
anything  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  - 
items  has  been  forgotten,  it  is  too  late  now.  . 

All    these    details — these    complexities, 
these  intricate  schedulings,  these  timings, 
these  infinite  attentions  to  a  million  mi- 
nutiae— are     the     logistics    of    invasion,  i 
They    indicate    why    military    men    rate 
Napoleon  as  a  gross  bungler  on  the  road  to 
Moscow,  and  Caesar  as  a  master  of  his 
art  in  the  conquest  of  Gaul.     They  also  I 
indicate  in  a  small  way,  for  all  of  us  arm- 
chair strategists,  why  the  mounting  of  an 
invasion  like  the  second  front  in  Europe  ; 
cannot  be  accomplished  on  short  notice. 


NIGHT    FLIGHT 

A  Story 


JOSEPHINE    W.    JOHNSON 


BEATING  slowly,  a  little  wearily  back 
across  the  long  Kansas  pastures,  Joe 
*  thought  it  all  over  and  decided  it 
was  good.  Almost  the  real  thing.  He 
thought  of  her  face  when  she  had  finally 
seen  him  sitting  there  on  the  bed,  and  for- 
got the  creeping  ache  in  his  arms  as  he 
shot  on  forward.  Only  five  hundred 
miles  to  go,  but  the  air  had  the  warning 
cold  of  dawn. 

He  smiled  a  little  to  himself.  God,  the 
things  that  a  woman  thought  of  to  do  be- 
fore she  let  herself  go  to  bed !  And  the 
nightgowns  she  wore  when  he  wasn't 
there! — long-sleeved  cotton,  with  buttons 
down  the  front.  She'd  looked  like  a  cute 
little  shoebox  in  it.  And  the  ironing,  iron- 
ing, ironing,  while  he'd  paced  up  and  down 
half-wild,  and  she'd  stood  there  mashing 
down  a  tablecloth,  pleating  up  a  skirt, 
looking  straight  at  him  and  not  knowing 
he  was  there.  Then  she'd  just  sighed  and 
folded  up  in  a  chair  and  taken  off  her 
shoes.  He'd  noticed  how  little  her  feet 
looked  in  the  damp  stockings  with  three 
runs  up  the  side. 

Then  she'd  got  up  and  gone  to  the  ice- 
box and  made  herself  a  little  sandwich 
of  bread  and  butter  and  a  slice  of  cold 
sweet  potato,  and  drunk  some  milk  straight 
out  of  the  bottle,  and  wiped  her  mouth  on 
her  sleeve.  It  had  made  him  hungry  and 
he'd  almost  reached  over  her  shoulder  and 


grabbed  a  cold  slice  of  ham,  but  remem- 
bered Polocheck's  warning  just  in  time: 
"Don't  eat,  Joe.  Don't  drink.  You 
might  ground  yourself  coming  back.  It 
has  happened."  He  had  shaken  his  head 
in  an  ominous  and  warning  way,  and  in 
his  silence  Joe  read  some  unspeakable  fate. 

Then  Charlotte  had  puttered  and  put- 
tered and  puttered.  Washing  her  stock- 
ings and  hanging  them  first  in  one  place 
and  then  in  another,  and  brushing  her 
lovely,  thick  black  hair  and  looking  at  her- 
self in  the  mirror  to  see  how  much  bigger 
she'd  got  round  the  waist,  and  then  just 
standing  there  like  a  kid  making  faces  at 
herself  and  whispering. 

He  loved  her  so  much  he  thought  his 
heart  would  crack,  and  then  he  thought  he 
would  let  loose  and  crack  her  too  if  she 
didn't  quit  dawdling. 

Then,  finally,  she'd  turned  out  the  lights 
and  sat  down  on  the  bed  facing  west,  and 
looked  out  at  the  moon  and  spoken  his 
name  once  or  twice,  and  that  was  all  the 
praying  she  seemed  to  do;  and  then  she'd 
gone  to  sleep  and  found  him  there. 

"Jesus!"  Joe  said  quietly  to  the  Kansas 
prairies,  "she  was  sure  surprised !" 

It  hadn't  taken  as  much  explaining 
though  as  he'd  expected.  Apparently  she 
had  thought  of  it  too  and  wanted  him 
to  teach  her  how.  But  he'd  said  no,  he 
wasn't  going  to  have  her  flying  around  at 


254 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


night,  and  besides,  his  bunk  wasn't  very 
big,  and  for  God's  sake  suppose  they  had  a 
night  alarm  and  inspection.  ''This  isn't 
Hke  the  Mexican  array,  baby,"  he'd  said. 
"It's  for  adults  only,  and  all  of  those  adults 
male." 

She  had  thought  him  wonderful  to  have 
learned  so  quickly,  and  since  she  pointed  it 
out  he  realized  it  was  pretty  wonderful, 
come  to  think  of  it.  This  was  only  Mon- 
day, and  Sunday  morning  Polocheck  had 
told  him  of  his  dream.  "...  And  in  the 
dream  I  ran  from  these  dogs — but  I  see  no 
reason  why  I  ran.  I  could  have  flown." 
He  looked  at  Joe  and  slowly  lifted  his  glass 
of  beer.     "I  often  fly.". 

"Home?" 

"Home  to  Czechoslovakia."  He  looked 
calmly  into  Joe's  grinning  eyes.  "To- 
night when  it  is  dark  I  will  teach  you 
how."  He  raised  a  round,  warning  hand 
above  his  glass:  "Hush."  His  blue  eyes 
glittered  behind  his  glasses:  "We  want 
no  more  fliers.  The  nights  are  wide  and 
peaceful  now." 

Joe  had  leaned  forward  and  whispered 
behind  hi"  hand:  "When?'! 

"Eighu  o'clock." 

"Do  many  know?'! 

"Some." 

"Who?" 

Josefs  eyes  had  twinkled.  *^You  would 
be  surprised." 

"Okay,"  Joe  said. 

It  had  been  a  bad  morning.  He 
wanted  to  forget  it.  Even  acting  like 
nuts  out  in  the  middle  of  the  desert  in  a 
madman's  prank  was  preferable  to  remem- 
bering. "It  wasn't  so  much  that  it  hap- 
pened to  me,"  he  growled  into  her  warm 
and  patient  ear,  "but  that  it  could  happen 
at  all !  The  fool — the  damn  young  fool !" 
He  re-enacted  the  scene.  The  Major's 
office,  young  pudgy  Major  Lewis  whose 
wife  once  off'ered  Joe  a  bag  of  peanuts  and 
who  summered  in  New  England  and  early- 
autumned  in  New  York.  It  had  all  been 
trivial  and  nasty.  The  matter  of  a  desk. 
The  desk  drawer  stuck,  and  the  Major 
wanted  another  desk  and  he  knew  where 
another  was.  He  wanted  it  moved  in, 
and  his  own  desk  moved  out,  and  he  needed 
a  truck  and  about  five  men,  and  he 
started  writing  out  communications  all 
over  the  place.     Joe  had  been  standing 


there  and  listening  and  finally  he  said: 
"Why  don't  you  just  have  the  desk  drawer 
fixed?"  Somewhere  along  the  line  he 
had  put  in  a  "sir." 

And  the  Major  had  turned  with  his  vapid 
young  face  suddenly  interesting  with  hate, 
and  shouted:  "Who  spoke  to  you?  Wait 
till  you're  spoken  to,  soldier!" 

Well,  that  was  that.  But  it  was  there 
like  a  ten- word  brand. 

".  .  .  And  then  I  just  went  out  with 
Josef,  and  he  showed  me  how  .  .  ." 

"You  learned  so  quickly,  darling!" 
She  had  looked  at  him  with  love  and  ado- 
ration. Sometimes  Charlotte  got  God 
and  Joe  confused. 

He  laughed  and  hugged  her  and  mut- 
tered that  it  was  something  that  any  fool 
could  do.  He  told  her  how  it  had  felt,  his 
spirit  slipping  quietly  between  the  beds, 
shuffling  out  into  the  moonlight  desert. 
.  .  .  He  had  paused  and  taken  in  the  incom- 
parable beauty  of  this  early  autumn  night. 
South  the  wide  snow-streaked  peaks,  beau- 
tiful and  barren  in  the  white  moonlight. 
The  clean  icy  air  poured  down  his  lungs. 
All  round  him  the  silent  tarboard  bar- 
racks and  the  sand,  sleeping  in  the  great 
white  flooded  light.  The  army  trucks 
huddled  row  on  row  like  shrouded  beasts. 

Quietly  Joe  had  lifted  one  long  arm  and 
then  the  other.  He  whirled  them  round 
like  a  ship's  propeller,  and  felt  the  blood 
race  through  his  veins.  "Contact,"  he 
whispered,  grinning. 

Then,  warmed  up,  he  had  started  taxi- 
ing across  the  sand,  his  long  mountain  legs 
casting  wild  shadows  from  the  moon.  He 
aimed  for  the  eastern  fence  and  planned  to 
take  off"  and  soar  above  the  spiked  wire 
in  a  gesture  of  derision.  But  halfway 
down  the  road  he  slowed  down  suddenly 
and  crouched.  By  shadowy  sound  his 
spirit's  sensitive  ears  detected  another 
traveler,  and  he  whirled  and  flattened 
against  a  barracks  building.  From  a  door 
of  the  officers'  quarters  a  short  and  heavy 
form  came  striding,  and  paused  in  the 
open  moonlight.  Major  Lewis  hesitated, 
reconnoitered,  and  seeing  only  the  dry,  un- 
speaking  sand,  the  bright  expressionless 
autumn  moon,  seemed  satisfied.  Over  his 
face  came  a  silly,  expectant  look,  and  his 
mouth  opened  and  shut  like  a  toad  de- 
vouring flies.     After  a  few  minutes  Joe 


NIGHT    FLIGHT 


255 


realized  that  the  Major  was  singing  as  he 
flailed  his  arms  and  warmed  up  for  the 
flight:  ''From  the  desert  I  come  to  thee,''  he  was 
singing/' On  a  stallion  shod  with  Jire  .  .   ." 

''Oh,  my  God,"  Joe  muttered.  "Oh, 
my  God." 

Then  the  Major  was  running,  beating 
his  arms  in  perfect  form,  and  heading  for 
the  gate  with  terrific  speed.  Breathless, 
Joe  watched  him  and  saw  him  suddenly 
leap,  click  his  heels  together  and  soar  up- 
ward with  a  roar  like  a  little  four-engine 
bomber.  The  perfect  take-off  of  long 
practice. 

Joe  sighed  with  envy  and  slid  out  from 
the  shadow.  "Bastard,"  he  murmured. 
"Bastard!" 

Then  his  eyes  filled  with  a  deep  and 
cynical  scorn.  The  Major  had  shot  like  a 
bullet  westward  and  not  toward  the  high 
towers  of  Manhattan,  which  seemed  an 
odd  thing  for  a  man  whose  wife  never  went 
farther  westward  than  Hot  Springs,  Vir- 
ginia. 

^^From  the  desert  I  come  to  thee,^^  Joe  whin- 
nied derisively,  "On  a  stallion  shod  with 
fire  I  I  ."  He  stamped  his  big  feet  in  the 
sand.  "Did  I  speak  to  you?"  he  muttered 
fiercely.  "Wait  till  you're  spoken  to, 
soldier!" 

A  flame  of  intolerable  hate  flared  up  in 
him  and  then  he  remembered  it  was  grow- 
ing late,  and  started  to  run,  forgetting 
the  Major  and  concentrating  with  all  his 
might  on  Polocheck's  lesson  and  his 
warnings: 

^^  Flail  those  arms.  Pick  up  the  feet.  Then 
jump — so — leap.  Beat.  Beat.  Right,  left, 
together:  beat.''  He  felt  himself  soaring  up- 
ward in  a  wild  rush,  clearing  the  barrack 
fence  and  heading  like  a  comet  for  the  sky. 

"Watch  you  level  oflf!"  Polocheck  had 
warned  him.  "Once  I  forgot.  My  God, 
the  stars!" 

He  had  leveled  off'  then  and  flown  east- 
ward in  the  moonlight.  Brownsville,  In- 
diana, here  I  come !  Below  him  the  dry 
autumn  fields  of  Colorado,  the  bony  creek 
beds  twisting  whitely,  the  forms  of  sleeping 
cattle  soaked  in  moonlight.  The  cold 
pure  air  whistled  by  his  ears.  It  was  an 
extraordinary  and  exhilarating  experience. 
He  felt  as  though  he  had  been  doing  it  all 
his  life,  and  wanted  to  try  a  nose  dive 
just  for  the  hell  of  it. 


Josef  was  too  cautious.  "Keep  level," 
he'd  said.  "Don't  fuss  round.  You  got 
to  go  fast."  But  Indiana  wasn't  Europe, 
and  Joe  turned  down  his  right  hand,  raised 
his  left,  and  bore  down  with  a  mighty 
rush.  The  cattle  lifted  up  stricken  faces 
and  poured  over  the  pastures,  their  wet 
hooves  glittering.  Joe  grinned  and  swept 
on  eastward. 

Above  the  Solomon  River  he  had  hit  an 
air  pocket  and  dropped  downward  with  a 
sickening  rush,  but  recovered  himself  and 
pulled  up  again,  beating  his  way  above 
the  cold,  scaly  water,  the  river  smell  chill- 
ing his  throat. 

Sometimes  he  thought  he  saw  other 
forms  far  ofif,  dim  wing-shapes  of  soldiers 
passing,  but  was  not  sure.  Not  till  he 
pulled  past  Topeka,  lights  burning  like  a 
handful  of  embers  on  a  plain,  did  he  meet 
another  nocturnal  flier  close  enough  to 
speak.  Here  he  was  overtaken  by  a  young 
Negro  sergeant  bound  for  Carolina  and 
traveling  fast.  Joe  acknowledged  his  com- 
ing with  a  right-arm  sweep  and  motioned 
as  though  to  shake  his  hand.  "Cold, 
Sergeant?" 

"Cold!" 

"Been  at  this  flying  long?" 

"Learned  last  week.  Been  home  every 
night  since."  He  laughed  as  at  something 
secret  and  very  pleasant. 

"First  flight  for  me,"  Joe  said.  "I 
don't  know  how  it'll  be.  Not  sure  of  all 
the  rules." 

The  sergeant  laughed.  "Me  neither." 
He  winged  in  closer.  "You  learn  some- 
thing new  every  time.  Las'  night  I  landed 
late  and  I  walked  up  the  backyard  after 
my  wife  was  asleep — she  can't  see  you  till 
she  sleeps — and  the  lights  were  all  out, 
only  a  bright  moon  so  you  could  see  every- 
thing white,  and  the  moonflowers  hanging 
on  the  fence.  Well,  I  walk  up  and  past 
that  old  broken  swing  the  kids  still  use, 
and  suddenly  I  stop.  I'm  not  kidding 
you:  I  stopped  like  a  man  shot  dead.  And 
there,  sitting  down  on  the  swing,  scuffing 
his  boots  and  looking  all  out  of  joints,  was 
the  mortal  soul  of  my  First  Lieutenant!" 

He  laughed  very  loudly,  and  after  a 
moment  of  uncertainty  Joe  laughed  too. 

"He  couldn't  get  in!"  the  sergeant 
gloated.     "That's  one  of  the  things  you 


256 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Icarn.  She  never  thought  about  him. 
She  didn't  never  know  he  was  there!" 

Joe  took  an  exulting  leap.  "What'd 
you  do?" 

The  sergeant  shrugged.  "Jus'  let  him 
swing.  A  man's  got  a  right  to  dream,  I 
guess.  He  was  gone  when  I  come  out 
again.  Only  a  scuff  place  under  the 
swing."     He  laughed  again. 

They  flew  on  for  a  minute  in  silence,  and 
then  they  saw  the  lights  of  St.  Louis  and 
the  sluggish  silvery  mud  of  the  Mississippi. 
"Here's  where  I  leave  you,  brother,"  the 
sergeant  said.  "Take  it  slow  and  easy. 
Don't  eat.  Don't  drink.  And  a  long 
night  to  you !"  He  was  gone,  winging  darkly 
southward,  and  soon  lost  in  the  shadows. 

Not  long  now  for  Joe.  Fly  east,  young 
man.  Familiar  hills  and  farmlands  going 
under,  but  he  could  not  see  them  well  in 
the  night.  "I  was  sure  afraid,"  he  told 
Charlotte.  "I  thought  I'd  pass  over  and 
land  in  Brooklyn!  'You'll  know,'  Josef 
kept  telling  me,  but  I  got  the  jitters.  No 
map,  no  compass — how'd  I  know  Browns- 
ville from  Ashtabula?" 

"How  did  you  know?"  Charlotte  whis- 
pered. 

He  held  her  and  laughed.  There  had 
been  no  question  about  his  finding  her. 
He  had  flown  lower  and  lower,  peering  at 
highways  and  little  billboards  and  the  si- 
lent, impassive  roofs  of  towns. 

Suddenly  he  realized  that  he  was  glid- 
ing slowly  downward  as  in  the  grip  of  a 
thick,  receding  tide.  "I  just  knew,"  he 
said. 


Now,  crossing  the  Kansas  border  and 
beating  on,  he  knew  he  would  find  the 
camp  all  right,  not  by  any  love-gravity  of 
the  heart,  but  because  it  was  so  damn  big 
that  he  could  not  miss  it. 

He  felt  calm  and  happy.  To-morrow 
was  to-morrow,  and  to  hell  with  yesterday. 
He  saw  the  white,  shining,  snow-cold  peaks 
and  the  canyoned  towns.  And  then  the 
camp  stretched  out  far  below  him.  There 
wasn't  much  time,  but  he  circled  slowly 
above  it,  hunting  hawklike  for  signs  of 
some  living  thing  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
plain.     Then  he  saw  what  he  was  seeking. 

A  mile  westward  from  the  camp,  a  small 
fat  form,  like  a  two-legged  dusty  beetle, 
scurried  across  the  sand. 

Leisurely,  heartlessly,  like  a  falcon  over 
a  wounded  hare,  Joe  circled  nearer  and 
lower.  He  knew  the  Major's  odd  hum- 
mocky  run.  "He  ate  too  much,  and  he 
drank  too  much,  and  a  lot  of  other  things 
too  much,  and  he  foundered  all  right,"  he 
thought.  "0;z  the  wings  of  the  desert,  I  come 
to  theeP^  Joe  sang  in  a  loud,  sweet  voice. 
He  swooped  low,  and  the  wind  of  his 
swooping  swept  the  Major's  hat  from  his 
round,  blond  head.  It  gleamed  like  a 
moonflower  opening  wide  in  the  pale  gray 
desert  air.  "Get  a  horse.  Bud!"  Joe 
shouted  coarsely.     "Get  a  horse!" 

Then  happily  Joe  soared  upward  with 
firm,  triumphant  strokes  and  plummeted 
swiftly  toward  the  barracks,  taking  care  to 
avoid  the  soul  of  Josef,  returning  in  haste 
from  Europe,  the  dawn  like  a  white 
Gestapo  at  his  heels. 


THE    STRANGE    STORY    OF 
SIR    O  S WALD    MO  SLE Y 

WILLIAM    ZUKERMAN 


THE  release  of  Sir  Oswald  Mosley 
from  detention  has  received  much 
less  attention  outside  Great  Britain 
than  it  deserves,  for  it  is  an  international 
event  of  significance  to  the  entire  demo- 
cratic world.  If  the  somber  background 
of  the  decade  which  gave  rise  to  Mosley 
and  to  the  forces  which  he  symbolizes 
were  fully  understood  everywhere,  the 
incident  would  have  evoked  the  same  pain- 
ful reaction  here  as  it  did  in  England. 
For  Sir  Oswald  Mosley  is  not  a  private  in- 
dividual fascist;  he  is  no  less  a  symbol 
than  is  Hitler,  the  incarnation  of  a  period 
and  of  a  social  and  psychological  trend 
which  almost  brought  Britain  to  its  great- 
est disaster.  Of  all  the  Quislings  whom 
Nazism  has  produced  in  Europe,  Mosley 
was  the  most  significant  and  dangerous 
because  the  most  able  and  brilliant.  He 
had  powerful  forces  behind  him  in  Eng- 
land— forces  which  have  not  altogether 
abandoned  him  even  now.  To  treat  him 
as  if  he  were  an  ordinary  individual  trans- 
gressor or  crank  is  to  make  the  same  error 
in  the  internal  affairs  of  Britain  that  the 
late  Mr.  Neville  Chamberlain  made  in 
foreign  affairs  by  treating  Hitler  as  an  in- 
dividual human  being,  not  as  the  symbol 
that  he  was  of  vicious  impersonal  forces. 
Only  those  who  lived  in  England  during 
the  drab  thirties,  when  the  soil  of  every 
country  in  Europe  was  being  prepared  for 


fascism,  can  see  the  event  in  its  true  pro- 
portions. And  only  those  who  followed 
the  British  people's  bitter  struggle  of  nearly 
a  decade  against  Mosley  and  his  efforts  to 
transplant  the  seeds  of  fascism  and  anti- 
Semitism  into  Britain  will  appreciate  the 
vehemence  of  the  protest  which  his  release 
has  now  called  forth  in  England.  For 
Mosley  must  be  seen  as  a  product  of  the 
period  which  created  him  and  other 
Quislings.  Detached  by  himself  he  is  of 
little  importance,  but  viewed  against  the 
background  of  the  unrolling  fascist  pan- 
orama in  Europe  he  is  one  of  the  balefully 
significant  figures  of  our  time. 

One  remembers  vividly  Sir  Oswald 
Mosley  in  the  heyday  of  his  tempestuous 
career  in  1929-31.  He  was  then  the  ris- 
ing star  of  the  Labor  Party,  the  personal 
protege  of  Ramsay  MacDonald,  the  hope 
of  the  Left-wing  laborites  and  liberals  in 
England,  and  the  platform  darling  of  radi- 
cal crowds  both  in  Great  Britain  and 
in  the  United  States.  Young,  handsome, 
and  colorful,  brilliant  and  highly  intellec- 
tual, he  stood  out  vividly  against  the  Par- 
liamentary scene.  There  was  something 
un-English  about  his  appearance  and 
manners,  in  spite  of  his  old  English  an- 
cestry, something  foreign — French  or  Ital- 
ian?— which,  one  suspects,  added  to  his 
popularity  with  the  English.  Dark,  lithe, 
with  flashing  eyes,  restless  and  morbidly 


258 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ambitious  even  in  those  days,  he  was  as 
different  from  the  average  Front  Bencher 
of  the  time  of  Ramsay  MacDonald  and 
Stanley  Baldwin  as.  anyone  could  be. 

It  is  difficult  to  tell  what  had  made 
the  genuinely  kina  and  sentimental  Mr. 
MacDonald  so  fond  of  Mosley.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  ingrained  respect  of  a  poor 
Scotsman  brought  up  in  poverty  for  the 
old  English  nobility.  Perhaps  it  was 
the  dearth  of  political  talent  and  leader- 
ship that  the  Labor  Party  then  experi- 
enced, or  perhaps  the  attraction  of  a  fun- 
damentally good-hearted  man  for  his 
opposite.  Whatever  the  reason,  Mr.  Mac- 
Donald doted  on  Mosley.  He  created  for 
him  a  special  post  in  his  cabinet  (the 
Duchy  of  Lancaster)  and  groomed  him 
for  the  leadership  of  the  Labor  Party. 
But  it  was  generally  known  that  Mosley 
despised  the  Labor  Party  and  his  chief  even 
then.  Born  and  bred  an  aristocrat,  he 
looked  down  on  labor  and  its  leaders. 
By  temperament  he  was  also  fundamen- 
tally opposed  to  the  humanitarianism  and 
pacifism  of  the  British  liberalism  which 
Mr.  MacDonald  typified.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  man  that,  in  spite  of  all  this, 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  use  the  Labor  Party 
and  its  chief  so  long  as  he  thought  that 
they  could  advance  his  ambition.  It  was 
only  when  he  left  the  Party  in  1930  that 
everyone  realized  how  alien  and  even 
hostile  he  had  always  been  to  its  ideals  and 
aspirations. 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  in  the  early 
part  of  Mosley's  political  career  he  was 
strongly  influenced  by  his  first  wife.  Lady 
Cynthia  Curzon.  She  was  in  many  re- 
spects the  exact  opposite  of  her  husband. 
Charming,  gentle,  idealistic,  she  was  one 
of  the  many  talented  young  people  of  the 
British  upper  middle  class  and  aristocracy 
who  in  the  early  decades  of  this  century 
suddenly  awoke  to  a  strong  feeling  of  duty 
to  and  responsibility  for  the  common  peo- 
ple, and  became  fired  with  a  desire  to 
serve  them  and  to  lighten  the  burden  of 
poverty  and  suffering  which  a  century  of 
industrialism  had  imposed  on  England. 
Most  of  these  people  flocked  to  the  Fabian 
Society  and  to  the  Labor  Party,  and  their 
work  laid  the  foundation  of  the  present 
political  and  spiritual  power  of  the  British 
labor  movement.     Lady  Cynthia  was  one 


of  the  gifted  young  women  of  that  inter- 
esting army.  She  had  rare  beauty  and 
was  an  eloquent  speaker.  She  and  Mos- 
ley cut  a  handsome  figure  on  labor  plat- 
forms; her  charm  and  loveliness  counter- 
balanced the  sharp,  incisive,  domineering, 
and  somewhat  raucous  notes  which  were 
heard  in  his  speeches  even  then.  No  other 
public  couple  in  England  in  those  days 
supplemented  each  other  as  these  two 
young  people  did.  Together  they  repre- 
sented the  dignity  and  nobility,  as  well  as 
the  snobbery  and  selfish  ruthlessness,  of 
the  British  aristocracy. 

Those  who  knew  the  Mosleys  intimately 
claimed  that  the  untimely  death  of  his 
first  wife  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the 
subsequent  remarkable  change  in  him. 
Certain  facts  throw  some  doubts  on  this 
theory,  for  Mosley  began  to  change  even 
during  the  lifetime  of  Lady  Cynthia;  as  a 
matter  of  fact  he  was  already  hatching  his 
fascist  plans  and  ambitions  even  in  1931, 
two  years  before  she  died.  But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  passing  of  his 
wife  marked  a  sharp  turn  in  his  life  and 
character.  He  became  more  imperious, 
domineering,  impatient;  freed  of  her  re- 
straining, gentle  influence,  he  soon  ap- 
peared in  public  in  his  true  light:  a  spoiled, 
frustrated,  arrogant  man,  sure  of  his  su- 
periority and  devoured  by  an  overweening 
ambition  to  rule  and  wield  power,  cruelly 
and  brutally  if  need  be — a  man  with  the 
makings  of  a  fascist. 


II 

MOSLEY  made  his  first  real  bid  for  fas- 
cism in  1931  with  the  formation  of 
his  New  Party.  Characteristically,  he  at 
first  veiled  his  creation  in  such  a  way  as  to 
appeal  to  dissatisfied  radicals  and  labor- 
ites.  Ramsay  MacDonald's  government 
had  already  revealed  all  the  impotence 
and  spiritual  weakness  which  was  soon  to 
lead  to  its  tragic  collapse.  There  was 
sharp  disappointment  in  the  air,  and  Mos- 
ley's move  was  at  first  taken  as  a  revolt  of 
progressive  youth  away  from  Mr.  Mac- 
Donald. Many  young  British  radicals  of 
the  Left  wing,  such  as  Mr.  John  Strachey, 
joined  the  New  Party,  having  been  led  by 
Mosley  to  believe  that  he  was  forming  a 
more  radical  and  active  group  to  energize 


THE    STRANGE    STORY    OF    SIR    OSWALD    MOSLEY 


259 


le  old  Labor  Party.  But  the  truth  came 
at  ahnost  at  the  first  meeting  of  the  New 
arty:  Mosley  was  planning,  not  a  new 
ibor  group,  but  the  most  reactionary 
olitical  experiment  ever  undertaken  in 
.ngland — the  formation  of  a  fascist  move- 
lent.  His  last  act  as  a  laborite  was  to 
etray  his  Left  colleagues  and  drag  them 
ito  fascism  under  the  guise  of  more  ad- 
anced  radicalism. 

The  experiment  failed  dismally.  Brit- 
5h  radicals  and  liberals,  no  matter  how 
lispleased  they  were  with  the  official 
^abor  Party,  had  never  taken  to  fascism 
a  any  of  its  forms.  Mosley  did  not  suc- 
!;eed  with  his  ruse  in  deceiving  a  single 
lecent  intellectual,  even  among  the  Con- 
;ervatives.  The  New  Party  was  a  com- 
Dlete  political  flop.  Thereupon  Mosley 
;ook  the  next,  inevitable  step.  He  threw 
away  all  disguises,  cut  all  his  previous  ties 
ivith  labor  and  liberals,  and  came  out 
frankly  and  openly  for  extreme,  undis- 
guised reaction  of  a  type  England  had 
'aever  known  before.  Parliament  was  to 
'be  done  away  with;  democracy  was  to  be 
abolished;  Britain  needed  a  Leader  and  a 
new  strong  party  to  rule  it  with  an  iron 
hand  in  order  to  exterminate  the  "menace 
of  socialism  and  Bolshevism."  The  new 
Leader  was  Mosley  and  the  new  party  was 
the  Union  of  British  Fascists,  or  the 
■  "Blackshirts"  as  he  preferred  to  call  it. 
The  Union  began  by  adopting  all  the 
paraphernalia,  trimmings,  and  ritual  of 
fascism.  Its  followers  were  dressed  in 
black  military  uniforms  and  armed  with 
bludgeons;  they  marched  in  goosestep 
and  lived  in  military  barracks.  The 
Leader  had  a  private  political  army,  in 
imitation  of  the  Nazi  Storm  Troopers; 
it  served  chiefly  as  his  bodyguard.  The 
meetings  of  the  new  Union  were  elaborate 
ritual  affairs  with  huge  banners,  fanfares, 
and  martial  music.  The  marching  song 
of  the  Blackshirts  was  the  tune  of  the  Ger- 
man Horst  Wessel  song.  The  head- 
quarters of  the  new  movement  was  in  an 
old  abandoned  military  barrack  in  Lon- 
don, a  sort  of  fortified  castle  to  which  no 
outsider  was  admitted.  Soon  stories  of 
beatings,  floggings,  and  brutal  coercion 
began  to  filter  into  the  columns  of  British 
newspapers. 

The  British  public  was  amazed  and  at 


first  somewhat  bewildered.  The  entire 
thing  looked  so  fantastic  and  un-English 
that  people  refused  to  take  it  seriously. 
Mosley  was  looked  upon  as  a  mountebank 
or  as  an  actor  who  had  descended  to  cheap 
sensationalism  for  political  purposes.  His 
open  and  unashamed  imitation  of  Italian 
and  German  fascists  alienated  the  British 
public  still  more.  That  Great  Britain 
with  its  long  tradition  of  world  political 
leadership  should  slavishly  imitate  Musso- 
lini and  Hitler  was  more  than  the  pride 
of  the  average  British  intellectual  could 
stand.  As  for  British  labor,  it  had  already 
known  enough  of  fascism  to  acquire  a 
healthy  distaste  for  the  Blackshirts,  for 
Mosley,  and  everything  he  stood  for.  This 
period  lasted  until  June,  1934,  when  the 
famous  Olympia  meeting  took  place  in 
London,  and  Mosley's  fascist  movement 
entered  still  another  phase. 


Ill 

MEANWHILE  things  had  changed 
sharply  in  Europe.  Hitler  had 
come  to  power  and  begun  his  feverish 
campaign  of  armament,  persecution,  blus- 
ter, and  terror.  Britain,  in  the  depths  of 
economic  and  political  decline,  was  em- 
barking upon  the  policy  which  was  later 
to  be  known  as  appeasement.  In  big- 
business  circles  Hitler  was  officially  con- 
demned but  secretly  admired  as  an  ex- 
ample of  successful  go-getting.  Labor 
was  in  the  doldrums,  first  because  of  the 
terrible  unemployment  which  had  settled 
down  upon  England,  apparently  perma- 
nently, and  second  because  of  the  obvious 
failure  of  the  Labor  Party  in  Parliamen- 
tary politics. 

Progressive  British  intellectuals  never 
wavered  in  their  opposition  to  fascism,  but 
in  certain  influential  Conservative  circles 
something  akin  to  a  flirtation  made  its 
appearance.  In  1934  Lord  Rothermere, 
the  powerful  press  lord  of  England,  came 
out  for  fascism.  According  to  the  word- 
ing of  his  declaration,  Mosley  was  the  only 
political  leader  who  could  save  England 
from  the  "menace  of  socialism"  and  the 
"hidden  hand  of  Bolshevism.''  The  Roth- 
ermere press  in  England  is  the  strongest 
chain  of  newspapers  in  the  English-speak- 
ing  world,   and   its  open   conversion  to 


260 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


fascism  was  the  first  serious  sign  that  Mos- 
ley's  poUtical  activity,  bizarre  and  exotic 
as  it  had  appeared  to  the  average  Britisher, 
was  not  wholly  insigmficant.  During  the 
two  years  since  the  formation  of  the  Black- 
shirts  the  movement  had  succeeded  in 
consolidating  around  itself  certain  social 
elements  in  England  which  were  rich  and 
powerful  and  determined  to  beat  down 
labor  from  the  high  position  which  it  had 
occupied  politically.  Thus  reinforced,  the 
Union  of  British  Fascists  had  built  a  strong, 
well-disciplined  organization.  It  had  man- 
aged to  enlist  big  financial  support  from 
among  brewery  owners  and  other  vested 
British  interests.  At  least  a  section  of  the 
British  ruling  class  was  ready  for  fascism, 
and  it  had  chosen  Mosley  and  his  move- 
ment as  the  instrument  with  which  to 
make  a  bid  for  power. 

The  first  step  in  that  direction  was  taken 
on  June  7th,  1934,  at  the  Olympia  in  Lon- 
don. One  clearly  remembers  the  garish 
scene  of  the  meeting,  but  still  more  the 
shock  which  that  public  manifestation  of 
fascism  in  England  produced.  The  huge 
hall,  a  sort  of  magnified  Madison  Square 
Garden,  was  gaily  decorated  with  bunting 
and  flags;  several  bands  played  martial 
music;  the  aisles  were  guarded  by  husky 
men  in  black  uniforms  without  tunics.  In 
the  middle  of  the  hall  stood  a  huge  plat- 
form decked  with  red  flowers  and  long 
banners.  To  anybody  who  had  seen  a 
Nazi  meeting  in  Germany  the  stage  effect 
and  the  accentuation  of  physical  prowess 
were  familiar;  but  to  most  of  the  huge 
crowd  in  the  densely  packed  hall  the  scene 
was  new,  strange,  and  a  little  disturbing. 
There  was  something  ominous  in  the  air. 

Suddenly  the  richly  decorated  platform 
was  lit  with  a  number  of  powerful  search- 
lights from  the  ceiling  and  to  the  fanfare 
of  trumpets  the  Leader  appeared,  sur- 
rounded by  a  bodyguard  of  bulky  men  in 
black  uniforms.  He  stood  still  for  an  in- 
stant, like  an  actor  at  the  moment  of  his 
greatest  triumph — debonair,  athletic,  in 
Blackshirt  uniform — and  raised  his  hand 
in  a  Hitler  salute.  The  hearts  of  those 
who  had  seen  scenes  like  this  before  sank 
with  dismay. 

Mosley  began  to  speak  and  before  he 
had  spoken  fifteen  minutes  the  usual  Eng- 
lish heckling  began.     The  huge  audience 


consisted  mostly  of  workingmen  who  had 
come  down  from  the  East  End  and  were 
openly  hostile,  and  of  British  middle-class 
intellectuals  who  had  come  with  the  usual 
British  open  mind  to  give  Mosley  another 
chance.     At  first  they  had  been  a  little 
overawed  by  the  splendor  and  theatrical- 
ity of  the  occasion,  but  soon  they  began  to 
act  as  at  other  political  meetings;  ques- 
tions and  interruptions  began  to  pour  in  - 
from  all  parts  of  the  hall.     In  England  such  i- 
heckling  is  not  only  common,  it  is  a  feature 
of  every  big  meeting.     The  trained  British 
speaker  knows  how  to  mount  this  wave  of  ' 
interruptions  and,  by  mastering  it,  to  mas-  ^ 
ter  the  crowd.     It  is  part  of  the  game  ' 
which  both  speaker  and  audience  expect. 
But  on  this  occasion  something  extraordi-  ^ 
nary  happened.     No  sooner  did  a  man  or  ' 
woman  rise  to  ask  a  question  or  make  a  re- 
mark than  he  or  she  was  jumped  upon  by 
the  husky  men  in  black,  dragged  into  the 
aisle,  and  then  and  there  beaten  up  so 
brutally  that  for  a  time  the  audience  was    • 
dumfounded.     No  distinction  was  made   * 
between  men  and  women,  old  and  young, 
well-dressed  people  in  silk  and  men  in 
working  clothes.     All  were  seized,  lifted 
bodily  from  their  seats,   and  hammered 
with  merciless  blows.     People  were  tram-   y 
pled  upon,  kicked  in  the  face  and  in  the    -' 
stomach,  beaten  over  the  head  with  black- 
jacks.    No  one  had  ever  seen  such  beastly 
organized  thuggery  at  a  political  meeting 
before,  and  the  shock  of  it  was  terrific. 

Soon  the  festive  hall  was  the  scene  of  one 
of  the  bloodiest  scrimmages  London  had 
ever  seen.     Shouts  and  screams  mingled    - 
with  cries  of  pain;  Blackshirts  and  work- 
men in  blouses  rolled  in  the  dust  with    ' 
bleeding   faces    and    broken  jaws.     And 
above  all  that  pandemonium,  on  the  high    - 
platform  piled  with  red  flowers  and  ablaze 
with  light,  stood   Mosley    with  his  hand     ' 
raised  in  a  Hitler  salute  and  a  smile  on  his     - 
lips,  like  a  satisfied  general  surveying  a 
successful  battle.  ' 

The  result  of  the  battle  was,  however, 
disastrous  for  Mosley.  Englishmen  had 
heard  of  fascist  brutality  but  had  been  un- 
able to  visualize  it.  Now  that  they  had 
been  treated  to  such  a  scene  in  public, 
they  were  appalled.  There  was  no  doubt 
that  Mosley,  in  his  usual  impatience,  had 
overplayed   his    hand    at    Olympia.     He 


THE    STRANGE    STORY    OF    SIR    OSWALD    MOSLEY 


261 


lad  deliberately  prepared  and  elaborately 

itaged  the  scene  in  order  to  frighten  Eng- 

and,    but    England    was    only   shocked. 

^ord  Rothermere  withdrew  his  open  sup- 

Dort  from  Mosley  soon  after  the  meeting; 

)ther   respectable    English   conservatives, 

ike  those  later  called  the  "Cliveden  set," 

vvho  had  been  quite  ready  to  embark  on 

the  "wave  of  the  future,"  found  that  they 

:ould  not  stomach  the  sight  of  fascism  in 

action.     Mosley  was  left  alone  with  his 

brewers  and  with  his  battered  "army,"  not 

only  a  discredited  man,  but  a  man  hated 

as  the  symbol  of  the  cruelty  and  brutality 

of  fascism  in  England. 

Such  he  has  remained  to  the  present 
day.  The  British,  as  a  rule,  do  not  hate 
their  public  men,  no  matter  how  bitterly 
they  oppose  them.  Mosley  was  the  first 
political  figure  to  introduce  real  hatred 
into  British  politics.  His  mere  appear- 
ance in  public  after  that  meeting  was 
enough  to  throw  labor  audiences  into 
paroxysms  of  rage  unknown  in  England. 

But  he  did  not  give  up  his  political  ac- 
tivity; he  continued  his  meetings  mostly  in 
the  provinces,  in  the  depth  of  the  country- 
side where  people  had  not  yet  heard  of  him 
nor  seen  his  Blackshirts  in  action.  In  a 
sense  his  movement  went  underground 
and  worked  there  very  diligently  and  en- 
ergetically, even  gaining  some  adherents, 
particularly  among  the  land  laborers.  It 
is  estimated  that  he  held  three  hundred 
meetings  during  the  two  years  following 
the  Olympia  meeting,  probably  the  most 
active  years  in  his  political  career.  But  for 
Mosley,  not  to  be  in  the  limelight  of  Lon- 
don meant  not  to  exist  at  all,  and  he  began 
to  prepare  for  another  thrust  into  the  open 
when  the  opportunity  should  arise. 

That  opportunity,  he  thought,  came 
two  years  later,  in  the  summer  of  1936, 
when  he  made  his  biggest  and  last  effort  to 
come  to  power  by  staging  his  march  upon 
Whitechapel,  the  center  of  the  Jewish  and 
labor  population  in  London.  That  was 
the  climax  of  fascism  in  England,  and  no 
future  historian  of  our  period  will  be  able 
to  overlook  it. 

IV 

THE  march  on  Whitechapel  was  planned 
by  Mosley  first  of  all  as  a  comeback 
after  his   failure   at   Olympia  two  years 


earlier.  But  whereas  the  Olympia  meet- 
ing had  been  designed  as  an  appeal  to  the 
British  middle  class,  the  march  on  White- 
chapel was  to  be  fascism's  bid  to  labor. 

One  other  reason  why  Mosley  chose 
Whitechapel  was  that  fifty  years  earlier  it 
had  been  the  Jewish  quarter  of  London, 
and  although  since,  then  the  Jews  had 
spread  all  over  the  city,  it  still  had  a 
considerable  Jewish  population  and  was 
spoken  of  as  the  heart  of  British  Jewry. 
The  march  on  Whitechapel  was  therefore 
to  be  a  sort  of  challenge  to  the  Jews,  as 
well  as  to  labor;  it  was  to  dramatize  anti- 
Semitism  and  introduce  it  as  a  political 
issue  in  England. 

Now  anti-Semitism  had  been  an  awk- 
ward issue  for  Mosley  at  first  for  a  number 
of  reasons.  In  the  early  years  of  his  fascist 
career,  Mosley  had  not  cared  to  break  en- 
tirely with  his  socialist  background.  He 
had  thought  of  himself  as  the  rising  intel- 
lectual leader  not  only  of  British  but  of 
European  fascism.  In  those  years,  when 
even  Mussolini  eschewed  anti-Semitism, 
he  had  not  been  willing  to  descend  to  the 
cheap  demagogy  of  the  anti-Semites.  Be- 
sides, he  knew  that  the  British  people, 
with  their  long  tradition  of  liberalism  and 
tolerance,  would  not  lend  themselves  easily 
to  any  such  movement. 

But  Mosley  had  another  reason  for  shun- 
ning the  Jewish  issue.  Lady  Cynthia,  his 
first  wife,  was  the  granddaughter  of  Levi 
Z.  Leiter,  a  Chicago  merchant  who  was 
generally  believed  in  England  to  have  been 
Jewish.  From  him  she  had  inherited  a 
big  fortune  which  had  supported  Mosley 
and  laid  the  financial  foundation  of  his 
movement.  According  to  Hitler's  racial 
theory,  if  Leiter  had  been  a  Jew,  Lady 
Cynthia  and  their  two  children  would  be 
Jews  and  the  Leader  of  the  British  fascists 
would  be  a  defiler  of  the  Aryan  race. 
Whether  or  not  there  was  such  a  Jewish 
strain  in  his  wife's  family,  all  London  be- 
lieved there  was.  Mosley  and  his  speakers 
were  often  heckled  about  it.  He  had  there- 
fore found  it  embarrassing  to  feature  anti- 
Semitism  in  the  early  years  of  his  career. 

Even  in  the  year  of  the  Olympia  meet- 
ing Mosley  had  hedged  on  the  question. 
To  a  semiofficial  inquiry  from  the  British 
Jewish  community,  he  had  replied  that  he 
was  not  opposed  to  "good"  Jews  who  were 


262 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


bom  in  Britain,  though  he  was  against 
the  "plutocratic  and  Bolshevik"  alien  Jews. 

But  by  1936  Mosley  had  abandoned  the 
role  of  fascist  intellectual  with  a  socialist 
past;  he  had  turned^for  inspiration  from 
Mussolini  to  Hitle^.  Hitler  had  made 
anti-Semitism  the  central  feature  of  his 
movement,  and  Mosley  could  no  longer 
ignore  it.  Jew-baiting  served  as  a  means 
of  expressing  a  spiritual  and  political  alli- 
ance with  Hitler.  Besides,  it  was  also  a 
cheap  and  easy  brand  of  propaganda 
which  had  proved  of  great  value  to  fascism 
in  many  countries.  So  now  he  launched 
upon  anti-Semitism  with  all  his  fiery  im- 
patience. The  Union  of  British  Fascists 
became  a  party  for  the  propagation  of  anti- 
Semitism  and  nothing  else.  All  earlier 
attempts  to  state  a  political,  economic, 
or  social  program  were  abandoned.  Mos- 
ley's  meetings  consisted  of  nothing  but  at- 
tacks on  the  Jews;  his  party  newspapers 
were  full  of  translations  from  Der  Sturmer 
and  reproductions  of  the  filthy  Streicher 
cartoons  and  photographs.  Mosley  had 
cast  his  lot  with  the  Nazis  on  anti-Semitism 
and  the  march  on  Whitechapel  was  to 
make  a  dramatic  and  sensational  announce- 
ment of  it  to  the  world. 

It  was  typical  of  the  British  government 
of  that  time  that  in  spite  of  the  open,  dou- 
ble provocation  which  that  march  offered 
to  labor  and  the  Jews,  it  refused  to  ban  the 
procession.  Probably  the  greatest  storm 
of  protest  of  the  decade  raged  against  the 
demonstration.  The  press,  the  churches, 
all  political  parties  appealed  to  the  gov- 
ernment to  avoid  what  seemed  to  be  cer- 
tain bloodshed  and  a  British  "Red  Sun- 
day"; but  the  Home  Secretary,  Sir  John 
Simon,  a  Liberal  of  the  old  school,  ada- 
mantly refused  to  prohibit  the  march.  Old 
British  Liberalism  made  what  was  prob- 
ably to  be  its  last  big  stand  for  nineteenth- 
century  freedom  of  speech  and  permitted 
the  fascists  to  deliver  their  challenge. 

But  the  challenge  was  never  delivered. 
The  people  of  the  East  End  took  the  matter 
into  their  own  hands.  On  the  day  of  the 
march  over  half  a  million  people  came  out 
into  the  streets,  blocked  all  entrances  to 
Whitechapel,  and  stopped  Mosley's  army 
from  passing.  The  sight  was  memorable 
to  those  who  witnessed  it.  Mosley  at  the 
head  of  a  uniformed  black  column  of  about 


two  thousand  men,  surrounded  by  six 
thousand  stalwart  British  bobbies,  marched 
proudly  with  music  and  banners  down  the 
Embankment;  but  when  they  reached 
Aldgate,  the  entrance  to  Whitechapel,  they 
were  stopped  by  a  wall  of  human  bodies 
stronger  than  any  wall  of  stone.  Fortu- 
nately the  bobbies  and  their  chief  had  a 
difi'erent  notion  of  liberalism  from  Sir 
John's;  they  did  not  regard  it  as  their  duty 
to  hew  a  road  for  the  Blackshirts  through 
the  human  fortress.  They  gave  the  army 
full  protection,  but  nothing  else,  and  Mos- 
ley's challenge  fizzled  out  even  more  mis- 
erably than  at  the  Olympia  meeting. 
There  were  no  dramatic  clashes  and  no 
blood  was  shed.  A  small  body  of  uni- 
formed men  came  up  to  a  solid  wall  of 
human  flesh  and  will  determined  not  to 
let  fascism  pass,  and  it  did  not  pass.  The 
army  waited  for  three  hours  under  a  hail 
of  boos  and  good-natured  jokes,  and  then 
turned  back  without  accomplishing  its 
purpose. 

Mosley  had  failed  again  and  more  thor- 
oughly than  ever  before.  The  contrast 
between  his  puny  "army"  and  the  sea  of 
humanity  that  came  out  to  meet  it  re- 
vealed, as  nothing  else  could  have  done, 
how  signally  fascism  had  failed  to  strike 
roots  in  British  soil  in  spite  of  five  years  of 
elaborate  and  energetic  preparations.  The 
event  doomed  fascism  in  England,  at  least 
for  many  years.  And  it  did  something 
even  worse  to  Mosley's  fortunes:  it  made 
him  ridiculous.  The  British  sense  of  hu- 
mor was  aroused;  it  pounced  upon  his  pre- 
tensions, his  theatricality,  his  love  of  the 
limelight,  his  inflated  ego,  and  destroyed 
him.  Olympia  had  evoked  the  anger  of 
Britain  against  fascism;  the  march  on 
Whitechapel  evoked  its  contempt. 

After  that  Mosley  never  even  attempted 
to  come  back.  The  Union  of  Fascists  did 
not  give  up  business;  it  kept  up  its  virulent 
Jew-baiting  and  the  dissemination  of  Nazi 
literature  in  England;  but  no  one  took  it 
seriously  any  more  as  a  political  force.  It 
was  regarded  merely  as  the  paid  agent  of 
the  Nazi  party  in  England,  and  Mosley 
as  its  errand  boy;  he  declined  with  his 
party.  He  married  into  the  family  of  the 
brewers  who  had  financed  his  movement. 
His  second  wife,  the  former  Mrs.  Diana 
Guinness,  is  a  sister  of  Unity  Mitford,  re- 


THE  STRANGE  STORY   OF  SIR   OSWALD   MOSLEY  263 


putcd  to  be  Hitler's  intimate  friend.  Hit- 
ler was  the  best  man  at  the  wedding,  and 
that  was  Mosley's  last  stroke  of  publicity. 
When  the  war  broke  out  Mosley  did  not 
interrupt  his  Nazi  activities,  and  the 
Chamberlain  government  did  not  interfere 
with  him.  It  was  only  in  June,  1940,  after 
Dunkirk,  when  Mr.  Churchill  had  assumed 
office,  that  Mosley,  his  wife,  and  his  leading 
lieutenants  were  interned  as  potential  en- 
emies. They  were  kept  in  detention  until 
November  of  last  year. 


Now  this  man  has  been  released.  The 
official  reason  given  in  Parliament 
at  first  was  that  Mosley  was  ill;  he  suffers 
from  a  club  foot  and  there  was  danger  that 
he  might  die  in  prison  and  become  a  fascist 
martyr.  This  excuse  for  the  release  was 
so  obviously  insincere  that  it  was  quickly 
withdrawn.  For  it  was  apparent  that 
Mosley's  club  foot  would  not  improve  any 
more  outside  the  comfortable  flat  where  he 
had  been  kept  than  it  would  inside.  Be- 
sides, the  same  British  government  had  not 
released  Gandhi,  a  much  older  and  sicker 
man  than  Mosley,  when  he  had  declared 
a  fast  of  twenty-one  days  last  February  and 
prominent  physicians  had  warned  the  gov- 
ernment that  he  was  very  likely  to  die. 
If  the  British  government  was  willing  to 
take  a  chance  on  raising  Gandhi  to  mar- 
tyrdom, why  this  fear  of  Mosley's  martyr- 
dom? And  why  should  Mosley's  wife  and 
lieutenants,  avowed  fascists,  have  been 
released  with  him? 

The  second  and  more  substantial  reason 
given  by  the  government  was  that  the 
"improvement  of  the  fortunes  of  Britain" 
in  the  war  had  made  the  danger  of  fascism 
in  England  negligible.  But  the  storm  of 
protests  which  the  release  of  Mosley  has 
called  forth  in  England  showed  that  mil- 
lions of  people  whose  instinct  has  always 


been  right  about  fascism  did  not  share  the 
government's  complacency.  The  fortunes 
of  Britain  had  indeed  improved  on  the 
battlefield  against  fascism;  but  millions  of 
British  men  and  women  felt  that  the  en- 
emy in  this  war  was  to  be  found  not  only 
on  the  battlefield,  but  also  within  every 
democratic  country.  And  they  wondered 
whether  Britain  was  entirely  free  now  from 
that  enemy  within.  True,  there  had  been 
a  great  change  in  the  mood  of  the  ruling 
class  of  Britain;  but  was  it  certain  that 
reaction  was  spent?  Had  not  Mr.  Mor- 
rison made  a  serious  blunder,  of  the  kind 
that  goes  back  to  Sir  John  Simon  and 
Neville  Chamberlain? 

Many  true  friends  and  admirers  of  Eng- 
land outside  the  British  Isles  share  these 
misgivings.  For  some  time  they  have  been 
disturbed  and  uneasy  over  the  gradual 
waning  of  the  spirit  of  Dunkirk  and  of  the 
great  moral  revival  which  in  1940  raised 
Britain  to  the  unquestioned  spiritual  lead- 
ership of  the  democratic  world.  New 
strident  notes  have  been  heard  lately  in  the 
speeches  of  some  of  the  official  leaders  and 
certain  government  acts  hark  back  to  the 
days  before  Dunkirk.  The  release  of 
Mosley  does  not  tend  to  assuage  these  peo- 
ple's uneasiness.  England  is  too  precious 
to  the  democratic  world  to  allow  any  such 
doubts  and  fears  about  her.  If  the  pres- 
ent holocaust  has  produced  any  bright 
hope  for  the  future  of  humanity,  it  was  the 
revelation  of  the  great  spiritual  forces  work- 
ing within  the  people  of  Great  Britain  and 
Russia.  To  the  Western  world  Britain's 
moral  leadership  is  even  more  important 
than  Russia's.  To  liberal-minded  hu- 
manity, the  England  of  Dunkirk  and  of 
the  blitz  was  the  greatest  spiritual  revela- 
tion of  the  war;  it  is  jealous  of  this  precious 
possession  and  is  afraid  to  lose  it.  Great 
Britain  has  become  the  salt  of  the  earth; 
if  the  salt  have  lost  his  savour,  wherewith 
shall  it  be  salted? 


THE    SILVER    HORN 


THOMAS    SANCTON 


THE  scene  is  a  Boy  Scout  summer 
camp,  thickly  grown  with  pines  and 
cypress.  There  is  a  row  of  green 
clapboard  cabins,  with  clean  floors  and 
neat  double-decker  bunks;  there  is  an 
open  field  and  a  flag  hanging  still  in  the 
heavy  air;  and  at  the  field's  edge  the  land 
drops  down  a  little  to  the  dark  water  of  a 
bayou.  I  spent  five  summers  here,  from 
the  time  I  was  twelve  until  I  entered 
college.  I  did  my  first  real  living  and  my 
first  real  thinking  in  this  camp. 

And  I  think  of  it  now.  Like  some 
reader  of  a  long  novel  who  turns  back 
through  the  pages  to  find  a  forgotten  part 
of  the  plot,  and  who  comes  with  a  flash 
of  recognition  across  old  scenes  and  dia- 
logues, and  characters  who  have  gone  out 
of  the  narrative  but  whose  personalities 
and  substance  once  filled  pages  and  pages, 
I  have  gone  turning  back  through  the 
pages  of  my  life.  When  was  it  and  where 
was  it — I  have  been  asking — that  I  first 
began  to  believe  what  I  now  believe  about 
the  Southern  world  I  left  not  many  years 
ago,  about  Negroes,  about  democracy, 
about  America,  about  life  and  death, 
about  men  and  all  their  curious  fates? 
This  search  has  been  long  and  turning. 
Often  it  has  led  me  back  to  the  years  of  my 
early  teens  and  to  the  summers  I  spent  in 
the  camp. 

I  was  born  to  the  sidewalks  and  asphalt 
of  the  largest  city  and  the  widest  street  in 
the  South.     In  New  Orleans,  broad  Canal 


Street  was  never  empty  of  speeding  auto- 
mobiles and  streetcars,  even  late  at  night, 
and  of  people  walking  by,  their  footsteps 
echoing  on  the  sidewalk.  But  here  on 
the  bayou  another  world  existed.  In  the 
morning  it  was  the  strange,  thin  call  of  a 
bugle  that  broke  into  our  sleep.  Almost 
before  we  were  awake  we  could  smell  the 
wet  exercise  field  and  the  forest.  Birds 
popped  from  tree  to  tree,  plump  and 
colorful,  bluejays,  mockingbirds,  cardi- 
nals, flickers — Audubon  had  painted  in 
these  woods.  Rabbits  ran  into  the  bushes. 
Snakes  we  had  no  fear  of,  long  thick  blue 
racers  and  speckled  king  snakes,  slid  through 
the  weeds  at  our  approach. 

Standing  in  the  wet  grass,  still  yawning 
and  sleepy,  we  took  the  morning  ex- 
ercises. Night  chill  was  in  the  air,  but 
behind  our  backs  the  sun  was  rising,  and 
its  warmth  crept  onto  our  shoulders. 
After  the  exercises  we  raced  along  a  wagon 
road  to  the  swimming  pool,  and  as  we  ran 
up,  shouting  and  excited,  two  or  three 
startled  frogs  made  tremendous  leaps  and 
plumped  beneath  the  glassy  surface  of  the 
water.  After  the  swim  we  dried  our 
skinny  sunburned  bodies  and  ran  to  the 
mess  hall. 

Most  of  us  in  the  camp  were  poor  boys, 
or  boys  who  were  almost  poor.  It  was 
not  a  welfare  camp,  but  the  fees  were 
low,  less  than  a  dollar  a  day  for  a  camper. 
As  a  consequence  it  was  filled  with  boys 
from  modest  New  Orleans  neighborhoods 


THE   SILVER   HORN 


265 


.iiid  also  from  the  tough  ones.  I'hcrc 
was  always  a  smaltrrlng  of  the  democratic 
rich:  the  son  of  tlie  traction  company 
president  came  every  summer.  So  did 
his  cousin  from  Texas,  a  wild,  hard  tow- 
head  with  plenty  of  money  and  the  soul  of 
a  true  picaroon.  He  fascinated  and  dom- 
inated the  rest  of  us.  He  was  the  first 
colorful  oudaw  I  ever  knew.  But  most 
of  the  well-to-do  families  sent  their  boys  to 
camps  in  the  Maine  woods  or  the  North 
Carolina  mountains.  Our  camp  was  only 
forty  miles  from  the  city.  Department 
store  clerks,  streetcar  motormen,  little 
grocers  could  afford  the  fees. 

We  had  no  saddle  horses,  no  golf  course, 
and  only  a  weed-grown  tennis  court  which 
no  one  used.  For  diversion  we  fell  back 
on  nature.  In  the  morning  we  performed 
a  work  detail,  cutting  a  patch  of  weeds 
or  hauling  dirt  in  wheelbarrows  to  mend  a 
road.  After  this  we  were  free  to  swim, 
to  paddle  on  the  bayou  in  slender  little 
Louisiana  boats  called  pirogues,  to  fish  for 
the  boisterous  black  bass  and  yellow  perch 
and  fat  blue  catfish,  and  to  work  for  our 
Boy  Scout  medals  and  merit  badges,  track- 
ing through  the  grassy  cut-over  pine  lands, 
cooking  dough  and  bacon  on  sweet-gum 
spits,  bandaging  one  another  with  first-aid 
splints. 

These  little  medals  and  bits  of  colored 
ribbon  meant  a  great  deal  to  us.  We 
wrote  home  enthusiastic  letters  about  our 
progress,  describing  in  detail  how  we  had 
passed  the  tests,  forwarding  the  comments 
of  some  eighteen-year-old  camp  ofHcer  as 
though  it  really  mattered.  Our  parents, 
most  of  whom  did  not  have  very  big 
events  happening  in  their  own  lives,  were 
just  as  eager  and  simple-hearted  about 
these  things,  and  one  or  two  of  the  fathers 
were  foolishly  ambitious  to  have  their  sons 
win  the  highest  number  of  merit  badges  in 
the  area. 

Little  things  that  happened  during  these 
years  seemed  of  great  importance.  I  re- 
member that  in  my  first  year  at  camp  I 
wore  an  ill-fitting  Boy  Scout  hat.  One  of 
the  councillors,  a  boy  five  years  my  senior 
who  seemed  to  me  to  belong  already  to  the 
grown-up  world  of  brilliance  and  au- 
thority, began,  in  a  pleasant  way,  to  tease 
me  about  the  hat.  Every  morning  for  a 
week  he  led  us  to  the  abandoned  logging 


road  and  clockc^rl  us  as  we  walked  and 
trotted  a  measured  mile.  My  hat  was 
anchored  down  by  a  licavy  chin  strap;  it 
Hopped  and  sailed  about  my  head  as  I  ran 
to  the  finish  line.  The  boy  began  to 
laugh  at  me.  He  waved  his  arms  and 
called  out,  "Come  on,  you  rookie!"  The 
other  kids  took  it  up  and  Rookie  became 
my  first  nickname.  I  loved  it.  I  tingled 
vvhen  someone  called  it  out.  I  painted  it 
on  my  belt,  carved  it  in  my  packing  case, 
inked  it  into  my  hatband,  and  began  to 
sign  it  to  my  letters  home.  Years  later 
when  we  were  grown  I  knew  this  camp 
officer  again.  The  gap  between  our  ages 
had  vanished  and  in  real  life  now  he 
seemed  to  me  a  rather  colorless  young  law- 
yer. He  did  not  remember  about  the  hat. 
At  mealtime  we  ate  ravenously  in  the 
mess  hall.  There  were  steaming  platters 
of  pork  and  beans  and  cabbage  and  stew. 
As  we  walked  to  the  long  clapboard 
building  with  our  hair  freshly  combed  and 
water  glistening  on  our  faces,  which  we 
washed  at  the  flowing  pipe  of  a  big  ar- 
tesian well,  we  existed  in  a  transport  of 
driving  hunger.  In  the  steamy  fragrance 
of  the  mess  hall  we  set  up  a  clatter  of 
knives  and  forks  and  china,  and  after- 
ward we  went  to  our  cabins  and  flopped 
on  the  bunks  in  a  state  of  drowsy  satisfac- 
tion. Somehow,  fat  never  formed  on  our 
skinny  frames.  We  ran  too  much.  We 
paddled  in  the  boats.  We  swam.  We  cut 
firewood  and  played  softball  after  supper. 
When  there  was  nothing  else  to  do  we 
climbed  in  the  rafters  of  our  cabins,  trying 
to  invent  complicated  monkey  swings  that 
no  one  else  could  do.  Every  year  some 
campers  broke  their  arms. 

II 

A  GIANT  Negro  named  Joe  did  the  camp's 
heavy  work.  He  cut  and  trimmed 
the  big  trees,  dug  the  deep  post  holes, 
mixed  the  cement,  cleaned  out  the  under- 
brush. His  strength  was  a  never-ending 
fascination  for  the  rest  of  us.  Joe  was  a 
light-eyed  Negro,  with  a  tan  cast  of  skin 
and  a  huge  bald  dome  of  a  head.  One  of 
his  grandparents  must  certainly  have  been 
a  white  man.  He  lived  half  a  mile  down 
the  bayou  with  his  large  and  hazily  defined 
family,  in  an  old  ''plantation  house." 


266 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Actually  it  was  not,  and  never  had  been, 
a  pretentious  place,  and  I  do  not  know 
what  kind  of  plantation  could  have  been 
there.  The  ground  round  it  was  alter- 
nately sandy  and  swampy  and  there  are 
no  plantations  where  pine  trees  grow. 
Pines  mean  sandy  land.  In  slave  days 
the  Negroes  had  boiled  Southern  history 
down  to  a  couplet: 

Cain't  make  a  living  on  sandy  Ian' — 
Ruther  be  a  nigger  den  a  po'  white  man. 

Joe's  place  stood  on  a  cleared  bend 
in  the  bayou.  The  weatherboards  and 
shingles  were  green  with  age.  The  house 
rested  on  high  slender  pillars  and  there 
were  patches  of  bright  red  brick  where 
the  covering  mortar  had  fallen  away.  The 
yard  was  shaded  by  two  enormous  water 
oaks,  hung  with  gray  Spanish  moss,  and  an 
iron  kettle  stood  beneath  the  trees  where 
women  did  the  washing.  At  the  bank 
of  the  bayou  five  or  six  towering  cypress 
trees  leaned  heavily  toward  the  water, 
for  the  slow  currents  of  a  century  had 
washed  their  roots  completely  bare  of  soil. 
To  get  a  new  anchorage  on  the  land  the 
trees  had  sent  out  a  forest  of  gnarled  roots 
and  stubby  knees  along  the  shoreline. 
The  house  seemed  beautiful  and  somber 
in  these  surroundings  as  we  paddled  past 
it  on  our  expeditions  down  the  bayou  to 
the  lake. 

Obviously  a  white  man  had  built  this 
place  long  ago,  and  if  he  had  not  been  a 
plantation  owner,  he  had  at  least  been  a 
man  of  substance.  Perhaps  this  had  been 
the  summer  home  for  some  wealthy  old 
New  Orleans  Frenchman  in  years  gone 
by.  Sometimes  the  camp  officers  spoke 
of  Joe  as  "caretaker"  on  the  place.  But 
that  was  hardly  possible.  He  and  his 
family  inhabited  every  room;  chickens 
roamed  freely,  and  washing  hung  on  lines 
stretched  across  the  wide  porch.  It  was 
clear  to  us  that  the  Negro  giant  was  no 
caretaker  here.  He  possessed  this  place, 
to  have  and  to  hold.  How  he  got  it  and 
why  we  never  asked  him;  and  his  presence 
there  did  not  seem  a  very  curious  thing  to 
us.  Already  a  dark,  subjective  under- 
standing of  Louisiana's  history  was  in  our 
blood  and  bones. 

Joe  smoked  strong  cigarettes  and  chewed 
tobacco.     His  teeth  were  rotted  stumps. 


We  delighted  in  bringing  him  supplies  of 
smokes  from  the  nearby  town  on  Saturdays 
to  win  his  quick  and  genuine  appreciation. 
There  were  two  or  three  measures  of  a 
Cajun  French  ditty  he  used  to  sing,  danc- 
ing and  stomping  the  ground,  waving  his 
hat  and  swaying  his  heavy  shoulders  with 
real  grace.  The  words  and  the  stomping 
finished  together,  with  two  hard  accents. 
He  would  do  this  every  time  in  exchange 
for  a  gift.  Yet  he  did  it  in  such  a  way  that' 
we  knew  always  that  this  was  nothing 
more  than  a  grown-up  man  doing  monkey- 
shines  for  children.  He  enjoyed  making 
us  laugh.  There  was  nothing  servile  about 
it. 

He  got  to  be  one  of  the  people  I  liked 
best  of  all — not  only  in  the  camp  but  in 
my  whole  circumscribed  world.     I  liked 
Joe  very  simply  because  he  was  a  nice  ^ 
man.     He  recognized  me  every  year  when  , 
I   returned   to   the  camp,   and   after  the 
second  or  third  year  I  could  tell  that  he 
considered  me  a  real  friend  and  was  glad  ] 
to  have  me   back.     We   talked   together  ] 
often,  equally  and  easily,  and  when  I  was 
sixteen    and    seventeen    and    by    then    a 
councillor  in  the  camp,  Joe  would  do  me 
the  honor  of  becoming  quite  serious  with 
me  and  of  placing  our  whole  friendship 
on  a  mature  plane.     I  do  not  remember 
many  of  the  things  we  talked  about,  but  I 
do  remember  that  a  conversation  with  him 
was  a  reassurance  and  a  satisfaction;  that  J 
it  was  always  good  to  find  him  walking  on 
the  road  and  to  fall  in  with  him. 

I  saw  a  brief  notice  in  the  paper,  some 
years  after  I  had  stopped  going  to  the 
camp,  that  Joe  had  died  of  blood  poison- 
ing in  the  New  Orleans  Charity  Hospital. 
I  thought  of  those  stumps  of  teeth,  and  of 
the  many  years  they  had  been  seeping 
infection  into  his  system.  I  thought  also 
of  the  tall  trees  I  had  seen  him  fell,  and  that 
now  Joe  too  had  come  toppling  to  the 
earth.  And,  though  I  felt  a  quiet  sorrow, 
I  felt  no  anguish.  Life  grew  rank  and 
lush  along  the  bayou.  His  old  house  was 
teeming  with  the  spawn  of  his  years.  The 
sun  would  beat  upon  the  water  forever, 
the  trout  would  break  the  surface,  the 
rushes  would  grow  thick  and  green.  Joe 
had  done  his  share  of  hauling  and  of 
digging.  Now  he  could  lie  down  in  the 
warm  and  sun-drenched  earth  and  sleep. 


THE   SILVER    HORN 


267 


III 


DURING  those  summers  in  camp  a  love 
grew  up  in  me  for  the  rhythms  of 
nature,  for  tropical  rains  that  came  sweep- 
ing through  the  pines  and  oaks,  for  the 
fiery  midday  sun,  for  long  evenings,  and 
the  deep  black  nights.  Great  campfircs 
were  lit  beside  the  bayou  and  a  rushing 
column  of  luminous  smoke  and  sparks  as- 
cended to  the  cypress  trees.  P'ire  gleamed 
in  the  water  where  bass  were  sleeping 
in  the  stumps.  Campers  wandered  to- 
ward the  meeting  place,  their  flashlights 
swinging  in  the  woods.  We  sat  about  the 
fire,  singing,  beating  deep  rumbling  tom- 
toms made  of  hollowed  oak  logs,  perform- 
ing an  ageless  repertoire  of  skits  and  mim- 
icry. And  after  these  sessions  one  leader 
took  the  Protestant  boys  and  another  the 
Catholics  and,  standing  in  the  open  fields, 
in  our  separate  groups,  we  prayed  aloud. 

My  heart  had  strayed  already  from  the 
formal,  repetitious  praying.  A  towering 
pine  tree  at  the  field's  edge  made  a  sil- 
houette in  the  starry  sky.  I  knew  the 
constellations,  the  Giant,  the  Dipper,  the 
Bear.  I  looked  for  the  two  inseparable 
stars,  Misar  and  Alcar,  horse  and  rider, 
and  sensed  the  fact  that  Arabs  named 
these  stars  a  thousand  years  before  me,  and 
even  in  my  boy's  ignorance  I  felt  aware 
of  man's  long  and  varied  time  upon  the 
earth.  I  knew  this  night-filled  wilderness 
had  stretched  beneath  these  stars  for  end- 
less ages  before  Frenchmen  had  come  in 
boats  to  build  New  Orleans:  I  thought 
of  the  Indians  who  had  fished  and  hunted 
here,  whose  bones  and  broken  pottery 
we  sometimes  found  in  grassy  mounds.  I 
felt  worshipful  of  the  earth,  the  pine  tree, 
the  night  itself. 

Sometimes  we  packed  provisions  and 
tents  and  mosquito  bars  and  paddled 
down  the  bayou  to  the  lake,  ten  miles 
away.  The  lake  was  a  great  inland  finger 
of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  twenty  miles  long, 
ten  wide.  Twenty  miles  below  us,  in 
prehistoric  times,  the  mouth  of  the  Missis- 
sippi river  had  built  up  new  land,  and 
these  watery  prairies  had  pinched  off  the 
small  inland  gulf  and  made  a  lake  of  it, 
but  it  connected  still  through  a  series  of 
passes  with  the  Mexican  Gulf.  The  lake 
teemed  with  croakers,  catfish,  shrimp,  and 


big  blue-clawed  crabs.  At  the  northern 
end,  where  we  camped,  a  network  of 
tributary  bayous  emptied  into  the  lake. 
For  the  last  mile  or  so  of  their  crooked 
lengths,  where  the  brackish  water  of  the 
lake  crept  into  the  slow-moving  bayous, 
fish  and  small  life  were  abundant,  bass 
fed  in  the  rushes,  and  muskrats  built  their 
cities  of  the  plains. 

There  was  a  relatively  high,  sandy  point 
near  the  mouth  of  the  bayou,  where  we 
camped.  The  sun  went  down  red  into  the 
lake  and  left  a  long,  clear  twilight.  A  few 
stars  came  out.  A  salty  wind  blew  in  from 
the  Mexican  Gulf;  it  came  out  of  the 
south  every  night.  The  breeze  swept  over 
the  rushes  and  made  small  waves  break 
on  the  sandy,  grassy  shore.  There  was  a 
red  beacon  light  on  weather-beaten  piles 
out  in  the  lake  and  its  long  reflection 
shimmered  in  the  water.  We  sprayed 
our  mosquito  netting  with  citronella  and 
built  up  a  driftwood  fire  and  lay  down  on 
canvas  bedrolls  spread  upon  the  thin, 
tough  grass  and  sand.  The  trade  wind 
blew  through  our  tents  throughout  the 
night.  We  listened  to  the  waves.  We 
could  smell  the  vast  salt  marshes  far  below 
us.  A  yellow  moon  came  out  of  the  gulf. 
Far  down  the  lake  we  could  see  the  lights 
of  a  railroad  bridge.  We  felt  the  beauty 
of  this  wilderness  like  a  hunger. 

After  two  days  of  fishing  and  swimming 
in  the  lake,  our  shoulders  and  faces  darker 
from  the  sun,  we  paddled  back  up  the 
winding  bayou. 

IV 

^NE  summer  when  I  was  sixteen  a  party 
of  us,  paddling  upstream  to  buy  some 
candy  at  a  crossroads  store,  came  upon 
three  young  girls  who  were  bathing  in  a 
sandy  cove.  There  were  four  of  us  in  the 
long  pirogue,  all  of  an  age.  For  a  long 
moment  we  were  speechless.  At  last 
we  said  hello,  and  they  answered  in  warm 
gay  voices.  We  drifted  the  boat  into  the 
cove  and  began  to  speak  to  them.  Two 
of  the  girls  were  sisters.  The  three  of 
them  had  come  to  visit  a  relative  who  kept 
a  fine  summer  lodge  in  the  woods  across 
the  bayou  from  the  camp.  One  of  the 
sisters  was  fifteen  and  the^^^fe€rs'7=weF€Uv>g^ 
seventeen.  They  were  a^^w^  With' fresli'- £^ 
and   slender   beauty,    ana  PtUStlBathiag/.  [JV; 


268 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


suits  were  bright  flags  of  color.  Their 
impact  upon  us  was  overwhelming.  We 
grew  silly,  tongue-tied,  said  foolish  things 
we  did  not  mean  to  say,  shoved  one 
another  about  in  the  boat,  and  finally 
overturned  it.  Th'^  loreleis  laughed  musi- 
cal little  laughs.  They  seemed  unbear- 
ably beautiful.  We  had  no  idea  what  to 
do  about  it. 

The  girls  had  been  at  the  lodge  for  a 
week.  They  missed  their  beaux  in  New 
Orleans,  they  missed  the  dating  and  the 
dancing  and  the  music.  It  was  a  gay 
town  in  the  summertime.  The  older  girls 
looked  upon  us  as  children;  but  still — 
they  must  have  reflected — we  were  not 
such  children  at  that.  The  younger  sister, 
a  slender  child  with  thick  brown  hair  and 
heavily  crimsoned  lips,  sat  on  the  bank 
and  regarded  us  with  a  happy  open  face. 

At  last  we  took  courage  and  asked  if  we 
could  call  on  them  that  night. 

"Oh,  yes!"  they  cried  eagerly.  Life 
at  that  moment  was  dazzling. 

Making  this  rendezvous  was  an  im- 
pulsive thing  to  do,  for  it  was  midweek 
and  we  should  have  to  steal  away  after 
taps  and  walk  down  a  path  without 
flashlights  through  a  snake-infested  low- 
land and — because  the  boats  were  counted 
and  chained  at  nightfall — swim  across  the 
bayou,  holding  our  clothes  above  our 
heads. 

We  crept  from  our  cabins  at  ten  o'clock 
that  night  and  met  in  the  pine  woods. 
One  of  us  intoned  a  counting-out  rhyme; 
the  loser  had  to  walk  first  down  the  path 
through  the  snake  hole.  He  cut  a  long 
gum  sapling  and  rattled  it  down  the  path 
ahead  of  us.  We  walked  bunched  tightly 
together,  tense  with  fear,  giggling  at  our 
own  unbelievable  audacity,  trembling  in 
our  eagerness.  At  the  bayou's  edge  we 
slipped  out  of  our  shorts  and  shirts  and 
sneakers  and,  holding  them  above  our 
heads  with  one  hand,  we  felt  our  way 
round  the  knees  and  along  the  sunken 
roots  of  a  cypress  tree,  and  pushed  ofl'  into 
the  bayou  and  began  to  swim. 

The  moon  had  not  yet  risen.  We  had 
only  the  silhouettes  of  trees  to  guide  us. 
We  swam  closely  together,  cautioning  one 
another  to  silence,  bursting  into  convulsive 
squeals  as  water  lilies  brushed  against 
our  bodies  or  when  a  fish  broke  the  surface 


near  us.  We  swam  upstream  from  the 
camp,  past  two  bends,  and  waded  from 
the  water  in  the  cove  where  we  had  met 
the  girls.  Now  we  were  laughing  with 
relief  and  excitement,  and  popping  one 
another  on  the  backsides.  We  scraped 
the  glistening  water  from  our  bodies,! 
dressed,  and  combed  our  wet  hair  and 
hurried  off*  down  the  wagon  path  into  the 
woods.  Long  ago  the  cove  had  been  a 
landing  stage  for  small  schooners  which  i 
came  to  load  pine  firewood  for  New 
Orleans. 

The  girls  were  waiting  for  us,  dressed 
in  bright  print  cotton  dresses  and  wearing  - 
hair  ribbons.     The   soft  light   gave   age ' 
and  mystery  to  their  youthful  shoulders,  ' 
to  their  slender  bodies;  and,  like  nameless  ■ 
night-blooming  vines  in  the  woods  about 
us,    they   bore   a   splendid    fragrance   all 
their  own,  a  fragrance  of  youth  and  clean- 
liness  and   fresh   cosmetics.     They   were 
playing  a  phonograph  on  the  wide  porch  of 
the  lodge.     This  was  the  summer  of  Mau- 
rice Chevalier's  great  success  in  American  ] 
movies.     The  little  sister  sang  his  song, 
rolling  her  eyes,  turning  out  her  soft  pink 
lip: 

If  ze  night-ting  gail  ; 

Good  zing  lak  you  ...  "f 

And  she  sang  another: 

.  .  .  you  make  me  feel  so  grand 
I  want  to  hand  the  world  to  you. 
You  seem  to  understand 

Each  foolish  little  dream  I'm  dreaming,  scheme 
I'm  scheming  .  .  . 

I  was  so  in  love  with  her  I  could  hardly  ] 
catch  my  breath.  I  was  in  love  with  the  • 
other  sister  too,  and  with  their  friend. 
All  of  the  boys  were  in  love  with  all  of  the  i 
girls;  the  girls — so  they  said — had  crushes  i 
on  each  of  us.     Our  hearts  were  afire.  ^ 

We  walked  hand  in  hand  down  the 
wagon  trail  to  the  cove  and  built  a  bon- 
fire. We  stretched  out  on  blankets,  laugh- 
ing, singing.  We  sang  the  songs  that 
people  always  sing  by  rivers  and  camp- 
fires,  "There's  a  Long,  Long  Trail 
A-winding,"  "The  Sweetheart  of  Sigma 
Chi",  all  the  rest.  We  kissed  the  girls  and 
they  held  fast  to  us.  Before  this  night 
we  had  been  only  boys,  holding  hands 
with  girls  in  movies,  not  quite  sure  why 
we  pursued  them  and  acted  silly.  Now, 
lying  beneath  the  open  sky,  for  the  first 


THE  SILVER   HORN 


269 


time  wc  understood  the  polgnance  and  the 
beauty  of  the  human  licritagc. 

Every  night  for  two  weeks  we  came  to 
see  them.  And  when  they  told  us  good- 
by  tlie  last  kiss  was  as  much  a  discovery 
as  the  first,  and  we  knew  that  love  was  a 
tiling  that  could  never  grow  old.  After 
they  had  gone  we  would  steal  from  our 
cabins  to  sit  on  the  back  porch  of  the  camp 
hospital,  on  a  hill,  where  we  could  see  the 
bayou  and  the  cove  and  the  woods  where 
we  had  found  them;  and  we  sat  there 
talking  late  into  the  night,  like  daemon 
lovers  in  the  ballads  of  old.  I  never  passed 
the  cove  again,  even  years  later  when  I 
would  paddle  down  the  bayou  fishing, 
without  remembering  our  meetings  with 
a  suddenly  racing  heart.  First  love  is  un- 
forgettable. 


I  HAD  no  lessons  to  do  in  those  summer 
months  of  camp  life.  There  was  plenty 
of  time  to  think.  I  was  living  a  communal 
life  with  other  boys.  Among  us  were 
embryonic  bullies,  scoundrels,  cheats,  pro- 
moters. Babbitts,  Christers,  and  stuffed 
shirts;  and  there  were  also  the  boys  of 
good  heart,  the  unselfish,  the  humorous, 
the  courageous,  boys  who  were  the  salt  of 
the  earth,  but  who,  often  in  their  later 
lives,  would  be  misled  and  preyed  upon 
and  set  against  one  another  by  the  sharp 
ones.  One  and  all  we  lived  together,  ate 
together,  slept  together.  Our  personal- 
ities clashed,  fermented,  or  formed  amal- 
gams. Sitting  together  at  night  in  the 
lamplit  cabins,  with  darkness  and  tower- 
ing woods  closing  in  upon  us,  we  had  our 
first  grave  talks  about  religion,  about 
death,  about  sex.  The  future  stretching 
before  us  was  wide  and  fathomless.  And 
all  about  us,  in  the  grass,  in  the  under- 
brush, in  towering  summer  skies,  we  be- 
held the  face  of  nature  and  the  earth's 
wide  harmonies  as  they  had  never  been 
revealed  in  our  city  lives.  At  night  we 
could  stretch  out  upon  the  field,  observe 
the  stars,  and  grasp  the  first  time  the  fact 
that  some  were  vastly  deeper  in  space  than 
others.  In  our  star-study  courses  we  heard 
phrases  like  "light  years."  It  began  to 
seep  into  the  consciousness  of  many  of  us 
that  a  hundred  years  or  the  life  of  an 
individual  had  little  meaning  in  the  total 


universe;  and  from  this  point  some  of  us 
began  our  first  gropings  after  moral  phil- 
osophy, gropings  for  a  belief  that  could 
give  the  total  universe  a  meaning  in  our 
own  lives. 

There  was  a  bugler  in  our  camp  who 
was  the  first  consummate  expert,  in  any 
field,  that  I  had  known.  He  had  no 
other  talent  but  his  music.  He  was  a 
good-natured,  chubby,  curly-headed  Ital- 
ian boy,  rather  lazy,  and  when  he  was 
not  back  in  the  woods  practicing  his  cornet 
he  walked  round  with  a  dreamy  look,  as 
though  our  own  handicrafts  could  not 
possibly  be  of  interest  to  him. 

Paolo  had  a  silver  trumpet  and  he  pre- 
ferred it  to  the  bugle.  He  wanted  to  be 
a  great  musician.  He  would  take  his 
horn  and  music  back  into  a  pine  clearing 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  camp  and  all 
day  long  we  could  hear  him  practicing 
the  runs.  He  blew  the  trumpet  with  a 
clear,  sweet  tone.  We  had  supreme  con- 
fidence as  we  stood  at  attention  on  the 
parade  grounds  and  the  flag  came  down 
the  creaking  flagpole  pulley  in  the  late 
afternoon  sunlight,  and  Paolo  stood  alone, 
with  everyone  watching,  and  bugled.  We 
were  proud  of  him  when  visitors  came. 
He  had  that  ability  of  experts  to  create  a 
sense  of  possessiveness  in  others. 

It  was  at  bedtime  that  Paolo  gathered 
up  into  his  clear,  thin  music  all  the  in- 
effable hungering  of  our  awakening  lives. 
At  ten  o'clock  he  climbed  a  high  ladder 
to  a  life-guard  platform  we  had  nailed 
into  the  branches  of  a  tall  cypress  tree 
beside  the  bayou.  Paolo  lived  for  this 
moment  and,  with  the  whole  camp  silent 
and  listening  below  him  in  the  darkness, 
he  blew^  taps  with  a  soft  and  ghostly 
beauty  all  his  own.  Somehow  the  music 
spoke  for  us,  uttered  the  thing  we  knew 
but  had  no  words  for,  set  up  a  wailing 
in  the  pine  trees  of  the  brevity  and  splen- 
dor of  human  life.  Lying  in  our  bunks 
in  the  darkness  of  the  cabin,  some  of  us 
fell  into  sleep;  but  some  lay  in  silence 
thinking  longer,  alive  to  the  night,  and  I 
was  of  these. 

One  night  some  ten  years  later  I  en- 
tered a  smoke-filled  tavern  in  another 
city  where  Paolo  was  playing  in  a  band. 
By  this  time  he  had  made  a  small  repu- 
tation as  a  boy  with  a  hot  trumpet.     I 


270                                          HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

watched  his  now  older  face  as  he  tore  lost  something,  before  any  of  us  had  lost 

through  the  hot  routines.     He  was  tired,  it,  a  kind  of  innocence.     I  wanted  to  re- 

The  silver  horn  made  noise  but,  though  member  him  in  the  land  of  our  first  dis- 

I  knew  little  about  it,  I  could  see  that  he  coveries,    when   he  had   climbed  into   a 

was  not  a  great  jazz  nitisician.  cypress  tree  to  blow  his  horn,  and  there 

I  did  not  go  to  see  him  any  more.     I  was  a  kind  of  Gothic  night-drench  in  our 

wanted  to  remember  Paolo  before  he  had  lives. 


Save  Paper  and  Grow  Thin 

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eflfort  by  saving  it  voluntarily.  -^^  The  Editors 


TOKYO    SINCE    PEARL    HARBOR 


JOHN    MORRIS 


[UNDAY,  the  7th  of  December,  1941, 
was  much  the  same  as  any  other 
Sunday  in  Tokyo.  I  had  got  up 
rather  late,  played  over  a  few  records  be- 
fore lunch,  and  spent  the  afternoon  writ- 
ing an  article  on  Virginia  Woolf.  It  was 
never  published  and  is  now,  I  believe,  in 
the  archives  of  the  Japanese  police. 

My  article  was  for  Japan  News  Week, 
the  American  paper  that  had  somehow 
managed  to  keep  its  independence  right 
up  to  the  outbreak  of  war. 

For  some  months  before  the  outbreak  of 
war  three  or  four  of  us  who  were  working 
for  the  paper  had  been  accustomed  to 
meet  every  Sunday  night  at  the  house  of 
Paul  Rusch,  an  educational  missionary 
who,  in  the  course  of  years,  had  brought 
into  being,  almost  entirely  through  his  own 
efforts,  what  was  probably  one  of  the  finest 
social  service  camps  for  boys  in  the  world. 
This  camp  was  well  on  the  way  toward 
completion  when  the  war  put  an  end  to 
Paul's  activities. 

On  the  night  of  the  7th  of  December  the 
group  at  Paul's  home  included  W.  R. 
Wills,  the  editor  of  Japan  News  Week; 
Phyllis  Argall,  the  managing  editor  of  the 
paper;  Air-Commodore  Bryant,  the  Brit- 
ish air  attach^;  and  myself.  It  was  not 
often  that  we  had  a  member  of  the  diplo- 
matic corps  to  give  tone  to  our  Sunday 
night  parties.  Besides,  he  brought  other 
advantages.  The  petrol  restriction,  which 
had  now  made  it  almost  impossible  to  get 


a  taxi  late  at  night,  did  not  apply  to  mem- 
bers of  the  Embassy;  when  they  went  out 
to  dinner  they  traveled  in  their  own  pri- 
vate cars,  and  it  had  become  more  or  less 
understood  that  before  returning  to  their 
own  houses  they  should  first  see  home  any 
fellow  guests  who  did  not  share  their 
privileges.  As  this  happened  to  be  an 
unusually  wet  night  we  were  delighted  to 
see  Bryant's  car  standing  in  front  of  Paul's 
door.  But  of  course  we  were  glad  to  see 
Bryant  for  his  own  sake,  and  to  hear  the 
latest  news  from  home.  It  was  only  when 
we  happened  to  meet  someone  from  the 
Embassy  that  we  had  a  chance  of  hearing 
what  was  really  happening;  for,  although 
it  was  in  theory  possible  for  Englishmen  in 
Tokyo  to  go  to  the  Embassy  and  collect  a 
copy  of  the  daily  bulletin,  in  actual  prac- 
tice this  was  seldom  done,  as  regular  visits 
to  the  British  Embassy  placed  even  British 
subjects  under  grave  police  suspicion.  In 
fact,  after  Japan  entered  the  war  a  num- 
ber of  our  nationals  were  arrested  for  the 
"offense"  of  having  paid  regular  visits  to 
their  own  embassy. 

After  dinner  we  all  sat  talking  round  the 
fire.  Most  of  us  had  realized  for  some 
time  that  Japan's  entry  into  the  war  was 
now  inevitable,  but  no  one  thought  the 
moment  was  yet  at  hand.  I  think  if  any- 
one had  told  us  that,  as  we  sat  there  en- 
joying our  quiet  chat,  the  Japanese  fleet 
was  already  in  position  in  front  of  Pearl 
Harbor,  we  should  have  laughed  at  the 


272 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


idea.  No  one  had  received  any  hint  that 
the  crisis  had  been  reached.  We  left 
Paul's  house  at  about  eleven  o'clock,  and 
Bryant,  after  seeing  Wills  and  Phyllis 
x\rgall  home,  took  me  on  in  the  direction 
of  my  house,  which  was  not  very  far  from 
his.  As  it  was  getting  late  and  he  had  to 
be  up  early  in  the  morning,  I  asked  him  to 
drop  me  at  the  crossroads  near  his  own 
house.  There,  accordingly,  he  stopped 
the  car  and  we  sat  in  it,  smoking  a  last 
cigarette,  before  I  got  out  and  walked 
home. 

The  streets  were  deserted;  I  cannot  re- 
member seeing  a  single  soul  on  my  way. 
And  yet  it  later  turned  out  that  not  only 
had  the  police  known  exactly  who  \vas 
dining  at  Paul's  house  that  night,  but  that 
they  had  also  kept  an  eye  on  Bryant  and 
me  talking  in  his  car  at  the  crossroads. 
No  doubt  I  was  shadowed  all  the  way 
to  my  house,  but  such  is  the  efficiency 
of  the  Japanese  police  that  I  was  totally 
unaware  of  it.  During  the  whole  of  my 
four  years'  stay  in  Japan  I  cannot  recall 
a  single  occasion  when  I  so  much  as 
suspected  that  I  was  being  watched,  and 
yet  reports  which  I  subsequently  received 
made  it  clear  that  the  police  had  kept  an 
eye  on  me  the  whole  time. 

On  the  following  morning  I  came  down 
to  breakfast  as  usual  at  about  half-past 
eight.  At  this  hour  there  was  a  daily 
broadcast  of  gramophone  records,  and  I 
generally  listened  to  it  as  I  ate  my  break- 
fast. I  switched  on  the  radio,  but  instead 
of  hearing  a  symphony  I  heard  an  an- 
nouncer talking  rapidly  in  Japanese.  He 
seemed  to  be  saying  tlie  same  thing  over 
and  over  again,  so  I  thought  I  had  better 
try  to  make  out  what  it  was  all  about. 
As  far  as  I  could  understand,  the  an- 
nouncer was  saying  that  a  state  of  war 
now  existed  between  Japan  and  the  United 
States.  (The  news  of  the  actual  attack 
on  Pearl  Harbor  was  not  made  public  un- 
til about  an  hour  later.)  As  I  was  not 
quite  certain  whether  I  had  understood 
correctly  I  called  in  my  cook  and  asked 
her  if  the  news  was  true.  "Yes,"  she 
said,  "but  go  on  with  your  breakfast  or 
you'll  be  late  for  your  work."  I  was  un- 
certain what  to  do,  so  I  thought  first  of  all 
I  would  go  and  talk  things  over  with 
Reuter's  correspondent,  Richard  Tenelly, 


who  was  my  next-door  neighbor.  As  soon 
as  I  had  stepped  out  of  my  door,  however, 
I  noticed  four  or  five  policemen  on  guard 
outside  Tenelly's.  They  told  me  their 
chief  was  inside  and  that  I  had  better  see 
him.  He  came  down  almost  at  once  and 
I  asked  what  I  should  do.  "We  have  no 
orders  to  arrest  you,"  he  said,  "so  you  had 
better  carry  on  with  your  work  as  usual." 
I  told  him  that  I  was  due  to  give  a  lecture 
at  ten,  and  he  advised  me  to  go  away  and 
deliver  it.  He  refused  to  let  me  see 
Tenelly. 

On  arriving  at  the  University  I  went 
straight  to  my  classroom  and  set  about 
delivering  my  lecture.  There  was  noth- 
ing abnormal  in  the  behavior  of  the  stu- 
dents and  we  carried  on  as  though  nothing 
had  happened.  At  the  end  of  the  lec- 
ture, however,  I  was  told  that  I  had  better 
do  no  further  teaching  pending  the  receipt 
of  instructions  from  the  Department  of  Ed- 
ucation. 

In  the  meanwhile  it  occurred  to  me  that 
I  would  do  well  to  visit  the  Japanese  For- 
eign Office  in  order  to  find  out  exactly 
what  my  position  now  was.  I  had  originally 
gone  to  Japan  under  the  aegis  of  the  For- 
eign Office,  and  although  the  matter  was 
never  committed  to  writing  it  was  under- 
stood that  in  the  event  of  war  I  should  be 
aff'orded  what  practically  amounted  to 
diplomatic  immunity. 

I  found  the  office  in  a  turmoil;  indeed, 
the  officials  with  whom  I  spoke  seemed 
just  as  much  surprised  and  stunned  by  the 
news  as  the  ordinary  man  in  the  street. 
To-day  it  is  widely  believed  that  the  send- 
ing of  Mr.  Kurusu  to  Washington  with 
the  ostensible  purpose  of  making  a  last- 
minute  attempt  to  prevent  war  was  one  of 
the  most  underhanded  diplomatic  actions 
ever  committed,  since  the  plans  for  at- 
tacking Pearl  Harbor  had  already  been 
made  and  the  Japanese  navy  was  actually 
moving  into  position  while  Mr.  Kurusu's 
negotiations  \vere  still  in  progress.  It  is 
doubtful  if  the  whole  truth  will  ever  be 
known,  but  when  I  call  to  memory  my 
conversations  with  members  of  the  Japa- 
nese Foreign  Office  on  the  morning  of  the 
8th  of  December  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  the  Japanese  Govemment  acted  in  good 
faith.  I  think  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the 
attack  on  Pearl  Harbor  was  launched  by 


TOKYO    SINCE    PEARL    HARBOR 


273 


the    armed    forces    without    the    previous 
sanction  of  the  Government  in  I'okyo.* 

II 

WHEN  I  went  back  to  my  own  house 
I  found  about  eight  pohccmen 
there.  Everything  was  in  disorder;  my 
books  were  lying  all  over  the  floor,  my 
clothes  had  been  pulled  out  of  the  cup- 
boards, the  bedding  was  heaped  in  the 
middle  of  the  room.  And  then  they 
questioned  me.  "Had  I  a  shortwave 
transmitter  concealed  in  the  house?  Had 
I  perhaps  a  machine  gun,  or  at  any  rate  a 
rifle?"  No;  I  had  none  of  these  things; 
but  not  until  they  had  made  a  thorough 
search  of  every  nook  and  corner  were  they 
satisfied.  They  went  through  all  my 
letters,  examined  my  photographs,  and 
took  away  with  them  a  series  of  large 
X-ray  negatives  of  my  lungs.  These  I 
had  kept  by  me  for  many  years  for  the 
purpose  of  periodical  comparisons.  I 
never  got  them  back.  I  was  quite  unable 
to  convince  the  inspector  that  they  were 
not  in  reality  photographs  of  fortifications. 
They  removed  also  some  half-dozen  of  my 
books,  all  of  them  with  red  bindings,  since 
in  the  minds  of  the  Japanese  police  books  in 
red  covers  are  connected  in  some  way  with 
communism.  To  these  were  added  a  very 
large  pile  of  newspapers,  some  a  year  old. 
Fortunately  for  me  these  papers  were  not 
consecutive,  for,  although  I  did  not  then 
know  it,  it  had  recently  become  a  penal 
offense  to  possess  a  consecutive  file  of 
newspapers.  Soon  after  the  police  de- 
parted, one  of  my  students  dropped  in. 
"I've  just  seen  a  most  extraordinary  sight,*' 
he  said.  He  then  went  on  to  describe  how, 
as  he  was  walking  up  to  my  house,  he  had 
passed  a  squad  of  policemen,  each  one  stag- 
gering along  under  a  weight  of  English 
newspapers. 

*  Since  \NTiting  the  above  I  have  discovered  that 
I  am  not  alone  in  this  belief.  Otto  D.  Tolischus, 
former  j\ew  York  Times  correspondent  in  Japan, 
vvTites  as  follows  in  Tokyo  Record  of  the  events  of 
December  7,  1941:  "T  didn't  then  know  that  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  had  sent  a  personal  message  to  the 
Emperor  with  a  last  appeal  for  peace.  It  had  been 
delayed  in  transmission,  presumably  purposely,  and 
it  was  not  till  midnight  that  Grew'  [Mr.  Joseph  C. 
Grew,  American  .Ajnbassador  to  Japan]  was  able  to 
present  it  to  Togo  [Mr.  Shiginori  Togo,  Japanese 
Foreign  Minister].  As  Grew  later  told  me,  he  was 
convinced  that  Togo  himself  did  not  know  then  that 
war  was  at  hand." 


After  this  preliminary  investigation  I 
was  left  more  or  less  alone  for  a  few  days. 
Then  the  police  again  visited  me.  It 
appeared  that  they  were  not  completely 
satisfied  that  the  contents  of  my  library 
were  harmless  and  wanted  to  examine  my 
books  in  greater  detail.  I  wondered  how 
they  were  going  to  do  this,  because  it 
soon  became  apparent  that  none  of  them 
knew  any  English.  They  were  expecting 
me  to  explain  the  contents  of  each  one 
of  my  books  to  them.  But  when  my  pa- 
tience (to  say  nothing  of  my  Japanese) 
proved  unequal  to  this  task,  they  con- 
tented themselves  with  looking  at  the 
pictures  in  such  books  as  were  illustrated. 

For  the  first  few  days  there  was  an  air 
of  bewilderment  about  the  people;  no- 
body seemed  quite  to  believe  that  Japan 
had  actually  entered  the  war.  This  feel- 
ing was  heightened  by  the  fact  that,  except 
for  the  blackout,  conditions  remained 
much  the  same  as  they  had  been,  and 
after  the  first  week  even  the  blackout 
was  reduced  to  no  more  than  a  partial 
dimmincr  of  lis^hts. 

Petrol  for  civilian  purposes  had  been 
getting  short  for  some  time  past;  now  it 
w^as  practically  unobtainable.  Taxis  al- 
most disappeared  from  the  streets  for  a 
while.  They  were  being  converted  to 
run  on  charcoal.  The  busses  too  were 
given  similar  treatment,  with  the  result 
that  the  service,  which  hitherto  had  been 
fairly  efficient,  rapidly  deteriorated.  Even 
high  Japanese  officials  were  forced  to  use 
charcoal-burning  cars,  the  only  petrol- 
driven  ones  now  on  the  streets  beins: 
those  belonging  to  the  various  embassies 
and  legations. 

A  system  of  rationing  was  introduced 
immediately.  Ration  books  were  issued 
to  every  householder,  but  the  actual  dis- 
tribution of  food  was  made  by  the  "Neigh- 
borhood Association"  of  the  street  in 
which  one  lived.  These  Neighborhood 
Associations,  which  had  been  started  a 
few  years  ago,  had  come  to  play  an  im- 
portant part  in  Japanese  social  life.  Their 
organization  was  based  on  the  old  \-illage 
associations,  to  which  the  Japanese  had 
long  been  accustomed.  \Vith  the  growth 
of  modern  cities  they  had  tended  to  dis- 
appear, but  the  Japanese,  who  have  a 
strongly   developed  sense  of  community 


274 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


life,  had  revived  them  in  a  modern  form. 
The  associations  provided  a  practical  way 
of  dealing  with  some  of  the  unusual  con- 
ditions produced  by  the  war  with  China. 
And  now  they  were  given  the  responsi- 
bility of  administeri.ig  the  rationing  sys- 
tem and  the  local  A.R.P.  organization. 
As  a  householder  I  was  of  course  a  mem- 
ber of  my  local  association,  but  I  never 
attended  any  of  its  meetings,  and  had  I 
done  so  it  would,  I  imagine,  have  caused 
considerable  embarrassment.  My  cook, 
however,  used  sometimes  to  attend  on  my 
behalf.  She  was,  in  fact,  called  to  attend 
a  special  meeting  very  soon  after  the  out- 
break of  war,  the  purpose  of  which  was  to 
discuss  what  precautions  should  be  taken 
to  deal  with  any  foreign  spies  who  might 
happen  to  be  living  in  our  street.  Being 
at  that  time  the  only  foreigner  still  at 
large,  I  took  a  personal  interest  in  the 
outcome  of  these  deliberations. 

Not  all  rationed  articles  were  distrib- 
uted; some  things,  such  as  meat,  fish, 
vegetables,  and  fruit,  had  to  be  fetched 
direct  from  the  shops.  This  usually  en- 
tailed waiting  many  hours  in  a  queue, 
and  if  one  was  at  the  end  of  the  line  one 
often  found  nothing  left  to  buy.  Every- 
body was  in  theory  entitled  to  a  certain 
amount  of  meat  and  fish  every  week,  but 
quite  often  none  at  all  was  on  sale  in  the 
shops.  This  led  to  the  report  that  even 
at  the  start  of  the  war  Japan  was  short  of 
food.  Actually  there  was  no  real  food 
shortage;  Japan  grows  sufficient  rice  to 
meet  all  her  needs,  and  has  an  abundant 
supply  of  fish  in  home  waters.  Nobody 
likes  living  on  an  unchanging  diet  of 
fish  and  rice,  but  it  should  be  realized 
that  the  Japanese  have  something  of  a 
genius  for  austerity. 

That  there  appeared  to  be  a  shortage 
of  food  in  Japan  was  due  to  various  causes. 
In  the  first  place,  the  extremely  rigid 
price  control  which  was  imposed  immedi- 
ately upon  the  outbreak  of  war  made 
farmers  unwilling  to  send  their  produce 
into  the  cities.  Lack  of  road  transport, 
the  result  of  petrol  restrictions,  was  an- 
other important  factor.  Lack  of  petrol 
also  accounted  for  the  shortage  of  fish, 
for  most  of  the  fishing  boats  were  petrol- 
driven.  Certain  imported  foodstuffs  of 
course  disappeared  completely  from  the 


market.  Chief  among  these  was  coffee, 
of  which  the  Japanese  are  extremely  fond. 
Its  place  was  taken  by  a  revolting  ersatz 
liquid,  made,  I  believe,  from  soya  beans. 
Foreign  wines  and  spirits  also  were  difficult 
to  obtain,  although  at  the  time  I  left 
Japan  it  was  still  possible  to  get  hold  of 
an  occasional  bottle  of  imported  whisky. 
The  price  had  risen  to  thirty  dollars  or 
more;  such  luxuries  were  obtainable  only 
on  the  black  market.  There  seemed, 
however,  to  be  plenty  of  Japanese  who 
were  willing  and  able  to  pay  this  exorbi- 
tant price. 

One  of  the  effects  of  the  rationing  system 
was  to  cause  those  who  could  afford  it  to 
make  an  even  more  frequent  .use  of  res- 
taurants. In  these  the  price  was  con- 
trolled, the  maximum  price  for  luncheon 
being  fixed  at  three  yen  (about  ninety 
cents),  and  for  dinner,  at  four  yen;  a  cup 
of  substitute  coffee  was  included  at  both 
meals.  No  attempt  was  made  to  limit  the 
number  of  dishes;  in  fact  the  number  of 
courses  remained  much  the  same  as  it  had 
been  before  the  war.  But  the  quality 
rapidly  deteriorated.  Beef,  which  in  nor- 
mal times  is  both  plentiful  and  excellent 
in  Japan,  practically  disappeared,  its  place 
on  the  menu  being  taken  more  often  than 
not  by  whale  meat,  an  edible  but,  to  me 
at  least,  unpalatable  substitute.  But  quite 
often  there  would  be  no  meat  of  any  sort 
available,  even  in  the  better  restaurants, 
for  days  at  a  time.  Many  of  these  places 
had  made  extensive  use  of  the  black  mar- 
ket at  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  this 
had  been  discovered  by  the  police,  who, 
in  revenge,  now  made  it  difficult  for  them 
to  obtain  even  the  supplies  to  which  they 
were  legally  entitled. 

One  curious  result  of  the  run  on  the 
restaurants  was  that  their  patrons  took 
their  meals  earlier  and  earlier,  for  unless 
one  arrived  at  a  restaurant  betimes  one 
found  nothing  left  to  eat.  In  ordinary 
times  no  eating-house  ever  closed  before 
midnight;  now  they  were  shutting  down 
by  nine  at  the  very  latest.  In  order  to 
make  sure  of  obtaining  a  meal,  people 
would  arrive  for  lunch  at  eleven  in  the 
morning,  and  during  my  last  few  weeks  in 
Japan  I  found  it  was  necessary  to  arrive 
not  later  than  five-thirty  in  the  evening  if 
I  wanted  to  be  sure  of  getting  dinner.     In 


TOKYO    SINCE    PEARL    HARBOR 


275 


ict,  there  would  often  be  very  little  left  to 

it  even  at  this  hour.      It  was  becoming 

jiiitc  usual  for  people   to  dine  at  three 

'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

There  are  in  Tokyo  large  numbers  of 

eer  halls,  which  are  much  frequented  by 

oung  men  of  the  student  class.     In  nor- 

lal  times  these  are  open  at  all  hours  of  the 

ay  and   do   not  close   before   midnight. 

apanese   beer,    for   the   manufacture   of 

/hich  hops  used  to  be  imported,  is  a  very 

feasant  light  drink  of  the  lager  variety, 

nd   one  could   spend   a   pleasantly  idle 

vening  chatting  in  one  of  these  places, 

)articularly  in  the  summer,  when  the  city 

5  less  crowded.     Very  shortly  after  Japan 

ntered  the  war  the  supplies  of  beer  be- 

:ame  so  restricted  that  the  beer  halls  were 

orced    by    the    government    to    remain 

:lGsed  during  the  day.     They  opened  only 

it  five  o'clock,  by  which  hour  there  would 

)e  a  queue  (often  a  couple  of  hundred 

/ards  long)  in  front  of  each.     Many  of 

hem  were  completely  sold  out  by  seven, 

md  the  majority  closed  their  doors,  for 

ack  of  supplies,  at  nine. 

During  the  first  few  months  following 
the  outbreak  of  the  war  there  was  very 
much  more  drunkenness  than  before,  so 
much  of  it  in  fact  that  I  had  to  give  up 
visiting  beer  halls.  In  such  places  I  was 
of  course  assumed  to  be  a  German,  and 
it  was  embarrassing  to  be  talked  to  by 
drunken  strangers  who  took  it  for  granted 
that  one  was  rejoicing  at  the  British  re- 
verses in  the  Far  East. 

In  addition  to  the  beer  halls,  there  are 
literally  thousands  of  small  dives  in  Tokyo 
where  drinks  of  various  kinds  can  be 
obtained.  Even  in  peacetime  the  quality 
of  the  liquor  supplied  in  the  more  disrepu- 
table of  these  places  was  extremely  suspect; 
but  the  wartime  stuflf  sold  in  most  of  these 
smaller  drinking  dens  was  nothing  less 
than  methyl-alcohol.  One  of  my  own 
students  drank  a  couple  of  glasses  of  this 
poison  and  then  was  seriously  ill  for 
several  days  and  did  not  recover  the  full 
use  of  his  mind  for  several  weeks.  This 
sort  of  thing,  which  is  likely  to  increase  as 
the  war  goes  on,  to  say  nothing  of  the  bad, 
unnourishing  food  on  which  most  Japa- 
nese are  now  forced  to  live,  is  bound  in 
course  of  time  to  undermine  the  health 
of  the  rising  generation. 


Ill 


EVEN  before  tlic  war  some  attempts  had 
'  been  made  to  organize  air  raid  pre- 
cautions in  Japan.  Elaborate  displays 
had  been  held  about  twice  a  year  in  order 
to  give  those  taking  part  a  chance  of 
demonstrating  their  elTicicncy;  but  no  one 
took  these  afTairs  very  seriously. 

While  the  Neighborhood  Association 
had  the  duty  of  organizing  A.R.P.  lo- 
cally, there  was  a  central  bureau  which 
issued  general  instructions.  The  way  in 
which  these  were  interpreted  often  varied 
from  street  to  street,  depending  upon  the 
fancy  of  the  president  of  the  Neighborhood 
Association  concerned.  Up  to  the  time  I 
left  there  was  not  any  full-time  civil  de- 
fense organization. 

Every  householder  was  required  to  keep 
a  bucket  of  water  on  his  doorstep,  together 
with  three  or  four  small  sacks  filled  with 
sand.  These  were  intended  for  use  in 
putting  out  fires,  but  actually  they  would 
have  been  quite  ineffectual.  The  provi- 
sion of  ladders  for  each  individual  house 
was  optional  so  long  as  a  certain  number 
were  available  in  every  street.  The  women 
of  every  household  were  required  to  equip 
themselves  with  the  Japanese  equivalent  of 
slacks,  loose  baggy  trousers  worn  over  the 
ordinary  kimono,  and  to  don  them  im- 
mediately the  alert  was  sounded.  At  this 
time  too  one  member  of  the  household, 
preferably  the  master  himself,  was  sup- 
posed to  stand  on  duty  at  the  front  door, 
there  to  await  further  instructions. 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  in  a 
city  like  Tokyo,  where  the  majority  of  the 
houses  are  built  of  wood,  a  more  efficient 
system  of  air  raid  precautions  would  have 
been  instituted.  That  no  serious  eflfort 
has  been  made  is,  I  believe,  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  city  is  so  in- 
flammable that  it  is  not  humanly  possible 
to  protect  it.  The  authorities  are  doubt- 
less well  aware  that  the  present  system 
has  but  a  psychological  value.  They 
count  on  its  reassuring  the  populace  and 
mitigating  the  panic  which  any  large- 
scale  raid  is  bound  to  cause. 

To  the  best  of  my  belief  there  are  no  air 
raid  shelters  in  Tokyo,  except  in  the 
Emperor's  Palace  and  the  German  Em- 
bassy.    An  underground  railway  does  in- 


276 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


deed  exist,  but  it  runs  too  near  the  sur- 
face for  the  stations  to  afford  protection 
against  even  moderately  heavy  bombs. 
Its  stations,  morebV^er,  would  afford  pro- 
tection for  only  p  few  thousand  people. 
It  seems  doubtful  if  any  attempt  will  be 
made  to  remedy  this  state  of  affairs. 
Tokyo  is  not  like  London,  where  there  are 
many  solid  buildings  which  afford  rea- 
sonable protection  against  all  but  a  direct 
hit.  To  protect  the  people  of  Tokyo 
adequately  would  mean  providing  shelters 
for  the  entire  population  of  the  city,  that  is 
to  say  for  between  six  and  seven  million 
people,  and  this  is  not  practicable. 

Until  quite  recently  it  was  thought 
unlikely  that  Japan's  enemies  could  ever 
secure  bases  near  enough  to  permit  of  the 
bombing  of  Tokyo  or  any  other  large 
cities  in  Japan.  Or,  at  the  worst,  it  was 
supposed  that  aerial  attacks  would  be  on 
so  small  a  scale  that  they  could  be  ade- 
quately dealt  with  by  fighters.  This  was 
the  view  constantly  put  forward  by  the 
Japanese  press,  which  quoted  the  military 
authorities  as  saying  that  Tokyo  was  un- 
assailable from  the  air.  The  Army  came 
in  for  a  good  deal  of  criticism,  in  conse- 
quence, when  the  Doolittle  raid  actually 
took  place. 

I  happened  to  be  in  the  Ginza,  the 
main  thoroughfare  of  Tokyo,  at  the  time. 
The  warning  was  sounded  at  about  five 
minutes  past  twelve  on  Saturday,  April 
18,  1942.  At  first  no  one  paid  very  much 
attention,  most  of  us  thinking  that  the 
siren  was  the  ordinary  midday  signal 
w^hich  is  sounded  in  the  city  every  day. 
This  signal  had  been  discontinued  on  the 
outbreak  of  war,  but  I  suppose  we  had  only 
half-consciously  realized  that.  Almost  im- 
mediately afterward,  American  bombers 
appeared  over  the  city,  flying  so  low  that 
their  distinguishing  marks  were  clearly 
visible.  They  appeared  to  be  unopposed, 
although  gunfire  now  became  audible 
from  the  distant  suburbs.  This  increased 
in  intensity,  particularly  from  the  direc- 
tion of  Yokohama,  and  continued  for 
several  hours;  nor  was  it  until  about  half- 
past  four  in  the  afternoon  that  the  "All 
Clear"  was  sounded.  There  was  not  the 
slightest  sign  of  panic.  The  police  halted 
the  traffic,  but  nobody  made  any  attempt 
to  take  shelter;  the  general  sentiment  was 


one  of  bewildered  interest,  everybody 
wondering  what  was  going  to  happen  next. 
Pedestrians  just  stood  about  in  groups;  and 
then,  as  a  realization  of  what  was  happen- 
ing gradually  dawned  upon  them,  one 
heard  people  starting  to  criticize  the  army 
for  having  misled  them. 

That  night  there  was  a  complete  black- 
out, and  we  were  ordered  to  keep  our  ra-, 
dios  permanently  switched  on  in  case  spe- 
cial instructions  should  be  issued.  Later 
on  there  was  an  order  that  in  the  event  of 
the  warning  being  sounded  in  the  future, 
radios  were  to  be  immediately  switched  on  ! 
and  not  turned  off  until  the  raid  was  over. 

The  evening  papers  gave  only  the  bare 
news  that  a  raid  had  taken  place,  but 
details  were  given  in  the  late  news  broad- 
cast. We  were  told  that  no  damage  had 
been  done  and  that  seven,  possibly  eight, 
of  the  American  planes  had  been  brought 
down.  Although  it  was  claimed  that  no 
casualties  had  occurred,  there  was  a 
notice  in  the  papers  about  one  week  later 
to  the  effect  that  the  government  intended 
to  grant  full  compensation  to  all  those  who 
had  suffered  loss  or  injury  in  the  raid. 

By  piecing  together  odd  scraps  of  in- 
formation it  gradually  became  possible  to 
find  out  what  had  really  happened  in 
Tokyo.  It  appears  that  several  hundred 
people  who  were  working  in  a  factory 
were  wounded.  The  petrol  storage  tank 
at  Haneda  airdrome,  Tokyo's  civil  air- 
port, was  set  on  fire  and  continued  to  burn 
for  several  days  following  the  raid.  There 
was  considerable  damage  to  the  military 
airdrome  a  short  distance  outside  Tokyo, 
and  several  streets  of  houses  in  the  vicinity 
of  Waseda  University  were  demolished. 
All  this  was  reported  to  me  personally  by 
friends  who  actually  witnessed  it.  The 
total  damage  done  was  doubtless  much 
greater. 

At  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  on 
the  day  following  the  raid  there  was  a 
further  alarm  in  Tokyo,  but  nothing  hap- 
pened, and  the  "All  Clear"  was  sounded 
about  one  hour  later.  Then  on  Sunday 
there  was  another  alarm  at  eleven  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  Large  numbers  of  Japa- 
nese fighters  were  visible  in  the  sky,  and 
some  distant  gunfire  was  to  be  heard;  but 
again  there  were  no  incidents.  The  "All 
Clear"  was  sounded  at  about  one-thirty, 


TOKYO    SINGE    PEARL    HARBOR 


277 


and  at  two  o'clock  it  was  announced  by 
radio  that  a  large  enemy  force  had  at- 
tempted to  approach  the  capital,  but  had 
been  driven  ofT  before  it  was  able  to  pene- 
trate even  the  outer  defenses.  I  believe 
that  no  attempt  was  made  to  raid  Tokyo 
a  second  time,  and  that  the  whole  affair 
was  an  imposture  devised  by  the  authori- 
ties to  win  back  the  confidence  of  the 
people.  If  so,  it  had  some  success,  for  I 
noticed  that  in  my  own  street  many  of  the 
older  people  seemed  to  gain  courage  on 
hearing  that  the  raiders  had  been  thwarted 
in  an  attempt  to  reach  the  city. 

I  believe  that  before  this  raid  there  was 
no  defense  against  low-flying  aircraft,  but 
shortly  afterward  machine-gun  posts  were 
visible  on  many  of  the  buildings  in  the 
central  part  of  Tokyo.  Barrage  balloons 
also  made  their  first  appearance  over  the 
city,  but  I  never  saw  more  than  six  in  the 
air  at  the  same  time.  One  of  these  was 
moored  in  the  center  of  Hibiya  Park.  It 
was  surrounded  by  a  double  fence  of 
barbed  wire  and  guarded  by  sentries  with 
rifles  and  fixed  bayonets  who  warned  ofl" 
anyone  who  attempted  to  approach  the 
enclosure. 

IV 

IN  ALL  these  months  I  had  no  means  of 
finding  out  what  had  happened  to  my 
friends.  During  the  first  few  days  I  had 
visited  several  of  their  houses,  only  to  find 
the  police  in  charge.  They  refused  to 
give  me  any  information  and  told  me  to 
keep  away. 

It  appeared  that  all  the  British  and 
American  journalists  were  in  jail,  but  that 
the  majority  of  the  teachers,  missionaries, 
and  business  men  had  been  interned  either 
in  Tokyo  or  Yokohama. 

Strange  though  it  may  seem,  I  would 
myself  much  have  preferred  to  be  interned. 
Although  no  restrictions  were  placed  upon 
my  movements,  and  I  was  even  permitted 
after  a  time  to  continue  my  lectures,  I 
suffered  from  severe  mental  strain,  as  I 
felt  sure  it  was  merely  a  matter  of  time 
before  I  too  should  be  arrested.  Not 
that  I  was  suffering  from  a  guilty  con- 
science; but  so  many  people  whom  I  knew 
to  be  perfectly  harmless  had  been  arrested 
that  there  seemed  to  be  no  reason  why  I 
should  be  left  at  liberty.     Eventually  I 


reached  the  stage  when  I  experienced  a 
pang  of  dread  every  time  my  front  door 
bell  rang.  ''At  last,"  I  thought,  "my 
moment  has  come!" 

I  must  here  say  something  of  the  at- 
titude of  my  Japanese  friends  during  this 
period.  Not  one  ceased  to  visit  me,  and 
I  even  made  a  few  new  friends.  Some  of 
them  went  to  great  personal  trouble  to 
keep  me  supplied  with  food,  and  others 
denied  themselves  such  luxuries  as  eggs 
in  order  that  I  should  not  go  short.  I 
shall  never  forget  their  kindness  nor  the 
risks  they  took;  for  in  a  country  like  Japan, 
with  its  vicious  system  of  police  spying,  it 
requires  considerable  courage  to  pay  reg- 
ular visits  to  an  enemy  alien  in  wartime. 
Some  of  my  friends  would  attempt  to  dis- 
cuss events  and  did  not  disguise  their  dislike 
of  the  Japanese  military  party.  I  refused, 
however,  to  discuss  this  subject.  Cynical 
though  it  may  seem,  I  had  always  to  con- 
sider the  possibility  that  some  among  my 
friends  were  agents  of  the  police,  and  that 
they  had  perhaps  been  ordered  to  keep  up 
their  intercourse  with  me  on  the  chance 
that  I  might  make  some  indiscreet  remark 
which  would  serve  as  an  excuse  for  my 
arrest.  I  did  not  of  course  really  think 
that  any  friend  of  mine  would  so  demean 
himself;  but  after  even  a  short  time  in 
Japan  one  becomes  suspicious;  and  I  felt 
that  I  dare  not  take  the  slightest  risk.  I 
only  hope  that  since  my  departure  none 
of  my  friends  has  suffered  for  his  constancy. 

It  is  the  custom  in  Japan  to  display  the 
national  flag  on  all  occasions  of  public 
rejoicing.  In  peacetime  it  was  no  em- 
barrassment to  me  to  conform.  After  the 
declaration  of  war,  however,  the  position 
was  different;  I  did  not  feel  that  the  fall  of 
Hong  Kong  and  Singapore,  for  instance, 
called  for  a  display  of  rejoicing  on  my  part, 
and  my  undecorated  house  brought  upon 
me  a  certain  amount  of  adverse  criticism 
from  my  neighbors.  Eventually,  how- 
ever, a  compromise  was  reached;  my  cook 
agreed  on  my  behalf  that  I  should  hoist 
the  flag  on  occasions  such  as  the  Emperor's 
birthday,  provided  that  I  should  not  be 
expected  to  celebrate  the  Allied  reverses, 
which  at  that  time  were  occurring  with 
depressing  frequency.  As  for  the  pound 
of  sugar  and  two  bottles  of  beer  which 
everyone  was  allowed  to  purchase  in  order 


278 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


to  mark  the  surrender  of  Singapore,  I  must 
confess  that  I  gratefully  accepted  them. 

I  have  said  that  for  some  little  time 
after  the  outbreak  of  war  there  was  lit- 
tle outward  change  in  the  life  of  the  Japa- 
nese people.  An  accumulation  of  small 
changes,  however,  was  taking  place,  and 
these  gradually  made  the  people  conscious 
of  the  war.  Most  of  these  changes  were 
concerned  with  amusement. 

After  the  first  week,  for  instance,  a  ban 
was  placed  upon  American  and  English 
music,  and  more  particularly  upon  all 
forms  of  jazz.  This  even  extended  to  the 
withdrawal  from  the  shops  of  all  foreign 
gramophone  records,  not  excluding  Ger- 
man classical  music  if  the  conductor  of  the 
orchestra  concerned  happened  not  to  be  a 
citizen  of  one  or  other  of  the  Axis  coun- 
tries. This  ban  fell  heavily  upon  record- 
ings made  by  Stokowski  and  Sir  Thomas 
Beecham,  but  Toscanini  and  the  many 
famous  German  conductors  who  had  long 
since  severed  their  connection  with  their 
own  country  escaped,  their  political  views 
being  apparently  unknown  to  the  Jap- 
anese police. 

The  ban  on  jazz  music  affected  particu- 
larly the  numerous  little  tea  and  coffee 
shops  dotted  about  all  over  the  city. 
When  it  was  first  enforced  the  gramo- 
phones in  these  places  were  silent,  but 
only  for  a  week  or  so.  Thereafter  the  rec- 
ords were  played,  very  softly  at  first;  but 
the  volume  was  soon  increased,  for  the 
people  began  to  realize  that  the  police 
could  not  distinguish  between,  say,  Duke 
Ellington  and  Mozart.  Before  I  left 
Japan  jazz  had  come  back  into  its  own 
and  the  gramophones  were  again  going 
full  blast. 

As  for  films,  all  the  American  and  Eng- 
lish ones  were  immediately  withdrawn 
from  circulation,  their  place  being  taken 
by  French  and  German  films.  Among 
the  latter  were  many  of  the  excellent  pre- 
Hitler  Ufa  productions  which  (their  direc- 
tors being  Jewish)  are  no  longer  shown  in 
Germany  itself.  To  me  personally  it  was 
a  great  joy  to  see  once  again  the  early  films 
made  by  Ren^  Clair,  but  by  the  time  I  left 
Japan  most  of  these  old  films,  which  were 
not  very  numerous,  were  being  shown  for 
the  third  or  fourth  time.  There  were  of 
course  plenty  of  Japanese  films,  but  the 


urban  audiences,  having  been  brought  up 
on  foreign  films,  did  not  take  to  them  very 
kindly.  They  were  more  popular,  I  be- 
lieve, with  less  sophisticated  people  in  the 
country  districts. 

The  theater  too  received  the  attentions 
of  the  police.  There  were  in  Tokyo  a 
number  of  small  theaters  which  special- 
ized in  the  production  of  Western  plays  in 
the  Japanese  language.  And  as  English 
has  always  been  the  most  widely  known  of 
foreign  tongues,  most  of  the  plays  pro- 
duced were  translations  from  the  English. 
These  theatrical  companies  were  not  ac- 
tually disbanded,  but  conditions  were  now 
made  so  difficult  for  them  that  the  players 
were  forced  to  appear  in  plays  of  purely 
Japanese  origin. 

The  Kabuki  theater,  presenting  as  it 
does  traditional  Japanese  drama,  suffered 
less  change.  The  police  were  content 
with  the  elimination  of  all  plays  of  a 
purely  comic  character  and  the  complete 
suppression  of  those  in  which  amorous  ad- 
ventures were  represented.  The  menu 
now  was  one  of  unrelieved  blood  and 
thunder.  Moreover,  most  of  the  plays 
were  so  edited  as  to  be  little  more  than 
exhortations  to  patriotism.  The  virtue  of 
dying  for  one's  betters,  that  is  to  say  for 
one's  country,  was  instilled  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  any  other  theme.  All  the  ordinary 
aims,  aspirations,  and  loves  of  human  be- 
ings were  excluded. 


A  FTER  December  8th  I  had  very  little  to 
j[\^  do.  I  have  already  explained  that 
as  soon  as  things  began  to  settle  down  I  was 
permitted  to  continue  with  my  lectures, 
but  these  occupied  only  a  few  hours  every 
week.  The  Foreign  Office  continued  to 
pay  my  salary  but  relieved  me  of  all  duties, 
so  I  had  a  great  deal  of  time  on  my  hands. 
It  might  have  been  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity to  set  down  my  ideas  on  paper,  or 
at  least  to  keep  a  diary.  This,  however, 
was  impossible.  It  is  not  advisable,  while 
actually  in  the  country,  to  commit  one's 
thoughts  on  Japan  to  paper,  unless  they 
happen  to  be  entirely  flattering;  even  in 
normal  times  the  Japanese  police  surrep- 
titiously make  periodical  examinations  of 
the    contents    of   all    foreigners'    houses. 


% 


TOKYO    SINCE    PEARL    HARBOR 


279 


\nd  when  the  time  came  to  leave  it  was 
orbiddcn  to  take  any  letters,  manuscripts, 
)r  even  a  book  out  of  the  country,  irre- 
pective  of  the  contents. 

I  used  at  first  to  spend  many  hours  a 
lay  listening  to  records  on  my  gramophone 
md  reading.  After  a  while  I  ceased  to 
Dlay  the  gramophone.  I  am  affected 
nore  by  music  than  by  any  other  form  of 
irt,  and  during  these  months  I  reached  a 
stage  when  the  emotional  effect  of  hearing 
^reat  music  was  so  overpowering  that  I 
rould  no  longer  bear  it. 

Nearly  every  afternoon  I  used  to  go  to 
the  Imperial  Hotel,  which  still  retained 
its  vogue  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  food  it 
now  provided  was  about  the  worst  in 
Tokyo.  At  teatime  the  place  was  usually 
crowded  with  Nazis,  and  it  used  to  give  me 
a  peculiar  pleasure  to  sit  there  and  be 
glared  at.  For  they  knew  of  course  ex- 
actly who  I  was,  and  it  doubtless  infuri- 
ated them  to  see  me  still  at  large.  Inci- 
dentally, although  Tokyo  contained  a 
considerable  Italian  colony,  I  never  once 
saw  Italians  mixing  with  Germans  except 
on  public  platforms,  where  they  had  of 
necessity  to  make  a  show  of  friendliness. 
As  for  the  relations  between  the  Ger- 
mans and  the  Japanese,  the  attitude  of  the 
ordinary  people  toward  their  German 
allies  is  well  illustrated  by  an  incident  that 
occurred  shortly  before  I  left  Tokyo.  It 
was  a  pouring  wet  night  and  I  was  in  the 
street  looking  for  a  taxi  to  take  me  home. 
I  eventually  found  one,  but  the  driver 
eyed  me  askance  as  a  foreigner.  After  a 
little  talk  he  seemed  more  friendly,  but  as  I 
was  about  to  open  the  door  he  demurred 
again.  "Are  you  a  German?"  he  asked. 
"No,  certainly  not,"  I  replied.  "An 
Italian,  then,  perhaps?"  For  a  moment  I 
considered  passing  myself  off  as  an  Italian 
in  order  to  get  a  lift,  and  he,  noticing  my 
hesitation,  inquired  bluntly  what  my 
nationality  was.  "As  a  matter  of  fact," 
I  said,  "I'm  English,"  to  which  he  replied 
with  a  cheerful  grin,  "Oh,  all  right,  hop  in!" 
It  is  not  difficult  to  account  for  the  dis- 
like in  which  the  Germans  are  held. 
Most  of  them  are  very  arrogant  and  make 
no  attempt  to  disguise  their  contempt 
for  the  Japanese.  Moreover,  few  edu- 
cated Japanese  are  ignorant  of  Hitler's 
published  views  on  the  peoples  of  Asia. 


In  official,  but  non-military,  circles,  it 
is  the  s.une  story.  Of  recent  years  Ger- 
man advisers  have  been  admitted  into 
several  government  departments,  and  this 
has  led  to  constant  friction.  The  Nazi 
cannot  advise;  he  can  only  dictate.  And 
while  the  Japanese  have  always  been 
willing  to  accept  guidance  from  their 
various  foreign  advisers,  dictation  they 
will  accept  from  nobody.  At  one  time  a 
couple  of  Germans  were  attached  to  the 
Tokyo  Central  Post  Office.  They  had 
been  planted  there  by  the  Embassy  os- 
tensibly for  the  purpose  of  examining  the 
correspondence  of  German  residents.  It 
was  not  long,  however,  before  they  de- 
manded access  to  the  correspondence  of  all 
foreigners,  and  when  this  was  refused  they 
became  so  offensive  that  the  Japanese 
officials  insisted  on  their  withdrawal. 

In  military  circles  the  position  is  differ- 
ent. There  is  no  doubt  that  the  profes- 
sional Japanese  army  officer  has  a  high  re- 
gard for  the  Germans,  or  perhaps  it  would 
be  more  correct  to  say  that  he  has  a  great 
respect  for  the  German  army.  After  all, 
the  Japanese  army  has  been  organized 
and  trained  on  German  lines  and  under 
the  supervision  of  German  experts.  This 
does  not  necessarily  mean  that  Japan's 
strategical  plans  have  been  worked  out  in 
close  conjunction  with  Germany's.  The 
Japanese  were  quick  to  note  that  the  com- 
mencement of  Hitler's  retirement  in 
Russia  coincided  with  the  day  they  them- 
selves entered  the  war,  and  it  is  doubtful 
whether  they  have  ever  had  any  illusion 
about  getting  material  assistance  from 
Germany,  no  matter  how  things  might 
turn  out.  There  must  obviously  be  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  co-operation  between  the 
general  staffs  of  the  two  countries,  but  the 
Japanese  are  realists  and  are  in  this  war 
for  their  own  ends  alone. 


VI 

DURING  all  these  months  it  was  difficult 
to  find  out  what  was  really  happen- 
ing in  Europe.  At  first,  the  Japanese  did 
not  actually  suppress  any  of  the  major 
items  of  news,  but  the  papers  printed 
them  in  such  a  way  that  their  significance 
could  be  properly  understood  only  by  one 
skilled  at  reading  between  the  lines.     In 


280 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


course  of  time,  however,  one  came  to 
measure  Allied  successes  almost  entirely 
by  the  lack  of  news;  if  there  was  no  men- 
tion of  Libya  for  weeks  at  a  time  one 
guessed  that  things  were  going  well  there. 

Our  main  source  of  information  was  the 
radio.  The  shortwave  sets  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Allied  embassies  were  of 
course  confiscated  upon  the  outbreak  of 
war,  but  there  were  still  some  in  operation 
in  the  various  neutral  embassies,  and  it 
was  from  these  that  we  obtained  bits  of 
genuine  information  from  time  to  time. 
I  used  to  get  them  from  an  anti-Nazi  Ger- 
man friend  who  gleaned  them  from  one  or 
other  of  the  South  American  legations. 
Incidentally,  although  neutral  embassies 
were  permitted  to  retain  their  shortwave 
receivers,  they  were  required  by  the  Jap- 
anese government  to  give  an  undertaking 
not  to  disclose  the  news  they  heard,  and 
warned  particularly  that  on  no  pretext 
whatever  should  they  listen  to  foreign- 
language  broadcasts  radiated  from  Japan 
to  the  outside  world ! 

I  have  forgotten  the  exact  date,  but  I 
think  it  was  sometime  in  April,  1942,  that 
I  was  summoned  to  the  Foreign  Office. 
When  I  went  there  I  was  introduced  to 
the  chief  of  the  foreign  section  of  the  Japan 
Broadcasting  Corporation,  for  which  I 
had  done  a  certain  amount  of  work  before 
the  war.  He  was  extremely  affable  and 
talked  on  general  matters  for  the  first  ten 
minutes;  then  he  became  less  impersonal. 
He  supposed  that  I  must  be  finding  it 
difficult  to  make  both  ends  meet,  and 
thought  it  might  be  possible  to  give  me 
some  employment  as  a  broadcaster;  how 
did  I  feel  about  it?  I  felt  very  strongly 
about  it,  and  I'm  afraid  I  lost  my  temper. 
"It  seems  to  me,"  I  said,  "that  you  are 
asking  me  to  become  Japan's  Lord  Haw- 
Haw,  or  have  I  misunderstood  the  posi- 
tion?" My  questioner  was  at  first  non- 
plussed, for  in  Japan  it  is  not  etiquette  to 
come  straight  to  the  point.  After  hedging 
a  little  he  was  obliged  to  confess  that  this 
was  in  fact  the  idea,  and  he  hoped  that  I 
would  receive  the  suggestion  favorably. 
I  told  him  that  I  realized  what  the  conse- 
quences of  refusing  his  offer  were  likely  to 
be,  and  that  I  accepted  them.  In  view  of 
the  exceptional  treatment  afforded  me  I 
had  remained,  I  said,  strictly  neutral,  al- 


though there  was,  of  course,  never  ai 
doubt  where  my  sympathies  lay.  Ar 
while  perfectly  appreciating  the  circun 
stances  in  which  I,  an  enemy  alien,  w; 
placed,  in  no  circumstances  would  I  dt 
mean  myself  by  broadcasting  anti-Britis 
propaganda. 

Having  got  this  off  my  chest  I  staike 
out  of  the  room,  fully  expecting  to  be  ai 
rested,  or  at  any  rate  interned,  the  follow 
ing  day.     To  my  surprise,  however,  noth<| 
ing  further  happened  until  about  threJ 
weeks  later,  when  I  received  a  letter  fronl 
the  Broadcasting  Corporation  saying  tha ' 
if  I  would  kindly  submit  full  particulars  Oi 
my  past  career  they  would  be  glad  to  con- 
sider me  for  employment.     And  there  the 
matter  ended.     Actually,  the  outcome  oi; 
this  rather  trivial  incident  is  not  so  sur-^ 
prising  as  at  first  it  seems.     Loyalty  to 
one's    country    is    something    that    every 
Japanese  understands,  and  had  I  accepted: 
their  offer  I  think  they  would  have  de- 
spised   me.     By    not    taking    any    action 
against  me  when  I  refused,  they  admitted 
that  my  conduct  was  what  they  would 
have  expected  from  one  of  their  own  peo- 
ple.    But  the  letter  had  to  be  sent  me;  it 
was  a  face-saving  method  of  neatly  closing 
the  incident. 

VII 

THERE  was  Still  no  news  of  a  British 
evacuation.  I  used  to  go  regularly  to 
the  Swiss  Legation  to  inquire,  but  they 
were  never  very  hopeful.  It  appeared 
that,  not  having  been  interned,  I  had  but 
a  slender  chance  of  getting  away.  The 
evacuation  ship,  if  it  ever  materialized, 
would  be  primarily  for  diplomats  and  their 
staffs.  No  one  else  had  the  slightest  claim 
to  be  repatriated,  and  should  there  still  be 
room  after  all  the  officials  had  been  ac- 
commodated, civilians  who  had  been 
jailed  or  interned  would  naturally  be 
given  first  place. 

In  July  the  Swiss  Legation  had  definite 
news  that  the  British  were  going.  My 
name  was  not  on  the  list,  but  I  was  given 
to  understand  that  there  would  be  a  sec- 
ond ship  on  which  I  could  be  certain  of  a 
place.  Discouraged,  I  decided  to  go  to 
the  Foreign  Office.  I  had  not  been  there 
since  refusing  the  broadcasting  offer,  and 
I  was  not  expecting  a  very  warm  recep- 


TOKYO    SINCE    PEARL    HARBOPv 


281 


ion.  My  heart  rose  when  I  (Hscovercd, 
lowcvcr,  that  tlie  oflicial  in  charge  of  re- 
)atriation  arrangements  was  a  man  that 
[  had  at  one  time  known  well.  Pie  was 
mxioLis  to  do  what  he  could  to  help  me, 
jut  unfortunately  the  selection  was  not  in 
his  hands.  The  list  had  already  been 
made  out  at  the  British  Embassy,  and  he 
liad  no  power  to  add  my  name  to  it. 

Naturally  I  was  bitterly  disappointed, 
but  at  least  I  knew  exactly  how  matters 
stood,  and  I  made  my  arrangements  to  go 
away  for  the  rest  of  the  summer,  for  it  was 
now  unbearably  hot  in  Tokyo.  I  sent  in 
an  application  to  the  police  and  a  few 
days  later  they  telephoned  to  me.  I  sup- 
posed it  was  to  tell  me  that  my  request  had 
been  granted,  but  it  was  not.  Imagine 
my  joy  when  they  said  that  I  was  to  sail 
with  the  diplomats  in  forty-eight  hours' 
time,  and  that  I  must  have  my  luggage 
ready  for  inspection  by  them  and  the  cus- 
toms officials  by  nine  o'clock  the  following 
morning. 

I  was  also  told  that  I  could  take  with 
me  only  clothing  and  certain  speci- 
fied household  belongings.  I  worked  all 
night,  stripped  to  the  waist,  for  the  hu- 
midity was  almost  intolerable,  and  some- 
how managed  to  pack  up  my  more  es- 
sential things.  The  customs  officials, 
together  with  several  police  inspectors, 
arrived  at  my  house  at  about  eleven  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  by  which  time  I  had 
somehow  or  other  managed  to  get  ready. 
But  they  made  me  unpack  everything. 
Then  they  carefully  examined  each  suit- 
case to  see  if  I  had  concealed  anything  in 
the  linings.  Next  they  looked  at  every 
article  I  was  proposing  to  take,  examining 
my  clothing  piece  by  piece  and  checking 
it  against  the  detailed  list  which  they  had 
ordered  me  to  prepare.  I  had  even  been 
made  to  specify  the  exact  number  of  hand- 
kerchiefs I  was  taking  out  of  the  country. 
My  cameras  and  field  glasses,  which  had 
been  confiscated  on  the  outbreak  of  war, 
were  handed  back  to  me,  and  I  was  al- 
lowed to  pack  them  in  one  of  the  trunks. 
After  this  the  customs  authorities  sealed 
all  my  boxes,  and  the  police  removed 
them.  I  was  told  that  I  should  find  them 
on  the  ship  when  I  embarked  the  follow- 
ing day. 

I  had  been  up  all  night  and  was  feeling 


almost  exhausted,  but  there  was  no  time 
to  rest,  as  I  had  Ijccn  ordered  to  be  ready 
at  five-thirty  the  next  morning.  First  I 
went  to  the  bank,  and  not  being  allowed  to 
take  any  money  out  of  the  country  ex- 
cept a  small  traveling  allowance,  I  trans- 
ferred my  balance  to  the  account  of  a 
Japanese  friend.  This  done,  I  spent  the 
rest  of  the  day  saying  good-by  to  as  many 
of  my  Japanese  friends  as  I  could  run  to 
earth.  My  house,  with  the  furniture, 
books,  gramophone  records,  and  so  on,  I 
did  not  attempt  to  dispose  of;  there  was 
not  time.  By  ten  o'clock  at  night  I  had 
done  everything  that  was  possible  in  the 
way  of  clearing  up  my  affairs  and  was  just 
about  to  retire  when  a  visitor  was  an- 
nounced. It  was  the  collector  of  income 
tax,  who  had  apparently  just  received 
news  of  my  imminent  departure.  It  ap- 
peared that  the  tax  was  claimable  for  the 
whole  of  the  financial  year  which  at  that 
date  had  only  run  a  couple  of  months.  But 
since  I  had  already  transferred  my  bank 
account,  and  was  in  possession  of  only  the 
small  amount  of  actual  cash  which  the 
government  had  allowed  me  to  keep  back 
for  the  expenses  of  the  journey,  I  could  not 
pay.  The  collector  saw  this  well  enough, 
but  like  all  his  kind,  he  had  no  idea  how  to 
deal  with  a  situation  for  which  no  provi- 
sion was  made  in  his  regulations,  and  so 
it  was  nearly  midnight  before  I  could  in- 
duce him  to  go  away.  As  it  was,  I  had  to 
sign  a  paper  making  over  my  furniture  to 
the  income-tax  authorities. 

The  police  inspector  arrived  punctually 
at  five-thirty  the  following  morning,  and 
together  we  set  off.  I  had  lived  in  the 
same  small  house  for  nearly  four  years  and 
had  grown  very  fond  of  it.  It  seemed  all 
wrong  to  be  leaving  it  almost  furtively  at 
dawn,  and  to  have  to  abandon  all  my 
books  and  other  treasured  possessions. 
We  walked  slowdy,  and  I  turned  for  a  last 
look  as  we  came  to  the  corner.  My  faith- 
ful old  housekeeper  was  still  standing  at 
the  gate,  and  as  I  waved  for  the  last  time 
she  bowed  low  in  ceremonial  fashion, 

VIII 

THAT  the  Japanese  will  suffer  defeat  I 
cannot  doubt;  but  I  find  it  quite  im- 
possible to  picture  what  shape  that  defeat 


282 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


will  take.  The  Japanese  army,  as  the 
reader  knows,  now  has  complete  control 
of  the  government.  The  army  in  fact 
is  the  government.  Every  branch  of  the 
national  life — educgition,  industry,  com- 
merce, even  religion — all  are  now  subject 
to  its  will. 

That  army  is  now  committed  to  a  plan 
of  almost  unlimited  aggression.  It  must 
conquer  or  perish;  there  is  no  other  alter- 
native. And  the  people  will  be  ready  to 
support  it  to  the  end.  The  Germans 
cracked  in  1918,  and  there  is  every  reason 
for  supposing  that  in  due  course  they  will 
crack  again.  But  the  psychology  of  the 
Japanese  people  is  different,  and  I  believe 
that  they  will  never  give  in;  they  will  go 
on  lowering  their  standard  of  living  if 
necessary  until  the  daily  ration  is  barely 
sufficient  to  support  life,  but  the  people 
will  not  crack.  It  is  only  by  complete 
physical  destruction  of  their  men  and  their 
resources  that  they  can  be  defeated;  and 
until  we  are  in  a  position  to  bring  this 
about  any  talk  of  a  Japanese  collapse  is 
merely  a  dangerous  form  of  wishful  think- 
ing. 

To  this  I  have  only  to  add  that  I  believe 
it  to  be  of  the  utmost  importance  for  the 
war  to  be  brought  home  to  the  people  of 
Japan  themselves.  They  know  so  little  of 
what  is  happening  in  the  world  to-day  that 
only  when  the  war  is  actually  brought  to 
their  homeland  itself  will  they  realize  they 
are  beaten.  Nothing  less  than  an  occupa- 
tion of  the  country  will  be  necessary — not 
necessarily  a  very  long  one,  but  one  long 
enough  to  make  the  fact  of  our  victory  and 
their  defeat  incontestable. 

During  the  period  of  occupation  the 
demilitarization  should  be  commenced, 
and  it  is  essential  that  it  should  continue 
until  the  warmaking  power  of  Japan  is 
destroyed.  Only  when  this  demilitariza- 
tion is  assured  should  Japan  be  given  a 
place  beside  the  peaceful  and  democratic 
nations  of  the  world.  This,  then,  should 
be  the  program:  defeat,  occupation,  demil- 
itarization, opportunity. 

The  period  of  occupation  should  be 
made  to  depend  upon  the  ability  of  the 
Japanese  to  produce  a  new  form  of  gov- 
ernment, a  government  with  liberal  ideas 
that  is  willing  and  anxious  to  co-operate 
with  the  Allied  Nations.     I  believe  that 


'i 


the  nucleus  of  such  a  government  alreadx 
exists  in  Japan.  The  country  has  alway 
possessed  liberal-minded  statesmen  in  suf- 
ficient quantity.  But  these  men  at  the 
present  time  dare  not  voice  their  feelings; 
to  do  so  would  be  to  invite  assassination,1 
or,  at  the  very  least,  imprisonment  and 
torture.  j 

The  chief  task  of  the  army  of  occupationj 
would  be  to  ensure  that  the  new  govern- 
ment is  afforded  protection  and  help 
while  it  is  reorganizing  the  administration 
of  the  country. 

It  will  be  important  not  to  lose  sight  of 
the  danger  lest  an  occupation  be  continued 
too  long,  and  thus  bring  odium  upon  the 
new  government.  It  might  well  be  found 
that  the  presence  of  foreign  troops  was 
making  it  harder  and  harder  for  the  gov- 
ernment to  carry  on.  Nothing  should  be 
done  to  incur  the  grave  risk  of  sowing  the 
seeds  for  a  war  of  revenge.  It  should  be 
remembered  that  secret  societies  have 
always  played  a  large  part  in  Japanese 
political  life.  A  great  many  of  these  have 
military  backing,  and  many  of  their  of- 
ficials are  retired  military  men.  Every 
soldier  is  more  or  less  forced  to  join  one  of 
them  after  he  leaves  the  service,  and  after 
this  war  a  very  high  proportion  of  the 
adult  population  of  Japan  will  consist  of 
soldiers  who  have  lost  their  occupation. 
It  is  certain  that  the  activities  of  these  so- 
called  "patriotic  societies"  will  tremen- 
dously increase. 

A  great  deal  will  depend  upon  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Emperor.  While  it  is  true  that 
he  has  always  been  held  in  great  venera- 
tion by  the  people,  his  present  almost  di- 
vine status  is  of  comparatively  recent  in- 
vention. This  myth  has  been  built  up 
gradually  by  the  army  for  its  own  ends. 
The  naval  and  military  leaders  have  al- 
ways had  direct  access  to  the  Emperor; 
it  has  been  in  their  power  to  have  all  im- 
portant decisions  promulgated  in  his  name 
by  Imperial  Rescripts.  Those  decisions 
are  thus  protected  from  all  criticism,  for  an 
Imperial  Rescript  is  looked  upon  as  holy; 
it  cannot  even  be  criticized,  let  alone 
disobeyed. 

Any  attempt  to  discredit  the  Emperor 
would,  in  my  opinion,  be  disastrous. 
What  we  must  do  is  convince  the  Japanese 
people  that  their  Emperor  has  been  led 


INEPT— NOT    APATHETIC 


283 


astray  by  his  military  advisers.  If  this 
could  be  successfully  accomplished  it  would 
have  the  cfTcct  of  discrediting  the  army, 
and  would  thus  strengthen  the  position  of 
the  new  government.  The  wholehearted 
co-operation  of  the  Emperor  would  be 
indispensable. 

To  sum  up,  the  goal  of  all  our  efforts 
\vill  be  to  bring  into  being  a  peace-loving 
and  contented  Japan,  an  agreeable  partner 


in  international  politics,  a  country  that 
will  contribute  to  a  single,  unified  world 
economy.  So  if  we  intend  to  demilita- 
rize Japan  and  control  her  key  imports,  as 
it  would  seem  we  must,  we  shall  have  to 
find  outlet  for  her  economic  energies.  We 
must  be  careful  not  to  injure  the  founda- 
tions of  Japan's  economic  life;  our  task  is 
to  show  her  how  to  build  a  better  structure 
upon  them. 


Inept  —  Not  Apathetic 

MANY  of  us  in  this  country  have  found  there  is  something  very  awk- 
ward about  being  a  civilian  in  this  war.  We  know  it  is  a  world- 
wide conflict,  but  the  bombs  don't  drop  on  us.  We  know  we  should 
be  doing  something  about  it,  but  what?  We  are  bewildered,  and  we 
fumble.  Frequently  our  inept  attempts  at  aiding  the  war  effort  em- 
barrass us,  and  so  we  eschew  them  and,  in  the  end,  go  on  much  as 
though  there  were  no  war  in  progress. 

Take  the  Junior  Woman's  Club  in  a  typical  Midwestern  suburb, 
for  example.  The  young  women  who  belong  to  it  are  about  of  a  kind. 
Nearly  all  of  them  are  either  married  to,  or  engaged  to,  servicemen. 
Most  of  them  are  living  with  their  parents  again  because  of  the  war. 
Their  economic  positions  and  social  backgrounds  are  typically  middle- 
class.  A  couple  of  years  ago  they  decided  to  abandon  their  annual 
Christmas  formal  (which  was  the  event  of  the  season  among  the  com- 
munity's younger  people)  and  to  give  a  dance  for  servicemen.  Prob- 
ably all  the  girls  envisioned  servicemen  much  as  the  Cosmopolitan  or 
Redbook  artists  envision  them;  but  the  soldiers  whom  the  Army  sent  to 
this  dance  turned  out  to  be  mainly  hardened  veterans  of  many  years' 
service,  bald  sergeants  with  wives  and  families.  The  girls  did  their 
best  but  the  thing  just  didn't  work  out  as  they  had  intended.  Then 
along  came  the  Red  Cross.  Two  of  the  girls  bandaged  each  other  for 
a  night  or  two  but  they  ended  up  by  giggling  a  good  deal,  and — because 
they  couldn't  see  that  they  were  accomplishing  much — they  dropped 
the  whole  thing. 

This  winter  the  Club  entertained,  at  a  Christmas  party,  the  orphans 
from  a  nearby  orphanage,  just  as  it  had  done  for  about  fifteen  years. 
Dances  for  servicemen  have  been  abandoned.  -^^  John  B.  Martin 


THE    TOUCH    OF    MIDAS 


GEORGE  RICHMOND  WALKER 


You  remember  King  Midas,  who 
wished  that  everything  he  touched 
would  turn  to  gold.  When  he 
repented  of  his  dreadful  wish,  he  was  told 
that  he  might  jump  in  the  river  Pactolus 
and  his  "touch  of  gold"  would  be  washed 
away.  He  was  lucky.  It  is  not  usual 
that  the  consequences  of  excessive  greed 
are  so  easily  escaped. 

Have  we,  the  American  people,  a  touch 
of  Midas  in  our  make-up? 

Between  the  years  1934  and  1941  our 
national  stock  of  gold  increased  by  over 
fifteen  billion  dollars.  About  five  billions 
of  the  increase  was  due  to  an  excess  of 
exports  over  imports,  and  about  six  billions 
was  due  to  the  transfer  of  capital  funds 
from  abroad.  We  Americans  willingly 
exchanged  five  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
goods,  produced  from  our  own  resources 
and  by  our  own  labor,  for  five  billion 
dollars'  worth  of  gold  which  we  buried  in 
the  ground.  The  six  billions  of  capital 
funds  shipped  here  as  gold  were  exchanged 
for  deposits  in  our  banks — which  could  be 
used  to  buy  six  billion  dollars'  worth  of 
American  goods  and  services — and  this 
gold  also  was  buried  in  the  ground. 
Apparently  we  thought  we  were  a  smart 
people  to  turn  our  goods  and  property  into 
gold. 

At  present  we  as  a  people,  unable  to 
accumulate  gold,  are  storing  away  in- 
ordinate sums  in  cash.  During  the  years 
1921  to  1930  the  amount  of  currency  in 


circulation  never  exceeded  five  billion 
dollars.  A  few  weeks  ago,  in  December, 
the  amount  rose  to  over  nineteen  billion  dol- 
lars, or  about  $145  for  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  in  the  United  States,  or  about 
$460  each  for  families  and  single  individ- 
uals.    That  is  an  altogether  amazing  sum. 

Where  is  all  this  money?  Nobody 
knows  exactly.  But  a  good  deal  of  it  is 
tucked  away  in  safe-deposit  boxes  and  desk 
drawers  and  under  the  mattress.  It  was 
recently  revealed,  for  example,  that  a 
former  police  commissioner  of  the  city  of 
Boston  had  $35,000  in  bills  stored  away  in 
the  vault  of  his  bank.  Cash  is  more  tangi- 
ble than  a  bank  deposit.  Probably  some 
people  also  appreciate  the  fact  that  it  is 
more  secret.  The  amount  of  your  bank 
deposit  is  known  to  your  banker,  and  he 
may  call  you  up  during  a  bond  drive  and 
ask  whether  you  will  buy  a  few  war  bonds. 
But  currency  can  be  hidden  away;  nobody 
knows  how  much  you  have  or  how  you 
got  it,  not  even  the  Bureau  of  Internal 
Revenue. 

But  it  is  nice  to  have  money  in  the  bank 
as  well  as  bills  in  a  strongbox.  And  our 
bank  deposits  too  have  been  growing  at  a 
remarkable  rate.  Back  in  the  boom  days 
of  1929  demand  deposits,  or  checking 
accounts,  totaled  about  twenty- three  bil- 
lions; they  fell  to  fifteen  billions  in  1933. 
But  by  December,  1943,  they  had  in- 
creased (including  government  deposits) 
to  about  sixty-Jour  billions.     Deposits  will 


THE    TOUCH    OF    MIDAS 


285 


ontinuc  to  increase  so  long  as  the  govern- 
icnt   continues    to    finance    the    war    by 
;icans  of  an   expansion  of  bank  credit, 
^nd  the  government  will  have  to  go  on 
)orrowing  from  banks  so  long  as  it  cannot 
ax  and  borrow  enough  from  individuals 
md    business   concerns.     It    is    not    that 
ndividuals    and    business    concerns    are 
mable  to  spare  the  money  necessary  to 
inance  the  war.     They  have  the  money 
ill  right,  but  many  of  them  prefer  to  hold 
)n  to  it  rather  than  use  it  to  buy  govern- 
nent  bonds.     The  same  desire  to  possess 
Tioney   which   made   it   seem   like   good 
ousiness  to  exchange  American  products 
for  foreign  gold  makes  it  seem  like  good 
business  to  hoard  currency  and  to  accumu- 
late money  in  the  bank. 

How  much  of  the  sixty-four  billions  held 
as  demand  deposits  by  banks  is  needed  and 
actually  used  in  financing  the  nation's 
business,  and  how  much  is  in  the  form  of 
idle  balances  and  excess  reserves?  No- 
body knows  precisely,  but  the  amount  of 
"idle"  or  "surplus"  deposits  has  been 
estimated  to  be  somewhere  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  thirty  billions  of  dollars.  The 
exact  sum  does  not  matter;  for  our  present 
purpose  all  we  need  to  know  is  that  a  good 
many  billions  have  been  withdrawn  from 
active  business  and  put  in  cold  storage. 

Why?  Why  do  people  prefer  to  hoard 
their  savings  rather  than  invest  them  in 
securities  or  war  bonds?  Why  are  busi- 
ness concerns  so  anxious  to  accumulate 
huge  cash  reserves?  No  doubt  the  reasons 
are  various.  But  one  reason  is  the  illusion 
that  money  is  wealth,  desirable  for  its 
own  sake,  whether  it  is  in  the  form  of  gold, 
paper  currency,  or  bank  deposits. 

But  the  more  money  a  man  has  the 
richer  he  is;  isn't  that  true?  Yes,  it  is 
true  of  an  individual  but  not  of  a  nation. 
The  Germans  did  not  make  themselves 
rich  when,  after  the  last  war,  they  printed 
untold  billions  of  paper  marks.  They 
succeeded  only  in  destroying  the  value  of 
their  currency.  Nor  are  we  becoming 
richer  at  the  present  time  simply  because 
we  are  printing  more  currency  and  ex- 
panding our  bank  deposits.  What  we  are 
doing  is  watering  down  the  purchasing 
power  of  our  money  by  increasing  its 
quantity  in  relation  to  the  things  that 
money  will  buy.     We  already  have  a  great 


deal  more  money  than  we  need  to  finance 
production  both  for  war  and  for  home 
consumption.  And  yet  the  government 
has  to  go  on  increasing  our  money  supply 
by  borrowing  from  banks— thus  creating 
new  money  in  the  form  of  government 
deposits — because  wc  as  a  people  arc  un- 
willing to  pay  enough  taxes  and  buy 
enough  bonds  to  finance  the  cost  of  the 
war.  We  would  rather  hoard  money  than 
pay  our  bills.  But  is  it  not  foolish  to  hoard 
money  and  to  ask  the  banks  to  create 
new  money  at  the  same  time?  It  is 
foolish,  and  yet  that  is  precisely  what  we 
are  doing.  Some  day  if  inflation  hits  us 
we  shall  look  back  and  see  that  we  were  no 
wiser  than  Midas. 

During  the  war  our  hoarding  is  being 
offset  by  the  creation  of  new  money  which 
does  the  work  that  the  hoarded  money 
refuses  to  do.  But  money  expansion  can- 
not continue  after  the  war  without  the 
risk  of  a  Germanic  inflation.  And  so  if 
hoarding  continues,  the  postwar  con- 
sequence will  be  economic  stagnation: 
goods  unsold,  factories  closed  down, 
workers  out  of  work. 

How  can  we  make  hoarding  un- 
profitable? 

II 

THERE  was  a  period  during  the  Middle 
Ages  when  hoarding  was  made  unprof- 
itable, and  the  consequences  were  extraor- 
dinary. The  three  centuries  from  11 50  to 
1450,  known  as  the  Age  of  the  Gothic,  are 
described  by  Sacheverell  Sitwell  as  follows: 
"It  was  the  greatest  period  of  building 
activity  that  there  has  ever  been,  and  no 
mere  catalogue  of  names  and  places  can 
convey  any  idea  of  the  strength  and 
quality  of  its  products."  And  again, 
"There  has  never  been,  before  or  since  in 
history,  anything  at  all  like  the  physical 
and  mental  atmosphere  of  that  age.  It 
presented  concrete  and  realized  ambition 
on  a  scale  that  has  no  precedent.  Life  had 
turned  into  poetry;  it  had  changed  into  a 
vigorous  paradise  that  made  it  worth  while 
to  run  its  dangers  as  well  as  to  enjoy  its 
pleasures."  This  was  the  age  in  which  the 
great  Gothic  cathedrals  were  built,  the 
baronial  castles,  and  the  guildhalls.  Al- 
though it  was  long  before  the  rise  of 
modern  science,  the  industrial  revolution, 


286 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  mass  production,  prosperity  was 
nevertheless  widely  diffused  among  the 
people.  They  lacked  our  modern  conven- 
iences and  gadgets,  to  be  sure,  but 
even  peasants  and  journeymen  were  well 
clothed,  well  housed,  and  well  fed,  and 
they  performed  wonders  with  their  hands. 
The  Age  of  the  Gothic  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  those  rare  periods  in  human  history 
when  the  creative  spirit  and  natural 
energies  of  men  were  set  free. 

How  shall  we  account  for  those  years  of 
spiritual  vigor  and  material  well-being? 
No  single  explanation  would  be  sufficient, 
but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  peculiar 
money  system  of  the  period  was  an  im- 
portant factor  in  the  astonishing  release  of 
human  energy.  It  was  a  money  system 
which,  according  to  our  modern  stand- 
ards, was  irrational  and  unsound.  But  it 
worked;  indeed,  it  worked  as  no  money 
system  has  worked  before  that  time  or 
since. 

What  was  this  system?  The  coins 
which  came  into  general  use  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Gothic  period  were  called 
bracteates.  They  were  thin  metal  discs, 
stamped  on  one  side,  and  often  grooved  so 
that  they  could  be  easily  broken  into  halves 
and  quarters  when  it  was  desired  to  make 
change.  They  were  quite  worthless  in 
themselves  (like  our  own  paper  money) 
and  no  one  wanted  to  keep  them  for  the 
metal  they  contained.  The  coins  were 
issued  by  local  rulers,  both  secular  and 
clerical,  and  periodically  they  were  re- 
called and  replaced  by  a  new  issue.  But 
here  is  the  peculiar  feature  of  the  system: 
in  order  to  exchange  an  old  coin  for  a  new 
one  you  had  to  pay  a  reminting  charge,  or 
seigniorage  fee,  of  from  ten  to  twenty  per 
cent.  This  was  a  lucrative  system  of 
taxation  for  the  bishops  and  the  princes, 
and  so  they  recalled  their  coins  for  remint- 
ing at  least  once  a  year,  and  sometimes 
twice  a  year  or  even  oftener.  Thus  a 
person  owning  one  hundred  bracteates  on 
the  day  before  reminting  day  would  find 
himself  with  only  eighty  or  ninety  brac- 
teates on  the  day  after,  the  prince  or  the 
bishop  keeping  the  difference  for  his  own 
enjoyment.  Could  any  system  be  more 
unreasonable  and  unfair  than  that? 

The  system  was  certainly  unfair,  but 
note  the  results.     In  the  first  place  no  one 


could  hoard  money,  for  coins  that  wer 
not  turned  in  for  reminting  became  worth 
less.  And  second,  because  the  value  o^ 
money  was  constantly  depreciating  as  re 
minting  day  approached — no  one  wantec 
to  be  caught  with  money  on  reminting  day 
if  he  could  avoid  it — people  had  a  tremcn-^ 
dous  urge  to  spend  money  as  soon  as  it 
came  into  their  possession.  And  it  was. 
spent.  It  was  spent  for  food,  clothing,] 
houses,  guildhalls,  castles,  and  cathedrals.' 
Money  circulated  from  hand  to  hand  as 
rapidly  as  possible,  paying  for  goods  and 
services  as  it  went  and  calling  forth  maxi- 
mum production.  All  willing  workers' 
could  find  jobs,  and  all  producers  had  an 
eager  market  for  their  wares.  People  who 
wanted  to  save  didn't  hide  bracteates  in  a 
strongbox  but  spent  them  on  objects  of 
enduring  value,  such  as  houses,  furniture, 
and  works  of  art.  They  became  rich  not 
in  money  but  in  possessions.  And  finally, 
usury  was  impossible,  for  there  was  no 
profit  in  accumulating  the  depreciating 
bracteates  between  reminting  days  in  or- 
der to  lend  them  out  at  interest,  a  fact 
which  made  the  prohibition  of  usury  by 
the  Church  quite  superfluous.  Thus  the 
Gothic  monetary  system  was  hard  on 
moneylenders,  but  it  was  wonderful  for 
farmers,  tradesmen,  artisans,  artists,  archi- 
tects, builders,  and  workers  of  all  kinds. 

Let  us  now  compare  the  primitive 
money  system  of  the  benighted  Middle 
Ages  with  the  highly  developed  system  of 
our  own  enlightened  day.  Our  paper 
money,  it  is  true,  has  even  less  intrinsic 
value  than  a  bracteate,  and  the  modern 
bank  deposit  has  shed  materiality  alto- 
gether and  knows  existence  only  as  an 
entry  in  the  ledger  of  a  bank.  But  com- 
pared with  the  flimsy  and  depreciating 
bracteate,  how  stable  and  enduring  is  our 
money !  You  can  keep  a  thousand-dollar 
bill  for  years,  and  no  prince  will  claim  a 
share  of  it.  And  you  may  be  sure  that  the 
ink  in  the  bank's  ledger  will  not  fade. 
The  cost  of  hiring  a  safe-deposit  box  is 
trifling  compared  with  the  value  of  the 
paper  money  it  will  hold,  and  the  cost  of 
owning  a  million-dollar  deposit  in  a  bank 
is  zero.  There  are  no  charges  for  storage, 
upkeep,  or  insurance,  and  it  is  not  taxed. 
Never  in  all  history  has  there  been  a  more 
perfect  medium  for  hoarding  than  a  bank 


THE    TOUCH    OF    MIDAS 


287 


^^^1: 


eposit,    not   even    gold.     How    inferior 
lerefore  were  the  bracteates !    There  was 
ttle  you  could  do  with  them  except  to  buy 
cods,  hire  workers — and  build  cathedrals. 
The  princes  of  the  Gothic  Age  took  a 
icavy  toll  when  they  claimed  their  per- 
entage    on    reminting    day.     And    our 
;overnment  also  takes  a  heavy  toll  when 
axes  must  be  paid.     But  note  the  differ- 
ence in  the  two  systems  of  taxation.     They 
axed  money,  and  those  who  held  it  paid 
he   tax.     We,    on   the   other   hand,    tax 
profits,  incomes,  land,  buildings,  imports, 
imusements,  club  dues,  furs,  jewelry,  and 
a  thousand  other  things  besides.     We  tax 
everyone  who  owns  anything  or  buys  any- 
thing,   everyone    who    works    and    earns 
above  a  certain  minimum,  everyone  who 
produces   wealth   and   makes   a   profit — 
everyone,  in  short,  except  the  man  who 
has  a  million  dollars  idle  in  a  bank.     So 
long  as  the  million  is  kept  in  idleness  it  is 
immutable  and  immune,  but  once  it  is 
sent  forth  into  the  world  of  active  business 
it  is  harassed  by  taxation  without  respite. 
The  effect  of  the  Gothic  system  was  to 
penalize    money    hoarding    and    to    en- 
courage creative  labor  and   production, 
whereas    our    system    has    precisely    the 
opposite  effect.     Gothic  money  circulated 
freely  and  rapidly,  performing  its  work  as  a 
medium  of  exchange,  whereas  our  money 
periodically  grows  sluggish  or  quits  work 
akogether  for  weeks  and  months  on  end. 
The  bracteate,  whose  life  was  short,  had  to 
work  fast;  but  dollars,  whether  in  bills  or 
bank  accounts,  are  in  no  hurry:  they  are 
far  more  durable  even  than  the  man  who 
owns  them.     Thus  with  bracteates,   but 
without  scientific  invention  and  machin- 
ery, the  people  of  the  Gothic  Age  enjoyed 
full    employment    and    prosperity.     We, 
with  our  marvelous  machines  and  all  the 
benefits  of  modern  science,  cling  to  our 
durable  dollars  while  factories  close  down, 
workers  lose  their  jobs,  and  people  suffer 
from  want  and  privation ! 

Ill 

WOULD  it  be  a  good  idea  to  sub- 
stitute bracteates  for  dollars  in 
our  American  economy?  Probably  not. 
Our  money  system,  when  it  is  working,  is 
a  marvel  of  convenience  and  efficiency. 


The  trouble  is  that  we  do  not  always  use 
our  money  as  money  is  supposed  to  be 
used,  namely  as  a  medium  of  exchange. 
This  is  largely  because  of  our  system  of 
taxation,  which  favors  hoarding  and 
penalizes  spending  and  investing.  It 
would  be  a  very  good  idea,  therefore,  to 
modify  our  system  of  taxation.  We 
should  tax  the  man  who  holds  investment 
funds  idle  in  a  bank,  and  lighten  the  taxes 
on  those  who  work  and  produce.  And 
except  for  such  taxes  as  those  on  liquor, 
tobacco,  and  gasoline,  which  serve  a 
special  purpose,  we  should  repeal  all  sales 
and  excise  taxes,  for  these  are  a  burden  on 
commerce.  Our  money  system  will  work 
all  right  when  we  reform  our  system  of 
taxation. 

But  if  we  put  a  tax  on  idle  investment 
funds  wouldn't  we  discourage  saving? 
The  answer  is  that  we  would  discourage 
only  excess  saving;  that  is,  saving  in  excess 
of  the  requirements  of  industry  for  new 
capital.  The  accumulation  of  surplus  in- 
vestment funds  not  only  serves  no  useful 
purpose  but  is  actually  detrimental  to  our 
economy,  for  it  deprives  industry  of  a 
market  for  its  products.  The  sales  of 
industry  depend  upon  consumer  expendi- 
ture and  capital  expenditure.  In  so  far  as 
income  is  saved  consumer  expenditure  is 
reduced,  and  unless  the  savings  are 
promptly  spent  or  invested  the  sales  of 
industry,  and  likewise  employment,  must 
necessarily  decline. 

As  the  investment  of  capital  provides 
employment  and  expands  the  plant  and 
equipment  of  industry,  so  the  refusal  to 
invest  causes  unemployment  and  business 
stagnation.  And  yet  those  who  own  or 
control  investment  funds  are  allowed  to 
say  in  effect:  "We  will  spend  our  money  or 
not  as  we  please.  And  we  will  invest  only 
if  we  anticipate  a  satisfactory  profit  for 
ourselves  and  not  otherwise.  Any  unem- 
ployment resulting  from  our  refusal  to 
spend  or  invest  is  not  our  concern." 

"But  it  is  your  concern,"  we  should  say 
in  reply.  "Having  money  you  have  the 
power  to  buy  goods  and  services,  and  there- 
fore you  are  responsible  for  employment. 
If  you  refuse  to  accept  this  responsibility  it 
will  be  assumed  by  the  state,  and  that  will 
be  the  end  of  the  system  of  private  enter- 
prise.    If  you  cannot  invest  at  a  satisfac- 


288 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


tory  rate  of  return  then  you  have  saved 
more  than  industry  is  willing  to  borrow  at 
the  rate  you  are  asking.  You  must  accept 
a  lower  return,  just  as  farmers  and  manu- 
facturers must  reduce  their  prices  if  they 
are  above  what  the  market  will  pay.  And 
if  you  cannot  invest  at  all,  even  at  zero  rate 
of  interest,  then  you  had  better  spend  your 
money  on  yachts,  or  endow  a  college  or  a 
scientific  foundation,  or  give  it  to  charity. 
In  any  case,  you  must  not  hold  your 
funds  idle.  Money  is  the  nation's  medium 
of  exchange;  it  is  the  lifeblood  of  com- 
merce, the  motive  force  which  keeps  our 
economy  in  operation.  If  you  have 
money  therefore  you  must  use  it.  We 
cannot  allow  you  to  withdraw  it  from 
circulation  and  hold  it  idle.  We  cannot 
allow  anybody  to  play  dog-in-the-manger 
with  the  nation's  medium  of  exchange." 

The  war  boom  will  be  over  when  our 
enemies  go  down  in  defeat.  And  then 
what  will  happen?  Investors,  appar- 
ently, are  apprehensive  about  the  future, 
for  with  every  "peace  scare"  the  stock 
market  goes  down.  This  cannot  be  very 
good  for  the  morale  of  our  soldiers:  it  sug- 
gests that  those  who  own  American  in- 
dustry, or  who  have  funds  available  for 
buying  an  interest  in  it,  expect  that  with 
victory  our  economy  will  sink  down  again 
into  depression. 

But  a  depression  need  not  happen.  We 
shall  come  out  of  this  war  with  vast  re- 
sources, a  productive  capacity  that  has  no 
precedent,   a  larger  and   better   trained 


labor  force  than  ever  before,  and  a  money 
supply  more  than  ample  to  finance  maxi- 
mum production  and  full  employment. 
With  these  we  can  have  a  degree  of  free- 
dom and  a  level  of  prosperity  unexampled 
in  the  history  of  the  world.  How  is  it  that 
there  is  even  the  possibility  of  failure? 

There  is  this  reason:  we  may  find  our- 
selves cursed  with  the  Touch  of  Midas. 
We  may  prefer  gold  to  real  wealth,  and 
dollars  to  the  things  that  dollars  will  buy. 
Moved  by  greed  and  fear  we  may  hoard 
our  money  instead  of  spending  it,  and  hide 
our  savings  instead  of  investing  them.  To 
get  money  we  may  sell  our  stocks  and 
bonds,  our  land,  our  buildings,  the  prod- 
ucts of  our  labor,  and  when  we  have  the 
money  we  may  not  use  it  but  choose  to 
hold  it  idle.  And  then  we  shall  wonder 
why  the  farmer  cannot  sell  his  produce, 
why  our  factories  are  closed  down,  and 
why  workers  are  unemployed. 

Some  will  blame  the  government  and 
others  the  system  of  private  enterprise. 
There  will  be  confusion,  bitterness,  and 
recrimination.  We  shall  feel  frustrated, 
cheated,  and  abused.  We  shall  look  for 
scapegoats.  Our  fear  and  our  greed  will 
have  made  us  blind  to  facts  and  deaf  to 
reason.  And  we  shall  not  hear  the  ironic 
laughter  of  the  gods  who  granted  us  our 
desire  to  have  money.  We  shall  have 
money.  We  shall  be  rich.  And  we  shall 
be  destitute. 

Is  there  no  river  Pactolus  for  us  to  jump 
in  before  it  is  too  late? 


Westinghouse  provides  yision  to  pierce  the  darkness  .  .  . 

Amazing  electronic  *'eyes"  for  a  Navy  skipper,  searching  the  sea  .  .  .  eyes  for  the  pilot  of  a  night- 
flying  bomber  .  .  .  eyes  for  an  anti-aircraft  battery,  seeing  far  beyond  the  range  of  human  sight. 


Westinghouse  sees  Tvith  the  sharp 
vision  of  trained  inspectors  ,  .  • 

Critical,  probing  vision  inspects  Westinghouse  products 
at  every  step  .  .  .  enforces  high  standards  of  accuracy  and 
precision  to  the  1/10, 000th  of  an  inch,  to  the  1/1, 000, 000th 
of  a  pound.  On  Westinghouse  inspectors  like  this  alert 
girl,  the  57-year  Westinghouse  creed  of  quality  depends. 


Westinghouse  opens  up  the  vision  of  a  brave  new  day  .  .  • 

In  Westinghouse  laboratories  today,  electronics  and  electricity  are  giving  up  their 
secrets  .  .  .  bringing  the  promise  of  immeasurably  better,  happier  living  in  the 
new  world  of  peace  that  lies  ahead.  Those  secrets  are  working  today  for  Victory. 
When  the  war  is  ended,  they  will  work  for  human  happiness  —  in  new  electrical 
products  and  appliances  far  beyond  your  dreams.  Westinghouse  Electric  &  Manu- 
facturing Co.,  Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania.  Plants  in  25  cities — ofi&ces  everywhere. 


PERSONAL  AND  Ortierwiso 


iPir^    VII.I.AINOVS    ERROR 

WE  WERE  guilty  of  an  atrocious  blunder 
in  the  January  issue.  On  page  134 
of  Ferdinand  Lund  berg's  article,  "Aurelio: 
The  People's  Choice,"  occurred  this  passage: 
"Nor  is  Aurelio  likely  to  find  himself  rebuked 
as  Judge  Freschi  was  by  the  Court  of  Appeals 
when  the  Court  reviewed  the  case  of  a  non-re- 
ligious conscientious  objector.  Judge  Freschi 
had  bawled  the  man  out,  accused  him  of 
cowardice,  and  denounced  him  before  a  court 
full  of  people;  the  Court  of  Appeals  sternly 
reproved  the  Judge." 

The  fact  is  that  Judge  Freschi  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  incident  cited.  The 
case  referred  to  was  before  a  Federal  Court 
whereas  Judge  Freschi  is  on  the  bench  of  the 
Court  of  General  Sessions  of  New  York  County. 
What  happened  was  that  Judge  Freschi' s  name 
was  accidentally  substituted  for  that  of  an- 
other man  and  the  mistake  was  never  caught 
until  a  few  days  before  publication,  when 
the  Magazine  was  printed  and  bound  and 
ready  to  ship.  At  the  last  minute  we  were 
able  to  insert,  at  considerable  expense,  an 
error  slip  which  acknowledged  the  blunder. 
We  believe  that  the  entire  edition  was 
covered. 

All  the  same,  we  feel  pretty  unhappy  about 
this  boner,  and  herewith  tender  our  apologies 
to  Judge  Freschi. 

PREFACE    TO    GEORGE    "W . 
MARTIN'S    AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

A  ND  how  did  George  W,  Martin,  author 
f\^  of  "Preface  to  the  President's  Auto- 
biography," get  this  way? 


At  least  part  of  his  wit  must  have  been  in-' 
herited  from  his  father,  the  late  Edward  S 
Martin,  who  was  long  editor  of  Life  (the  humor 
magazine  whose  title  was  subsequently  bought 
by  Henry  Luce)  and  who  for  many  years 
wrote  the  Easy  Chair  for  Harper^ s;  Edward  S. 
Martin  had  a  knack  of  writing  about  public 
issues  and  public  men  in  a  way  which  made 
them  very  human.  The  younger  Martin, 
like  his  present  subject,  went  to  Groton 
School  (whose  former  headmaster,  Endicott 
Peabody,  he  portrayed  for  us  last  month)  and 
to  Harvard  (1910),  and  then  into  the  law,  in 
Wall  Street.  There,  unlike  his  subject,  he 
stayed,  utilizing  his  extra  energies  largely  by 
interesting  himself  in  education:  he  is  the 
President  of  the  Brearley  School  in  New  York 
City,  and  has  long  been  regarded  as  an  enfant 
terrible  among  the  Groton  alumni,  whom  he 
shocks  and  delights  with  his  skeptical  sallies 
about  the  inculcation  of  muscular  Chris- 
tianity. 

He  is  now  fifty-six  years  old,  a  man  of  mid- 
dle height,  lean  and  spare,  with  gold-rimmed 
spectacles  and  coarse  black  hair  turning  gray. 
He  wears  a  bow  tie  of  lean  dimensions  and, 
to  see  him  in  repose,  you  would  take  him  for 
the  lawyer  of  the  novels,  forever  rustling  with 
papers  and  handling  the  fine  points  of  con- 
tracts with  a  pair  of  tweezers.  When  he 
enters  a  conversation,  any  such  impression 
is  abruptly  altered.  He  then  appears  to  be 
made  of  springs,  got  under  power  by  a  con- 
siderable store  of  nervous  energy.  He  rel- 
ishes being  considered  a  hard  man,  a  tough 
guy,  and  though  his  countenance  softens  when 
Mencken's  name  is  mentioned,  the  softness 
is  fleeting.     In  argument  he  bears  down  on 


WHEN  THERE'S  WORK  TO  BE  DONE 
-IN  WAR  OR  PEACE 


GM  Diesels  will  he  on  hand  to  show 
that  they  can  do  an  even  bigger  job  in 
America's  trucks.  Simple  in  mechani- 
cal construction;  sturdily  and  pre- 
cisely built;  economical  in  operation 
and  upkeep,  GM  Diesels  will  prove  as 
indispensable  in  peace  as  they  are 
proving  vital  in  war. 


YOU  will  find  GM  Diesels  hard  at  work  in 
every  theater  of  the  war.  They  power  mas- 
sive tanks  moving  into  battle;  heavy  trucks 
in  endless  supply  lines,  tractors  to  clear  land- 
ing fields,  landing  and  assault  boats,  big  sub- 
marines and  fast  subchasers  in  home  and  in 
foreign  waters. 

In  every  respect,  these  GM  Diesel  Engines  are 
living  up  to  all  that  was  predicted  for  them — and 
more.  In  many  instances  they  are  doing  an  even 


greater  variety  of  jobs  than  they  were  designed 
for.  They  are  standing  up  under  conditions  that 
couldn't  possibly  have  been  foreseen. 

When  the  war  is  over,  GM  Diesels  will  be  ready 
to  serve  the  peace  as  they  are  serving  in  war. 
With  this  difference:  expanded  production  facil- 
ities, together  with  improvements  and  refine- 
ments in  design  and  construction,  will  make  them 
even  more  available  for  use— more  capable  of 
reliable,  low-cost  performance. 


-K,:'r^>^ 


DIESEL 
POWER 


ENGINES    15  io  250  hK^^;7D^^  OlESiL  ENGINE  DIVISION,  DehoiiMkL 

ENOiHES.  J5Q  to  2000  H.P:,.CLBVELAND  DtESBL  ENGINE  DIVISION,  OevehrKl,  Ohio 
LOCOMOTIVES. MECTRO-^ MOTIVE  DIVISION,  La  Grange,  ill 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


his  adversary,  heckling,  gibing,  finally  firing 
off'  a  broadside  with  a  cackle  of  derisive 
laughter. 

''I  was  born  in  Rochester  and  I  don't  mean 
Minnesota  either,"  he  .s^ys.  "  I  detest  the 
West.  No  first-rate  man  ever  came  from 
there.  No,  I  never  wi^-nt  to  see  it  and  I'm 
damned  if  I  ever  go  west  of  Seventh  Avenue 
again." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Mr.  Martin  should 
approach  Mr.  Roosevelt  with  a  somewhat 
skeptical  eye,  for  of  late  years  the  President 
has  tended  to  recede  further  into  the  mists 
and  to  become  more  image  than  human  being. 
It  is  at  the  very  moment  when  he  has  reached 
the  upper  levels  of  world  decision  and  signs 
a  great  document  with  imperial  brevity  and 
simplicity  as  "Roosevelt"  that  Mr.  Martin 
picks  up  the  scalpel  and  proceeds  with  his 
researches  as  to  what  manner  of  man — ^not 
figurehead — the  President  is. 

MYSTICISM    SOLD    SHORT 

ABOUT  a  year  ago  business  leaders  began 
£\^  public  discussion  of  postwar  problems 
and  the  capacity  of  the  business  community 
to  meet  them.  Since  that  time  the  volume  of 
such  discussion  has  increased  enormously  until 
now  scarcely  a  day  goes  by  without  still  an- 
other business  man  appearing  on  the  rostrum. 
What  are  they  talking  about,  what  is  the  body 
of  the  doctrine  now  being  preached?  C. 
Hartley  Grattan's  "What  Business  Thinks 
About  Postwar  America"  is  both  a  synthesis 
and  an  analysis  of  what  these  industrialists 
and  business  men  have  been  saying.  The 
text,  of  course,  is  "free  enterprise"  but  the 
application  of  the  text  is  made  with  a  good 
deal  more  discrimination  than  once  was  the 
case.  Readers  may  recall  a  celebrated  little 
volume  edited  by  Edward  Angly  called  Oh 
Yeah?  published  in  1 931 .  This  book  consisted 
of  quotations  from  the  public  utterances  of 
the  banking  fraternity  and  industrial  magnates 
in  the  months  after  October,  1929.  "Mysti- 
cism" is  the  gentlest  term  that  could  be  ap- 
plied to  a  great  deal  of  the  nonsense  put  about 
in  those  days.  "Comparatively  few  people 
are  reached  by  this  crash,"  said  Julius  Rosen- 
wald  in  November,  1929.  "It  looks  as  if 
industry  would  have  to  begin  scraping  around 
to  get  employees  instead  of  laying  off'  any- 
body," was  the  opinion  of  Alexander  Legge. 
Compared  to  balderdash  of  this  character — 
tom-tom  beating  and  gourd  rattling  was  what 


it  really  was — the  statements  coming  from 
some  of  our  business  people  now  are  models 
of  restraint  and  precision.  Mr.  Grattan  is  an 
old  contributor.  It  may  be  interesting  to 
recall  that  eight  years  ago  he  wrote  an  article 
for  us  called  "The  Road  to  Destitution:  Why 
Twenty  Million  Are  on  Relief."  It  was  a 
remarkable  performance  and  perhaps  was 
more  widely  quoted  than  any  other  magazine 
article  on  the  subject  published  during  the 
depression. 


SEVENTY-EIGHT-YEAR    MYSTERY 

Dale  Clark's  "It  Was  Booth's  Body"  is 
the  most  recent  treatment  of  a  question 
as  hardy  and  vigorous  as  that  of  the  author- 
ship of  Shakespeare's  plays.  The  question  is: 
What  happened  to  John  Wilkes  Booth  after 
he  killed  Lincoln?  Thousands  of  people 
believed  that  he  had  escaped.  One  story 
had  it  that  Edwin  Booth,  in  his  later  tours  of 
the  country  as  an  actor,  was  wont  to  halt 
after  his  engagement  in  Louisville  and  go  to 
the  Kentucky  mountains  where  his  aging 
brother  lived  as  a  recluse.  Many  people 
believed  that  John  St.  Helen,  a  strange  char- 
acter who  lived  in  the  Southwest  after  the 
Civil  War  and  who  finally  committed  suicide 
in  1903  at  Enid,  Oklahoma,  under  the  name 
of  David  E.  George,  was  really  John  Wilkes 
Booth.  A  Memphis  lawyer  named  Finis  L. 
Bates  spent  many  years  trying  to  prove  that 
St.  Helen  was  Booth.  (In  1924  Harper's  sent 
William  G.  Shepherd  to  the  South  and  West 
to  investigate  the  story  which  was  still  flour- 
ishing. Shepherd's  refutation  of  St.  Helen's 
claims  appeared  in  November  of  that  year  in 
a  Harper  article,  "Shattering  the  Myth  of 
John  Wilkes  Booth."  According  to  Ernest 
Sutherland  Bates,  St.  Helen's  mummified 
body  was  on  exhibition  at  Venice,  California, 
as  late  as  1929.  It  may  still  be  there.  Other 
legends  had  Booth  masquerading  as  a  clergy- 
man; still  others  were  to  the  effect  that  he 
had  been  seen  in  London,  Paris,  and  India. 

Mr.  Clark — his  name  is  a  pseudonym — 
goes  at  this  celebrated  case  from  a  different 
direction.  He  is  satisfied  that  Booth  was 
killed  as  the  history  books  agree,  but  that  the 
authorities  found  something  puzzlingly  wrong 
with  the  body  in  their  possession.  He  under- 
takes to  explain  why  they  were  so  secretive 
about  the  body.  Mr.  Clark  is  a  mystery 
fiction  writer.  He  is  the  author  of  Focus  on 
Murder    and    is    the  creator  of  Black  MasJCs 


{Continued  on  second  page  following) 


Ho)  :Io  our  far-flung  convoys  find 
L'ir  I  y  through  thousands  of  miles 


can  an  oil-well  drill  be  steered 


;h  rock  in  any  desired  direction 
underground? 


5-f  at  guides  pilots  through  fog  and 
less?  What  holds  the  plane  on 
e  with  no  hand  on  the  controls? 


This  mysterious  wheel  makes 
all  these  things  possible 


Ihis  mysterious  wheel  is  a  gy- 
roscope. 

When  set  in  motion,  It  constantly 
maintains  a  fixed  position  in  space 
.  .  .  pointing  straight  as  an  arrow 
in  whatever  direction  it  is  set. 

It  gives  man  a  sort  of  sixth  sense 
—  a  sense  of  direction  that  frees 
him  from  dependence  upon  land- 
marks. It  has  made  possible  the 
development  of  devices  so  uncanny 
that  it's  hard  to  believe  your  eyes 
when  you  see  them  in  operation. 

These  devices  are  comparatively 
new.  It  was  only  33  years  ago  that 
Sperry  made  a  successful  test  of 
the  first  Sperry  Gyro-Compass. 
This  compass  greatly  improved 
the  accuracy  of  navigation  because 
it  points  to  true  north. 

Sperry,  a  firm  of  creative  en- 
gineers whose  chief  interests  lie  in 
solving  new  and  difficult  technical 
problems,  continued  to  experiment 
with  the  gyroscope.  The  result  was 
the  development  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  tools  for  war  and  peace 
based  on  the  gyroscope. 

For  example,  the  gyroscopic 
devices  which  solve  the  problems 
stated  under  the  pictures,  were  all 
invented  by  Sperry. 

1.  The  Sperry  Gyro-Compass 
guides  precious  American 
convoys  to  port. 

2.  A  gyroscopic  device  —  invent- 
ed by  Sperry— enables  men 
to  control  oil-well  drills  a 
mile  underground.  (You  can 


start  drilling  an  oil  well  on 
shore  and  tap  oil  half  a  mile 
out  to  sea.) 

3.  The  Sperry  Directional  Gyro 
and  the  Gyro -Horizon  help 
guide  our  pilots  through  fog 
and  darkness.  The  Sperry 
Automatic  Gyropilot  relieves 
the  human  pilot,  holding  the 
plane  on  its  course  with  no 
hand  on  the  controls. 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  many 
uses  of  the  gyroscope  . . .  most  of 
which  have  been  pioneered  by 
Sperry. 

At  present,  naturally,  we  are 
concentrating  on  the  uses  of  the 
gyroscope  as  a  tool  of  war  . .  .  just 
as  our  work  with  hydrauHcs  and 
electronics  is  now  devoted  to  war 
uses.  After  the  war,  we  shall  re- 
sume the  production  of  gyroscopic, 
hydraulic,  and  electronic  equip- 
ment which  will  serve  an  America 
at  peace. 

^  Let's  All  Back  the  Attack!  -^^ 
Buy  More  Bonds 


sreiif 

CORPO  RATION 

30  Rockefeller  Plaza,  New  York  20 


FORD  INSTRUMENT  CO.,  INC. 

SPERRY  GYROSCOPE  CO.,  INC. 

ViCKERS,  INC. 

Waterbury  Tool  Division,  ViCKERS.  INC. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


house  detective  O'Hanna.  A  new  mystery 
of  his,  The  Narrow  Cell,  will  be  published 
shortly  after  this  issue  of  Harper^s  is  on  the 
stands. 


e/ays 


SOMEOIVE    BLlJXnERED 


Albert  Carr,  the  author  of  "The  Five  Fatal 
J\^  Mistakes  of  the  Axis,"  is  Special  Assist- 
ant to  Donald  M.  Nelson,  Chairman  of  the 
War  Production  Board.  Mr.  Carr  was  a 
research  chemist  at  the  University  of  Chicago 
when  he  began  to  be  interested  in  social 
problems.  Presently  he  quit  chemistry  and 
joined  a  firm  doing  economic  research  for 
large  corporations.  He  wrote  short  stories — 
a  couple  of  them  appeared  in  Harper's  some 
years  back — and  articles  for  various  periodi- 
cals. He  is  the  author  of  three  books:  Jug- 
gernaut, Men  of  Power,  and  America'' s  Last 
Chance. 

ITE    CAN    TAKE    IT 

Iouis  /.  Dublin,  author  of  "Our  Health 
jl  in  Wartime,"  is  one  of  the  best  known 
statisticians  in  the  United  States.  He  is  a 
vice-president  and  chief  statistician  of  the 
Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Company.  Usu- 
ally he  is  addressed  as  Dr.  Dublin;  the  prefix 
comes  from  a  degree  in  biology  which  he 
took  at  Columbia. 

Dr.  Dublin  was  born  in  Kovno,  Lith- 
uania, in  1882  and  was  brought  to  New  York 
four  years  later  by  his  immigrant  parents. 
His  childhood  and  youth  conform  to  the  now 
classic  East  Side  tradition — even  to  the  point 
of  selling  papers.  He  was  a  precocious  child 
and  entered  the  College  of  the  City  of  New 
York  when  he  was  fourteen.  His  principal 
fields  of  study  were  mathematics  and  biology. 

A  J\'ew  Yorker  profile  of  Dr.  Dublin,  pub- 
lished last  year,  says  that  his  interest  in  public 
health  problems  arose  from  a  prolonged  argu- 
ment which  he  carried  on  by  correspondence 
with  the  late  Karl  Pearson,  who  wrote  articles 
on  the  application  of  mathematics  to  biology 
and  eugenics.  Pearson  contended  that  it 
was  futile  to  try  to  eradicate  tuberculosis 
by  curing  individuals.  "If  these  individuals 
were  simply  allowed  to  die,  the  plague  would 
in  time  vanish."  Dublin  was  "horrified"  at 
this  argument. 

In  1908  Dr.  Dublin  was  made  statistical 
assistant  to  the  medical  director  of  the  Mutual 
Life  Insurance  Company,  and  a  year  later  he 


moved  over  to  the  Metropolitan  where  1 
was  associated  with  the  late  Dr.  Lee  Frank 
who  headed  the  new  welfare  division  of  tJ 
company.  Dr.  Dublin  is  now  in  charge 
public  health  relations  for  the  Metropolita 
At  the  moment  he  is  particularly  interestei 
in  the  organization  of  a  permanent  Museu 
of  Health  which  he  hopes  will  be  set  up  i 
New  York  City.  He  is  Chairman  of  tl 
Board  of  this  project,  which  already  owi 
the  exhibit  material  which  was  shown  in  tl 
Medicine  and  Public  Health  Building  at  th 
New  York  World's  Fair. 

Dr.  Dublin  is  the  author  of  many  book 
written  either  with  collaborators  or  by  hiir 
self  alone.  Some  of  them  are  Health  an 
Wealth,  The  Money  Value  of  a  Man,  Lengt 
of  Life,  Population  Problems,  Twenty-Fii 
Tears  of  Health  Progress,  and  A  Family  of  Thirt 
Million. 

ACTION    IN    THE     IVEST    INDIES 

''y^ARiBBEAN    Command"    is   the   ninth  ii 
V^  Fletcher  Pratt's  series  of  articles  or 
engagements  in  which  American  naval  force! 
have  been  involved  in  this  war,  and  the  last  tc 
carry  the  overall  title  of  "Americans  in  Bat- 
tle."    More   Pratt  material  is  on  the  way, 
however,    and   we   shall   next   month   begin 
another  series  by  him  to  be  called  "The  Gam-3 
paign  for  the  Solomons."     In  the  present  series^ 
all  the  articles — with  the  exception  of  "Carib-i 
bean    Command"    and    "Memorial    of   thq 
Wasp'' — have  dealt  with  the  naval  war  in  the 
Pacific. 

The  eighth  of  the  series,  "One  Destroyer," 
appeared  in  the  December  issue.  Because  of 
space  limitations  in  Personal  and  Otherwise  wej 
could  not  print  an  exhibit  that  Mr.  Pratt  sent- 
in.  It  seems  that  it's  an  old  Navy  custom  for. 
a  crew  to  celebrate  the  arrival  of  New  Year's] 
Day  with  a  poem  presented  to  the  captain,  j 
Here  is  the  job  done  by  the  crew  of  "One  { 
Destroyer"  (the  John  D.  Ford)  on  the  first  New  ' 
Year's  Day  of  the  war.  The  Ford  was  atf 
Surabaya:  • 

The  sea  is  calm,  the  sky  is  clear,  i' 

The  John  D.  Ford  moored  to  a  pier,  > 

With  six  lines  doubled  fore  and  aft. 
The  Axis  powers  at  war  with  us,  ; 

We're  in  a  port  we  can't  discuss. 

The  old  year's  out,  the  new  is  in, 
In  all  due  time  this  war  we'll  win; 
We'll  lick  them  fairly  without  a  doubt. 


(Continued  on  second  page  following) 


THE  MAGNA  CHART  A 

OF  THE  U.  S. 
MERCHANT  MARINE 


From  the  Merchant  Marine  Act  of  1936, 
as  amended:  "It  is  necessary  for  the  na- 
tional {l('f<'nse  and  development  of  its 
foreif^n  and  domestic  commerce  that  the 
I'nited  States  sliall  have  a  merchant 
marine  (a)  sufficient  to  carry  its  domes- 
tic w'aterl)()rne  commerce  and  a  substan- 
tial portion  of  the  walerborne  export  and 
import  forei<in  commerce  of  the  United 
States,  and  to  provide  shipping  service  on 
all  routes  essential  for  maintaining  the 
flow  of  such  domestic  and  foreign  water- 
borne  commerce  at  all  times,  (b)  capable 
of  serving  as  a  naval  and  military  auxil- 
iary in  time  of  war  or  national  emergency, 
(c)  owned  and  operated  under  the  United 
States  flag  by  citizens  of  the  United 
States  insofar  as  may  be  practicable, 
and  (d)  composed  of  the  best-equipped, 
safest,  and  most  suitable  types  of  vessels, 
constructed  in  the  United  States  and 
manned  with  a  trained  and  efficient  citi- 
zen personnel.  It  is  hereby  declared  to 
be  the  policy  of  the  United  States  to 
foster  the  development  and  encourage 
the  maintenance  of  such  a  merchant 
marine."  {Public  Act  835) 


HE'S  MEASURING  THE  WIDTH  OF  AN  OCEAN! 


)ne  of  America's  proudest  achievements  is 
me  precision  factory  work.  The  skill  of  men 
ike  this  is  the  measure  of  the  demand  for  our 
lanufactured  products  in  foreign  lands. 

Production  for  overseas  sale  adds  to  wages 
n  our  factories  and  mines,  offices  and  oil  fields, 
n  our  farms  and  ranches  .  .  .  and  enables  us 
0  buy  the  goods  we  need  from  abroad.  Every 
American  has  a  stake  in  our  foreign  trade! 

Until  very  recently,  most  of  our  overseas 
rade  had  to  travel  in  other  nations'  vessels. 
Jut  now,  thanks  to  the  war-accelerated  pro- 
gram of  the  Merchant  Marine  Act  of  1936,  we 
lave  enough  for  "all  routes  essential  for  main- 
aining  the  flow  of  domestic  and  foreign  water- 


borne  commerce.^^  And  shipping  that  is  truly 
American:  built  and  manned  by  Americans, 
operated  efficiently  and  successfully  by  the 
business  genius  that  has  made  our  nation  great. 

American  Export  Lines  have  helped  put  this 
declaration  of  seagoing  independence  into 
action.  Before  the  war,  fine  new  ships  and 
U.  S.  seafaring  men  enlarged  our  trading  in 
the  Mediterranean  and  Indian  Ocean  areas. 

Today,  an  augmented  American  Export  fleet 
sails  under  War  Shipping  Administration 
orders,  part  of  a  new  merchant  marine  that's 
handling  unprecedented  demands  for  U.  S. 
war  materials  —  a  permanent  cornerstone  of 
our  national  defense  and  economic  security. 


American  Export  Lines    M  f 


i.  W.  AVER  a  SON 


25  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY  4 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Our  boiler  is  number  one  in  use, 
Making  our  steam,  our  water,  our  juice. 

A  phone  on  board  connected  to  land. 
No  enemy  in  sight  on  any  hand. 
Riding  ebb  tide  in  ^ jDlack  out. 
No  one  on  liberty,  no  one  on  leave. 
All  hands  aboard  I  do  believe. 

MOVI]^G    A    MECHAXICAt    ARMY 

ONCE  upon  a  time  military  commanders 
were  extremely  casual  in  the  handling 
of  their  commissaries,  baggage  trains,  and 
equipment.  Plunder  and  forage  seem  to  have 
been  depended  on  to  close  every  gap.  Now- 
adays planning  has  reached  such  an  elaborate 
stage  that  extemporaneous  action  or  abrupt 
change  of  plan  is  practically  impossible.  To 
move  an  army  requires  the  services  of  an 
enormous  subsidiary  corporation  of  experts 
and  skilled  labor. 

C.  Lester  Walker^ s  "Preparation  for  In- 
vasion" will  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  the 
complexity  of  a  large-scale  military  enterprise 
of  today.  We  have  published  a  number  of 
articles  by  Mr.  Walker  on  various  phases 
of  service  training  and  preparation.  These 
pieces  include  "We  Train  Our  Armored 
Force,"  the  story  of  the  tank  school  at  Fort 
Knox;  "The  Army  Teaches  the  Trades," 
which  was  about  the  service  schools;  and  "We 
Model  Our  Fighting  Ships,"  an  account  of  the 
basin  at  Carderock,  Maryland,  where  the 
Navy  solves  technical  problems  by  putting 
models  through  their  paces.  Mr.  Walker  is 
a  free-lance  writer.  He  first  taught  English 
at  Yale-in-China  and  then,  after  his  return 
from  the  Far  East,  was  engaged  in  the  pub- 
licity business.  After  a  brief  period  as  an 
editor,  he  quit  to  devote  his  entire  time  to 
writing. 

DREAMLAIVD    EXPRESS 

Josephine  W,  Johnson^  author  of  "Night 
Flight,"  is  the  well  known  novelist  and 
short  story  writer.  Her  novels  include 
Now  in  November — which  won  the  Pulitzer 
Prize — and  Jordanstown.  She  has  also  pub- 
lished a  book  of  verse,  a  volume  of  short 
stories,  and  a  book  for  children.  Three  of 
her  stories  appeared  in  the  O.  Henry  Memo- 
rial Collections.  She  is  married  to  Sgt.  Grant 
Cannon — now  with  the  Air  Force  in  New 
Guinea — and  is  the  mother  of  two  chil- 
dren. 


A    MINOR    LUCIFER    UNCHAINED 

THE  occasion  for  printing  William  Zuker- 
man^s   "The  Strange   Story  of  Oswald 
Mosley"  is  the  release  of  that  detestable  fig-i 
ure  from   prison  by  the  British  government! 
and  the  public  outcry  which  followed.     Per- 
haps Mosley  is  too  unstable  a  character  to  be 
described  as  "sinister"  but  he  certainly  repre- 
sented a  sinister  point  of  view.     Out  to  win 
by  whatever  means,  he  represented  that  por- 
tion of  the  English  rich  who  put  the  salvation 
of  their  wealth  above  everything  else  and  who  I 
were  willing   to   employ   any   sort   of  social  \ 
poison  to  attain  their  end.    Their  counterparts 
live  in  the  United  States  to-day.     Mosley's 
release  had  the  effect  of  thrusting  a  needle  ' 
into  the  vital  nerves  of  a  large  section  of  the 
British  public.     The  protest  was  almost  deaf- 
ening.    Why?     Here  is  a  paragraph  from  a 
recent   editorial    in    The   New   Statesman   and 
Nation  that  gives  one  explanation: 

There  have  always  been  two  main  views  of  this 
war.  The  first  that  it  is  a  national  struggle  for 
power  provoked  only  by  the  restless  ambitions  of 
Germany.  The  second  view  is  that  the  German 
form  of  Fascism  is  merely  the  worst  and  that  the 
struggle  is  at  root  ideological.  Thus,  according  to 
many  Members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
some  sections  of  the  middle-class,  when  the  war 
against  Germany  is  formally  at  an  end,  the  task 
will  be  done.  They  expect  to  go  back  to  the  same 
way  of  life,  hope  for  good  jobs  and  a  quiet  Britain, 
Millions  in  the  factories  and  Services  see  the  matter 
quite  differently.  Fascism  is  a  doctrine  which 
arises  from  the  failure  of  our  present  social  order 
to  deliver  the  goods  to  common  people.  It  is  not 
exclusively  a  German  disease;  it  began  in  Italy, 
it  is  to  be  found  in  a  virulent  form  in  many  other 
countries  of  Europe,  was  partly  responsible  for  the 
destruction  of  France,  and  was  attempting  to  ob- 
tain a  hold  in  Britain  before  the  war.  It  deliber- 
ately cultivates  anti-Semitism  as  a  weapon  of  dis- 
integration; it  aims  in  Britain,  as  elsewhere,  at 
nothing  less  than  the  total  destruction  of  all  our  lib- 
erties and  at  a  totalitarian  dictatorship.  Scotched 
in  1940,  it  is  again  rearing  its  head.  On  that 
analysis,  victory  over  German  Fascism  does  not 
finally  destroy  the  enemy,  either  in  Europe  or  in 
Britain.  Sir  Oswald  Mosley,  in  the  language  of 
the  A.  E.  U.,  is  "the  personification  of  Hitler  and 
of  all  those  foul  and  beastly  deeds  and  ideas" 
against  which  our  soldiers  and  workers  are  fight- 
ing. And  the  danger  of  Fascism  in  England  may 
be  greater  than  ever  after  the  war. 

Mr.  Zukerman  is  an  American  newspaper- 
man who  lived  and  worked  in  England  for 
many  years.  At  the  moment  he  is  on  the 
staff  of  the  New  York  Jewish  Morning  Journal. 


{Continued  on  third  page  following) 


A    GLORIOUS    PITROUCHKA,   DANCID 
ANIW    IN    LIVING,    ILECTRONIC    TONE 


The  clown,  the  hiillerina,  and  the  Moor, 
triangle  in  pantomime.  \'iviclly  the  Mu- 
saphonic  reproduces  the  famous  hallet  by 
Stravinsky.  With  incredible  realism,  this 
instrument's  electronic  tone  captures  the 
very  breath  and  color  of  the  gay  Russian 
carnival,  the  puppet  show,  the  holiday 
sounds  and  scenes.  Petrouchka  is  danced 
anew,  in  your  own  home,  so  faithfully  is 
the  colorful  music  reproduced!  .  .  .This 
superb  radio-phonograph  is  a  product  of 
General  Electric  electronic  research.  It 
prings  from  the  desire  of  General  Elec- 
tric to  build  the  finest  possible  radio  and 
phonograph  in  combination.  .  .  .  Today 
General  Electric  is  engaged  in  war  pro- 
duction, and  only  present  owners  can 
enjoy  the  Musaphonic.  But  after  Vic- 
tory, following  advances  in  electronics, 
the  Musaphonic  with  FM  (Frequency 
Modulation)   will   be   finer   than   ever. 


MUSAPHONIC 


The  Sheraton  is  a  Musaphonic  cabinet  of  dis- 
tinguished appearance,  adapted  from  an  18th 
century  piece.  Musaphonic  prices  range  upward 
from  $300.  Authorized  Musaphonic  representa- 
tives are  located  in  principal  cities.  Tune  in  "The 
World  Today"  every  evening  except  Sunday  at 
6:45  E.W.T.  CBS.  On  Sunday  listen  to  "The 
G-E  All-Girl  Orchestra"  at  10  P.M.  E.W.T.  NBC. 
Each  week  192,000  General  Electric  employees 
purchase    over  a    million    dollars    in    War    Bonds. 

BY  GENERAL  A  ELECTRIC 


our  distilleries  are  devoted  to  the  production  of  alcohol  for  war  use  only 


may  I  suggest  you  buy 
more  (7.  S.  War  Bonds  today? 


Kentucky  Straight  Bourbon  Whiskey,  Bottled  in  Bond,  100  Proof.  Bernheim  Distilling  Co.,  Inc.,  Louisville,  Kentucky 
Tune  in  Schenley's  Cresta  Blanca  Wine  Carnival  Every  Wednesday  Evening  C.  B.  S. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


J 


He  is  and  has  been  a  frequent  contributor  to 
both  En^Ush  and  American  periodicals.  His 
most  recent  Harper  article  was  "The  Revolt 
in  the  Warsaw  Ghetto,"  last  September. 

ni.OW,    IIIK^KK,     III.OW 

Wi:  CERTAINLY  don't  }:)ropose  to  use  "The 
Silver  Horn"  by  Thomas  Sancton  as 
a  bait  for  recollections  by  others  of  vacations 
in  Boy  Scout  Camps,  but  we  can't  help  but 
feel  that  the  variety  would  be  extraordinary. 
We  can  recall  one  Scout  Camp  in  Minnesota 
where  a  boy  rescued  another  from  drowning 
under  circumstances  that  could  justifiably  be 
described  as  heroic.  After  the  first  shock  and 
admiration  had  worn  off",  the  camp  decided 
that  the  hero  should  be  rewarded  with  a 
''feather  pulled  from  the  tail  of  Dan  Beard" 
and  this  subject  was  the  staple  of  conversation 
for  some  days  after.  We  can  also  recall  the 
Scout  sleighride  at  Waverly,  Pennsylvania. 
This  sleighride  wound  up  at  the  Stevenson 
farmhouse  where  there  was  the  promise  of 
oyster  stew.  Somebody  asked,  "How  do  you 
catch  oysters?"  and  Joe  Carpenter — he  had 
won  no  merit  badges — replied,  "Run  'em  up 
on  shore  and  step  on  'em." 

Mr.  Sancton  lives  and  writes  in  New  York. 
He  is  a  native  of  New  Orleans  and  worked 
on  the  Times-Picayune  before  he  came  North. 
Last  month  we  published  a  piece  of  his  called 
"Race  Clash."  That  article  and  ''The  Silver 
Horn"  will  probably  reappear  as  chapters  of  a 
book  about  the  South  on  which  he  is  now  at 
work. 

JAPAN    IN    WARTIME 

John  Morris,  the  author  of  "Tokyo  Since 
Pearl  Harbor,"  was  recently  repatriated 
from  Tokyo.  He  had  spent  a  couple  of 
years  there  lecturing  at  one  of  the  Japanese 
universities  and  acting  as  an  adviser  to  the 
Japanese  Foreign  Office  when  Pearl  Harbor 
was  attacked  and  he  found  himself  an  alien 
enemy.  Presumably  because  of  his  govern- 
ment connection  he  was  allowed  considerable 
freedom  by  the  Japanese  authorities;  appar- 
ently he  was  the  only  Englishman  who  was 
not  imprisoned  or  put  in  a  concentration 
camp.  Thus  he  had  an  extraordinary  oppor- 
tunity to  observe  the  popular  reaction  to  the 
war.  Right  now  Mr.  Morris  is  in  charge  of 
the  Japan  Section  of  the  British  Broadcasting 


Corporation.     His  books  include  The  Ghurkas 
and  Living  with  Lepchas. 


G^5y0 


GOLD    <:nA2KY 


Georf^e  Richmond  Walker,  the  author 
'  of  "The  Touch  of  Midas,"  earns  his  liv- 
ing as  a  managing  trustee  of  real  estate,  but 
says  that  he  had  a  hard  time  deciding  between 
economics  and  literature.  He  lives  in  Con- 
cord, Massachusetts.  "Money,"  he  says,  "is 
a  fascinating  study,  perhaps  even  more  baf- 
fling as  a  subject  of  enquiry  than  it  is  elusive 
as  an  object  of  desire.  To  be  a  good  mone- 
tary theorist  one  should  perhaps  be  trained  as 
a  theologian,  for  theology  and  the  theory  of 
money  deal  with  opposites:  God  and  Mam- 
mon. Money  is  to  the  material  world  what 
God  is  to  the  spiritual;  money  is  the  'source  of 
all  evil'  as  God  is  'the  source  of  all  good'; 
money  represents  power  on  earth  as  God 
represents  power  in  heaven;  and  avarice  is 
the  antonym  for  charity.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  the  subject  of  money  is  bitterly  contro- 
versial, nor  is  it  an  accident  that  monetary 
theorists,  like  theologians,  are  called  either 
orthodox  or  heretical.  I,  of  course,  am  a 
heretic.  I  regard  'sound  money'  doctrines 
as  unsound,  and  believe  that  the  salvation  of 
the  country,  and  of  the  system  of  private 
enterprise,  depend  upon  a  successful  revolt 
against  our  traditional  ideas  about  money. 
We  must  choose  wisely  among  heresies,  how- 
ever, for  most  of  them  are  also  unsound !" 


e<ys> 


SHORT    RUNS 


THERE  are  two  Less-Than-a-Pagers  this 
month.  "Save  Paper  and  Grow  Thin" 
is  our  own  statement  about  the  paper  short- 
age. "Inept — Not  Apathetic"  is  by  John 
Bartlow  Martin.  Mr.  Martin  is  a  Chicago 
newspaper  man  who  has  written  a  number  of 
articles  for  us.  The  most  recent  was  "The 
Master  of  the  Murder  Castle,"  published  in 
the  December  number. 


POET 

THE  only  poet  this  month  is  Gilbert 
Maxwell.  Mr.  Maxwell,  an  old  con- 
tributor, is  a  native  of  Atlanta  and  now  lives 
in  New  York.  He  is  on  the  staff  of  the  Na- 
tional Broadcasting  Company.  He  is  the 
author  of  three  volumes  of  verse:  Look  to  the 
Lightning,  Stranger^s  Garment^  and  The  Dark 
Rain  Falling. 


{Continued  on  next  page  following) 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Nature's  most  pampered  champagne 

grapes  are  blended  with  nearly 
three  quarters  of  a  century's  experience 

to  produce  this  delicate,  delicious, 

sparkling  wine.  Naturally  fermented  in 

the  bottle.  Favored  by  informed 

people  the  world  over. 

Write  for  a  free  copy  of  our  24-page 

"Wine  Recipe  Book.  Address  Dept.  33, 

L.  N.  Renault  &  Sons,  Inc.,  Egg  Harbor 

City,   N.   J.    Distributed   through 
McKesson  &  Robbins,  Inc.,  New  York. 

Buy  War  Bonds 


Apropos  of  Mr.  Maxwell's  poem,  here  is 
the  report  on  the  Gettysburg  Address  pub- 
lished by  Harper^s  Weekly  for  December  5, 
1863: 

Gettysburg 

The  solemn  ceremony  at  Gettysburg  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  events  of  the  war.  There  are  grave- 
yards enough  in  the  land — what  is  Virginia  but  a 
cemetery? — and  the  brave  who  have  died  for  us  in 
this  fierce  war  consecrate  the  soil  from  the  ocean 
to  the  Mississippi.  But  there  is  a  peculiar  signifi- 
cance in  the  field  of  Gettysburg,  for  there  "thus 
far"  was  thundered  to  the  rebellion;  This  it  is 
which  separates  it  from  all  the  other  battlefields  of 
this  war.  Elsewhere  the  men  in  the  ranks  have 
fought  as  nobly,  and  their  officers  have  directed  as 
bravely;  but  here  their  valor  stayed  the  flood  of 
barbarism,  and  like  the  precious  shells  that  the 
highest  storm-tides  strew  upon  the  beach,  show- 
ing how  far  the  waters  came,  so  the  dead  heroes 
of  Gettysburg  marked  the  highest  tide  of  war. 
Therefore  shall  their  graves  be  peculiarly  honored, 
and  their  memory  especially  sacred;  and  all  that 
living  men  can  bring  of  pomp  and  solemnity  and 
significance  to  hallow  their  resting-place  shall  not 
be  wanting. 

The  President  and  the  Cabinet  were  there,  with 
famous  soldiers  and  civilians.  The  oration  by 
Mr.  Everett  was  smooth  and  cold.  Delivered, 
doubtless,  with  his  accustomed  graces,  it  yet 
wanted  one  stirring  thought,  one  vivid  picture, 
one  thrilling  appeal. 

The  few  words  of  the  President  were  from  the 
heart  to  the  heart.  They  can  not  be  read,  even, 
without  kindling  emotion.  "The  world  will  little 
note  nor  long  remember  what  we  say  here,  but  it 
can  never  forget  what  they  did  here."  It  was  as 
simple  and  felicitous  and  earnest  a  word  as  was 
ever  spoken. 

Among  the  Governors  present  was  Horatio  Sey- 
mour. He  came  to  honor  the  dead  of  Gettys- 
burg. But  when  they  were  dying  he  stood  in  New 
York  sneeringly  asking  where  was  the  victory 
promised  for  the  Fourth  of  July?  These  men  were 
winning  that  victory  and  dying  for  us  all;  and  now 
he  mourns,  ex  officio^  over  their  graves. 

When  the  war  is  over  and  the  verdict  of  history 
is  rendered,  it  is  not  those  who  have  steadily  per- 
plexed the  Government  in  every  way — those  who 
first  incited  and  then  palliated  massacre  and  riot — 
who  will  be  known  as  the  friends  of  the  soldiers, 
but  those  whose  faith  was  firmest  in  the  darkest 
hours,  and  who  did  not  falter  though  the  foe  were 
at  the  door. 

A^    ANIMAI.    CRACKER 

Here  is  a  letter  from  a  subscriber: 

There  ought  to  be  some  contact  between  the 
editorial  group  of  Harper's  and  the  subscription 


WHAT  MAKES  AN  ACE  ? 

An  ace  is  judged  by  the  number  of  enemy  planes 
he  downs.  *  By  that  standard  the  Allison  engine 
rates  high.    *    In  four  years  of  service  on 
every  active  front,  more  enemy  air- 
craft   have    been    knocked 
out   by   Allison-powered 
fighters  than  by  any 
other   American 
plane.    *    Pre- 
cision pays   in 
perfection    of 
performance. 


POWERED  BY  ALUSON 

P- 3  8— Lightning      •      P-jg—Airacobra 
P-40—lVarhawk      •      A-3 6  and  P-5 /  —Mustang 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


hmmt 
d/mlM 


RONRIGO 


The  Rum  Connoisseur  contains  over  100 
tested  drink  and  food  recipes.  Send  for  your 
Free  copy.  Ronrico  Corporation,  Dept.  (J) 
Miami,  Florida.  Ronrico  Rum  86,  90  and  151 
Proof.  U.  S.  Representative:  Import  Division, 
McKesson   6-  Robbins,  Inc.,  New  Yorb   City. 

Copyright  1944         ^Trademarks 


"Now,  if  we 
were  only 
staying  at 

THE  ROOSEVELT 


When  you  stop  at  The  Roosevelt  you  don't 
risk  getting  marooned  like  this.  For  you'll  be 
within  walking  range  of  Manhattan's  Midtown 
activities.  Direct  passageway  from  Grand 
Central  Terminal  to  hotel  lobby.  A  reserva- 
tion at  The  Roosevelt  liquidates  a  lot  of  bother. 
Rooms  with  bafh  from  $4,50. 

THE  Roosevelt 

Robert  P.  Williford,  General  Manager 

MADISON  AVE.  AT  45th  ST..  NEW  YORK 
-A  Hilton  Hofe/- 

OTHER  HILTON  HOTELS  FROM  COAST  TO  COAST: 

TEXAS,    Abilene,    El   Paio,    Longview,    Lubbock,    Ploinview;    NEW 
MEXICO,  Albuquerque;   CALIFORNIA,    Long    Beach,    Los   Angeles, 
,     T/ie  Towm  Hou$;  MEXICO,  Chihuahua,  T/ie  Palacio  Hilion. 
Hilton  Hotels,  C.  N.  Hilton,  President. 


department.  I  have  been  a  subscriber  to  your 
magazine  for  years.  This  morning  I  received 
an  Editorial  Courtesy  Card,  offering  me  a  six 
months'  subscription  for  a  buck.  I  have  no  ob- 
jection to  purchasing  the  magazine  at  that  price 
or  even  less  but  since  my  subscription  doesn't 
expire  until  next  March,  it  seems  to  me  that  you 
boys  are  either  very  careless  with  the  company's 
money  or  just  utterly  confused. 

At  any  rate,  I  think  it's  a  swell  magazine. 
The  piece  about  the  Detroit  race  riots  was  merely 
superb.  I  think  that  piece  should  be  used  as  a 
guide  by  all  m-unicipalities  in  the  United  States 
that  fear  that  they  too  may  have  race  riots. 

Anyway,  thanks  for  your  kind  and  bewildering 
offer.  It  was  sweet  to  hear  from  you  all  and 
revealing  to  discover  how  a  successful  magazine 
operates.  In  closing,  I  want  to  tell  you  how 
happy  I  am  to  know  that  you  regard  me  as  a 
representative  leader  of  opinion.  It  had  never 
occurred  to  me. 

Sincerely, 

Grougho  Marx 

We  append  our  editorial  reply,  since  it 
casts  light  on  something  that  seems  to  have 
perplexed  many  other  subscribers: 

Thanks  for  your  nice  letter  of  November  24. 
One  of  the  perpetual  headaches  of  the  magazine 
business  is  that  it  is  dreadfully  difficult  and  ex- 
pensive even  in  the  best  times  to  comb  through 
lists  of  prospective  subscribers  and  check  them 
against  scores  of  thousands  of  stencils  represent- 
ing present  subscribers.  In  these  days  of  man- 
power and  womanpower  shortage  it's  just  about 
impossible.  We  can't  get  the  hands  to  do  the 
job. 

Of  course  it  looks  idiotic  to  a  subscriber  to  get 
an  invitation  to  subscribe.  It  makes  him  think 
that  we  have  lost  our  minds,  and  we  don't  enjoy 
giving  this  impression.  But  in  this  case  we  have 
some  solace.  That  circulation  letter  was  sent  to 
very  carefully  selected  lists  of  the  sort  of  people 
we  were  most  anxious  to  have  as  subscribers;  our 
idea  was  that  in  these  times,  when  our  circula- 
tion is  limited  by  government  paper  restrictions, 
we  ought  to  do  what  we  could  to  see  that  our 
subscription  list  included  as  many  representative 
and  influential  people  as  possible.  We  have 
received  a  good  many  admonitions  like  yours, 
and  it  pleases  us  to  note  that  these  people  were 
already  regular  readers  of  Harper's. 

Don't  be  so  modest  about  being  a  "represen- 
tative leader  of  opinion"  yourself.  Great  heav- 
ens, man,  millions  hang  on  your  words ! 

By  the  way,  are  your  brothers  subscribers  too? 

SHEPHERD'S    INN    AGAIN 

The  following  comes  from  E.  L.  Gartner  of 
Wilmington,  Delaware: 


^ 


This  is 
^/^/^MS^  Speaking... 


1^ 


1^ 


^ 


^ 


Enlist  your  dollars 
.  .  Buy  War  Bonds . . 
To  shorten  the  duration. 


My  husband,  Mike, 

is  a  Corporal  in  the  Army. 

He's  been  gone  nearly  two  years  now. 

I  like  to  think  of  him  as  carrying  one  of  these 
.30  Caliber  Carbines  wherever  he  goes. 

We  make  them  here, 

and  it's  comforting  just  to  know  that  my  hands 

helped  make  a  part  of  what  he's  fighting  with. 

I  know  that  when  Mike  shoots  his  gun, 
the  bullet  will  go  straight  where  he  aims  it 
because  practically  everyone  in  the  U  E  F  plant 
here  has  his  own  personal  reason  for  putting 
his  heart  and  mind  into  the  work. 

You  see,  nearly  everyone  of  us  has  somebody 
in  the  Armed  Forces  who's  fighting  for  us. 

For  us — and  for  you,  too  . .. 

And  for  the  way  Mike  and  I  want  to  live .  • . 
in  peace  and  comfort — after  the  war's  won. 

So  we  all  say:  Speed  the  guns. .  .to  speed  that  day! 

EMILY  MALLIA— Badge  No.  5301 

Underwood  Elliott  Fisher  Company 

ONE  PARK  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK  16,  N.  Y. 

War  Products:  U.  S.  carbines,  Caliber  .30  M-l—AirpUne  Instruments- 
Gun  Parts — Ammunition  Components — Fuses — Primers — and  Miscellane- 
ous Items. 

Peacetime  Products:  underwood  Noiseless,  Standard  and  Portable  Type- 
writers—  Accounting  Machines — Adding  -  Figuring  Machines  —  Payroll 
Machines  —  Ribbons,  Carbon  Paper  and  Miscellaneous  Supplies. 


^ 


^ 


^ 


^ 


^ 


^ 


it 


^ 


it 


it 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


r  On  Not 
I  nientin 
I      more  in 


November  23,  1942,  we  inserted  the  following  advertise- 

the  newspapers.  The  thoughts  expressed  in  it  are  even 

important  today  than  they  were  when  first  published. 


] 


MONEY  TALKS 

Make  it  speak  the  only  language 
the  Axis  understands: 

THE  RUMBLE  OF  TANKS 
THE  ZOOMING  OF  PLANES 
THE  CRACK  OF  RIFLES 
THE  ROAR  OF  CANNON 
THE  BURSTING  OF  BOMBS 

BUY 
WAR  BONDS 

INTERNATIONAL  BUSINESS  MACHINES  CORPORATION 


Hajozffie  of  Warflmni  Ti 

a    p  I  ^^^H 

Mi^ 1 

KNC 

>W    PLACES    AND    PRICES  —  GET    THE    1 

^IkJir^T      ri40  FASCINATING  PAGES  "l 
U  1  IVI  L  Cr  1       L        JUST  OFF  THE  PRESS        J 

Hotels  and  Rates,  Restaurants  and  Prices  —  Wbere  to  Go  — 

What  to  See.  The  Costs,  Recommendations  Canada  to  Florida,  in- 

cludes N.  Y.  City.  Postpaid  50c.  The  Gimlet,  551  5th  Ave.,  N.  Y.  City  1 7. 

Typical  Hotels  Recommended: 

New  York 

New  York  City 

THE  PLAZA 

WHITE  TURKEY  INNS 

Montreal 

LUM  FONG 

MOUNT  ROYAL 

OLNEY  INN 

Boston,  Mass. 

KING  OF  SEA 

KENMORE 

CASTLEHOLM 

Savannah,  Ga. 

Miami,  Fla. 

GEN.  OGLETHORPE 

THE  GARDEN 

Hollywood  Beach 

OLD  SARATOGA  INN 

SEA  CREST  MANOR 

ROTUNDA 

North  Miami  Beach 

JIMMIE'S  BAR  &  GRILL 

GREEN  HERON 

PIG  &  WHISTLE 

Miami  Beach 

Miami  Beach 

MacFadden-Deauviile 

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Miami 

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JOE'S  STONE  CRABS 

—  In\ 

Washington  — It's  H< 

DGATES  — fo 

r  Seafood  ^.J 

Does  Your  Copy  Arrive  late?— 

If  so,  please  remember,  wartime  transportation  is 
subject  to  frequent  and  unforeseen  delays.  Late 
delivery  of  your  copy  of  Harper's  Magazine  means 
that  your  area  has  been  affected.  Harper^s  Magazine 
is  still  being  printed  and  mailed  on  its  regular 
schedule,  and  we  shall  continue  to  endeavor  to  get 
your  copies  to  you  on  publication  date. 


I  was  interested  in  reading  your  comments  in 
Personal  and  Otherwise  anent  Enid  Griffis's 
"He  Runs  a  Hotel"  referring  to  Shepherd's  Inn 
at  Dandridge,  Tennessee. 

While  Old  Man  Shepherd  has  now  gone  to  his 
reward,  I  can  testify  from  a  very  recent  visit  to 
the  Inn  that  his  widow,  rationing  or  no  rationing, 
is  still  serving  the  poetic  biscuits  and  ham  plus 
delicious  stewed  apples. 

But  this  will  be  of  interest  to  you: 

While  Mr.  Shepherd  was  still  alive,  four  young 
engineers  from  the  nearby  Zinc  Mill  at  Mascot, 
Tennessee,  went  for  a  feed  at  Shepherd's  Inn. 
They  filled  their  plates  the  third  and  fourth  timej 
from  the  platters  on  the  table  which  were  con- 
stantly being  replenished  with  ham  and  chicken, 
and  Mr.  Shepherd,  who  was  leaning  against  the 
window  sill,  watched  them  with  consternation 
and  later  with  amazement. 

When  the  boys  finally  dragged  themselves 
away  from  the  table  they  asked  Mr.  Shepherd 
how  much  they  owed  him.  "Not  a  cent,"  said 
he.  "In  the  firstplace,  you  boys  haven't  enough 
money  to  pay  me  for  all  you  ate,  and  in  the  sec- 
ond place,  I  never  knew  that  a  human  being 
could  put  away  that  much  food.  It's  a  pleasure 
to  find  it  out,  and  the  joke's  on  me." 

And,  by  George,  he  would  not  accept  any 
money. 


©^^^ 


COKRECTIO]^ 


The  following  letter  explains  itself: 

As  chairman  of  the  Music  Critics  Circle  of 
New  York  I  feel  that  I  must  call  your  attention 
to  an  essential  error  involving  the  Critics  Circle 
in  the  November  issue  of  Harper'' s,  top  of  page 
516. 

In  the  article  on  Rodzinski,  Moses  Smith 
states: 

"Instead,  he  will  place  on  the  shoulders  of 
Critics  Circle  of  New  York  the  responsibility  of 
selecting,  from  reading  performances  at  re- 
hearsals, those  works  which  are  worth  presenting 
in  public." 

The  Music  Critics  Circle  has  assumed  no  such 
responsibility.  To  the  contrary,  when  the  sug- 
gestion was  placed  before  the  Circle  it  voted  to 
have  no  part  in  the  selection  of  works  for  Dr. 
Rodzinski's  programs.  This  vote  was  taken 
before  the  first  of  the  reading  rehearsals.  It 
was  the  sense  of  the  meeting  of  the  Circle  that 
to  make  recommendations  of  works  to  be 
played,  and  then  have  to  criticize,  perhaps  ad- 
versely, these  same  works  when  they  were 
played,  would  be  altogether  inadvisable  and 
prejudicial. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Oscar  Thompson 
Chairman,  The  Critics  Circle  of  New  Twk 


eg 


w^'. 


^mh 


'm 


BUY  WAR  BONDS  AND  STAMPS 


How  long  will  they  live? 


They're  both  enjoying  life — one  in  his  very  first 
year — the  other  in  his  first  year  as  Granddad. 
And  their  chances  of  enjoying  life  a  long  time 
are  better  than  ever  before ! 

Only  28  years  ago,  one  baby  out  of  every  ten 
died  before  its  first  birthday.  Today,  the  rate 
is  less  than  one  in  twenty.  And  over  the  same 
period,  the  average  span  of  human  life  has 
lengthened  from  about  55  to  64  years. 

This  precious  gift  of  life  has  come  largely 
through  your  family  doctor,  as  a  result  of  re- 
search by  the  profession  of  which  he  is  a  part. 
By  their  skill  and  devotion,  medical  men  have 
saved  the  lives  of  millions  of  Americans  who, 
in  turn,  are  saving  America  today. 

Remember  this  debt  to  your  doctor  —  and 
the  tremendous  pressure  under  which  he  works 
now.  He's  carrying  the  practice  of  colleagues 
called  to  war.  He's  crowded  for  time,  hungry 
for  rest.  And  his  first  duty  is  to  those  who 
need  him  most. 

Be  as  considerate  as  you  can.  A  telephone 
call  may  save  a  personal  visit.  If  you  call 
early  in  the  day,  he  can  better  plan  his  sched- 
ule. Try  to  let  him  sleep  at  night.  And  follow 
the  instructions  he  gives  you! 


In  a  modest  way,  we  are  partners  with  the 
medical  profession.  Some  measure  of  Amer- 
ica's advance  in  health  is  due  to  better  food. 
National  Dairy  Laboratories  have  helped  im- 
prove products  made  of  milk  —  nature's  most 
nearly  perfect  food.  Right  now  they  are  devel- 
oping new  products  that  promise  still  better 
nutrition  and  longer  life. 

Dedicated  to  the  wider  use  and  better  under- 
standing of  dairy  products  as  human  food  .  .  . 
as  a  base  for  the  development  of  new  products 
and  materials  .  ,  .  as  a  source  of  health  and 
enduring  progress  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
towns  and  cities  of  America. 


NATIONAL  DAIRY 

PRODUCTS   CORPORATION 

AND    AFFILIATED    COMPANIES 


LISTEN : 


MARCH  1,1944 


jThe  Phlladelphm  0*'chestra  has  come  back 
to  the  CBS  air,  and  will  continue  as  a  CBS 
sustaining  full -hour  every  Saturday  (3:30- 
4:30  p.m.,  EWT)  throughout  the  current 
subscription  season  which  ends  April  22. 

We  should  remind  you  to  listen  sharply,  for 
the  acoustics  (and  hence  the  radio  "pick-up") 
of  the  Academy  of  Music  were  planned  to  a 
hunch,  and  turned  out  what  musicians  call  per- 
fect. The  architect  theorized  that  if  he  could 
put  under  the  floor,  instead  of  an  oblong  cellar, 
one  concaved  like  a  giant  flat  kettle-drum,  the 
music  striking  the  drum-head-floor  of  the  hall 
would  clarify,  and  please  do  not  ask  us  why. 
He  had  the  temerity  to  build  the  hall  shaped 
more  or  less  like  the  shell  of  an  egg,  and  the 
darn  thing  worked.  What's  more,  the  orchestra 
plays  from  the  stage-floor,  instead  of  the  con- 
ventional "shelves"  of  steps.  This  is  because 
Stokowski  and  Harl  McDonald  (its  manager 
and  annotator  on  the  air)  built  a  great  shell 
upstage  which  is  unique  in  its  assembling,  blend- 
ing and  projection  of  the  music  made  by  the 
100-odd  instruments. 

No  need  to  tell  you  in  detail  of  the  excel- 
lence of  this  orchestra.  One  of  the  "Incom- 
parable Four"  left  in  the  civilized  world,  it  has 
special  claims  to  distinction:  in  its  43  years  it 
has  had  four  conductors  —  Scheel,  Pohlig, 
Stokowski,  Ormandy.  Rachmaninoff  called  it 
"the  finest...!  have  ever  heard  at  any  time  or 
place  in  my  whole  life."  Its  records  have  out- 
sold those  of  any  other.  Before  touring  ceased 
the  Philadelphia  played  to  the  largest  paid  audi- 
ence of  any  symphonic  group;  it  has  been 
affectionately  called  "The  People's  Orchestra." 
T)scanini  and  Beecham  and  Stravinsky  and 
d'Indy  have  led  it  at  one  time  or  another. 

In  the  present  series  Mr.  Ormandy  will 
conduct  9  times,  Bruno  Walter  twice,  Saul 
Gaston  twice— and  its  broadcasts  will  be  studded 
with  soloists  of  substance  and  brilliance.  CBS 
once  more  "points  with  pardonable  pride"  to 
fresh  evidence  of  its  determination  to  serve  the 
American  people  with  the  finest  music  that  can 
restore  the  troubled  soul  of  man. 


Roy  Chapman  Andrews  says  that  5  years 
ago  New  Guinea  was  one  of  the  largest  unex- 


plored areas  on  earth.  He  ought  to  know:  he 
was  there  30  years  ago.  As  an  explorer  he's  a 
little  rueful  about  the  fine-tooth-combing  it's 
getting  from  Allied  troops,  but  as  a  patriot  he 
feels  great.  Veteran  of  40  years  of  exploration 
in  Alaska,  Korea,  the  Gobi  Desert,  Yunnan, 
North  China  and  Borneo,  he  is  now  holed  up 
at  Colebrook,  Conn.,  and  commutes  to  town 
each  Wednesday  to  conduct  CBS'  New  Hori- 
zons series  in  The  American  School  of  the  Air ' 
(9:15  a.m.,  EWT).  He's  telling  several  mil-' 
lion  boys  and  girls  why  exploring  post-war  is" 
going  to  be  more  important  than  ever.  But  he's 
homesick  to  get  back  to  those  spaces  where  men 
greet  each  other  with:  "Ah,  Dr.  Presume,  I 
presume  ? "  • 

One  way  to  make  $2000  is  to  win  the  third 
annual  "Dr.  Christian  award"  by  submitting 
the  best  dramatic  script  for  the  Dr,  Christian 
program,  (Wed.  8:30-8:55  p.m.  EWT). 
Every  Wednesday  night  the  Doctor's  kindly, 
sympathetic  voice  (it's  Jean  Hersholt's)  goes 
out  over  130  CBS  stations.  Last  year  the  con- 
test was  won  by  Nelson  Bond  of  Roanoke,  Va. 
Mrs.  Bond  also  submitted  a  script  and  won  a 
$250  prize.  If  you  want  to  give  the  contest  a 
try,  write  for  details  to  the  Chesebrough  Manu- 
facturing Company  at  17  State  St.,  N.Y  C, 
which  sponsors  the  program.  The  contest  closes 
March  31.  • 

Fred  Allen's  One  Long  Pan  pronunciation: 
"Ah!  A  leWALLOWAf'  has  been  forwarded 
to  the  Messrs.  H.  L.  Mencken,  Merriam- 
Webster,  Funk  &  Wagnalls,  and  to  Prof. 
Greet's  publication  American  Sfeech,  since  it  is 
now  firmly  fixed  in  the  American  language. 

(The  "le"  is  pronounced  schwa.) 


This  is 


CBS 


tlie  COLUMBIA 
BROADCASTING   SYSTEM 


THE  New  Books  n(/lm  Chmhorbtm 


SINCE    L 
mora 
'  a(.  th; 


INGE  the  world  is  in  a  period  of  acute 
il  crisis,  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered 
tiiat  contemporary  literature  has  be- 
•ome  a  branch  of  applied  homiletics.  Per- 
sonally, I  could  wish  that  it  were  otherwise,  for 
I  constant  preoccupation  with  moral  issues 
is  hardly  a  good  life  for  the  happy  animal. 
One's  morality  ought  to  be  like  one's  digestion 
or  one's  l)reathing,  something  that  functions 
almost  automatically.  But  when  the  stomach 
or  the  lungs  or  one's  living  values  are  out  of 
whack,  the  pills  must  be  taken. 

Having  made  this  necessary  obeisance  to 
the  compulsions  of  our  time,  I  am  forced  to 
set  the  stage  for  a  criticism  of  John  Hersey's 
remarkable  and  endearing  novel  of  the 
Sicilian  campaign,  A  Bell  for  Adano  (Knopf, 
$2.50),  by  indulging  in  a  little  homily  of  my 
own.  Mr.  Hersey  has  built  his  story  around 
the  attempt  of  an  Amgot  official  to  bring 
"democracy"  back  to  a  small  Sicilian  town.  I 
put  the  word  "democracy"  in  quotes,  for  it  is 
a  question  whether  freedom  can  ever  be  be- 
stowed on  anyone  by  the  methods  of  de  haut  en 
has.     And  now  for  the  homily. 

Last  month,  in  my  ruminations  on  the 
phenomenon  of  Lord  Vansittart's  Lessons  of  My 
Lfe,  I  argued  that  reform  schools  are  potent 
breeders  of  Fagins,  gangsters,  crooks,  and 
con-men.  I  doubt  that  any  serious  sociologist 
could  prove  otherwise.  Similarly,  I  doubt 
that  any  serious  psychiatrist  would  deny  that 
an  attempt  to  "train"  people  for  liberty  by 
telling  them  what  they  can  and  cannot  do 
either  produces  the  psychology  of  the  fawning 
retainer  or  the  psychology  of  the  rebellious 
son.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek:  freedom 
and  maturity  depend  on  the  exercise  of  the 
moral  faculty,  which  demands  the  assumption 
of  free  will.  The  good  man  is  one  who  has 
rejected  evil  by  his  own  free  choice. 

But  what  if  evil  men — and  wicked  nations 
— threaten  the  society  of  good  men?  Can  one 
wait  for  the  unrighteous  to  discover  that 
violence  and  the  subordination  of  reason  to 
uninhibited  desires  must  necessarily  operate 
on  the  law  of  diminishing  returns?  Can  one 
wait  for  the  wicked  to  learn  by  experience 
that  the  golden  rule  is  a  wholly  pragmatic 


maxim?  Alas,  one  cannot.  The  evil  man — 
or  the  aggressor  nation — must  be  opposed  at 
some  point  along  the  line  by  someone,  merely 
as  a  matter  of  expedience.  One  cannot  save 
one's  throat  by  passive  waiting.  The  ques- 
tion of  moral  rehabilitation  of  the  arrested 
man  or  the  defeated  enemy,  however,  is  not 
one  to  be  solved  by  a  continued  application  of 
force  majeure.  If  the  "reform"  of  the  evil  one 
is  truly  desired,  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  set 
him  free.  If  the  condition  of  freedom  does 
not  produce  a  self-chosen  reform,  then  the 
power  of  forcible  constraint  may  have  to  be 
invoked  for  a  second  time. 

But  how  about  a  little  force  majeure,  just  a 
little  during  the  interim  period  of  administer- 
ing conquered  territory  while  the  armies  are 
pounding  up  ahead  toward  final  victory? 
Well,  as  a  practical  matter  of  keeping  com- 
munications open,  a  little  force  majeure  is  neces- 
sary. But  the  pro  tem  administrator  must  be 
a  profoundly  humble  man  or  he  will  end  up 
by  creating  a  new  crop  of  Fagins,  gangsters, 
fawning  serfs,  and  rebellious  sons.  Goebbels 
came  out  of  the  occupied  Rhineland;  Goering 
was  the  rebelUous  child  who  had  been  told 
that  he  could  never  play  with  airplanes. 

John  Hersey,  who  spent  three  months  of 
the  summer  of  1943  in  the  Mediterranean 
theater,  is  acutely  aware  of  the  dangers  that 
are  inherent  in  the  attempt  to  govern  occupied 
territory  by  military  force.  During  his  so- 
journ in  a  Sicilian  village,  he  evidently  dis- 
covered one  Amgot  officer  (it  was  Amgot  in 
those  days,  not  simple  AMG)  who  believed  in 
the  humble,  tentative,  purely  pro  tem  ap- 
proach to  his  job.  In  ^  Bell  for  Adano  this 
officer  goes  by  the  name  of  Major  Joppolo. 
Joppolo,  an  Italian-American  from  the  Bronx, 
knows  that  the  town  of  Adano  must  find  its 
own  way  to  freedom  and  democracy;  he 
knows  that  a  permanent  rejection  of  Fascism 
must  come  from  the  people  themselves.  But 
he  is  faced  with  the  paradoxical  necessity  of 
using  a  little  force.  And  he  is  dependent 
for  his  power  on  a  certain  General  Marvin 
who  believes  only  in  force.  This  General 
Marvin  acts  and  talks  like  General  Patton, 
and  it  is  perhaps  noteworthy  that  Mr.  Hersey 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


The  Signpost 

By  E.  Arnot  Robertson 

Author  of 
Four  Vrightened  People 

"Brilliant,  ironic  .  .  .  cert^itily  one  of 
rhe  best  novels  to  come  out  of  Eng- 
land since  the  Wdx!' —Saturday  Re- 
view of  Literature.  It  is  the  story  of 
a  convalescent  RAF  pilot  on  leave; 
it  is  also  the  story  of  the  English  un- 
der fire,  of  neutral  Ireland,  and  of 
tragic  France.  $2.50 


A  Treasury  of  Great 
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Edited  by 
Avrahm  Yarmolinsky 

This  comprehensive  anthology  of 
the  shorter  works  of  the  great  Rus- 
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Red  Roses  for  Me 

By  Sean  O^ Casey 

Author  of  Within  the  Gates,  tic 

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By  CHARl-ES  !-•  ^.^^  and 

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By  'Tercors'' 

This  tense  and  beautiful  story,  smug- 
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THE  MACMILLAN  CO. 

60  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York  1 1,  N.Y. 


Road  to  2r' 

By  DAVID  RAME  ^ 

from  f^'l         ^igor,  and  a  hne  se  ^.^ 

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By  Paul  I  ah  or  i 

THliY  aic  the  men  of  many  nations 
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the  Axis.  "A  sharply  focused  picture 
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little  jK'ople  .  .  ,  startlingly  moving 
and  effecfive."— N.  Y .  I'mies  Book 
Review  $2.1^ 


Far  on 
the  Ringing  Plains 

By  George  Rodger 

"A  marvelousiy  exciting  record  of  a 
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phia Inquirer.  It  is  a  brilliant  LIFE 
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The  Elizabethan 
World  Picture 

By  £.  M,  W,  TiUyard 

This  presentation  of  rhe  way  the 
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I  Wanted  to  See 

By  Borghild  Dahl 

This  is  rhe  inspiring  story  of  a 
woman's  achievement  despite  the 
tragic  handicap  of  blindness.  It  is  the 
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THE    NEW    BOOKS 


does  not  introduce  his  book  with  the  usual  dis- 
chiimer,  "All  characters  in  this  novel  are  purely 
fictitious." 

When  Joppolo  got  his  job  as  civil  officer  in 
Adano  on  the  Sicilian  coast,  he  tried  to  act  as  a 
missionary,  not  as  one- Avho  was  clothed  with 
authority.  He  didn't  tell  the  gloomy  anarchist, 
Tomasino,  that  he  had  to  go  out  and  fish:  he  merely 
persuaded  him  that  fishing  would  bring  no  penal- 
ties in  the  form  of  "protection"  money  paid  for  the 
privilege  of  following  one's  trade.  Even  those 
who  had  served  in  the  Fascist  town  bureaucracy  in 
minor  positions  were  accepted  by  Joppolo,  who 
recognized  that  men  with  families  sometimes  do 
things  against  their  better  judgment.  Joppolo 
believed  in  trusting  men  to  behave,  and  he  was 
even  willing  to  give  the  old  Fascist  mayor  a  proba- 
tionary second  chance  as  a  human  being. 

Naturally  Joppolo  had  trouble.  His  own  men — 
Captain  Purvis,  Sergeant  Borth — didn't  know 
what  he  was  up  to.  The  idea  of  the  Americans, 
even  those  working  for  Amgot,  was  to  get  on  with 
the  war  solely  in  order  to  win  and  go  home.  The 
Kent- Yale  naval  officer  who  helped  Joppolo  get 
around  the  fishing  regulations  thought  of  the  Ital- 
ians as  "wops"  or  "meat-balls."  And  Corporal 
Schultz  considered  the  whole  business  of  invasion 
as  an  endless  opportunity  to  try  out  the  various 
types  of  Italian  wine. 

Joppolo's  primary  job  was  to  put  Adano  back  on 
a  producing  basis  under  law,  order,  and  a  dispen- 
sation of  good  hygiene.  But  General  Marvin 
couldn't  see  it  that  way.  When  a  peasant  muleteer 
blocked  General  Marvin's  way  into  Adano,  the 
general  solved  his  problem  by  shooting  the  mule 
and  ordering  all  carts  off  the  road  for  an  indefinite 
period.  He  was  too  quarrelsome  and  too  busy  to 
realize  that  Adano  must  starve  and  die  of  thirst 
without  its  carts.  But  Joppolo  knew  that  Adano 
must  have  food  and  water,  and  he  ignored  the 
general's  orders. 

Joppolo  also  knew  that  man  does  not  live  by 
bread  alone.  For  centuries  Adano  had  had  a 
beautiful  bell.  When  the  Fascists  removed  the 
bell  for  the  production  of  cannon,  Adano  felt  even 
more  frustrated  than  it  had  before.  The  towns- 
people had  regulated  their  lives  by  the  bell;  they 
needed  it  as  city  factory  workers  need  alarm  clocks, 
but  they  also  needed  it  for  its  symbolic  reassurance. 

Mr.  Hersey,  who  is  an  ingenious  contriver  of 
absolutely  realistic  incident,  gets  Adano  a  new  bell 
by  invoking  the  famous  "Annapolis  system"  of  the 
American  Navy.  Navy  red-tape  is  theoretically 
as  omnipresent  as  Army  red-tape,  but  any  Annapo- 
lis-trained officer  has  a  way  of  getting  around  it. 
The  method  of  dodging  the  rules  is  to  go  to  an 
Annapolis  classmate  for  whatever  one  wants.  The 
new  bell  for  Adano  comes  from  an  American  de- 
stroyer, the  gift  of  one  Annapolis  man  to  a  class- 
mate who  happens  to  be  a  friend  of  Joppolo. 

But  if  Joppolo  manages  to  get  the  bell  and  to 


put  Adano  on  its  feet,  it  is  only  by  paying  the  ultij 
mate  penalty  of  forfeiting  his  job.  The  floutinJ 
of  General  Marvin's  order  finally  catches  up  wit^ 
him,  and  he  is  sent  back  to  Algiers  for  reassign- i 
ment.     Adano  must  get  on  without  him.  ^ 

A  Bell  for  Adano  is  first-class  reporting  in  thei 
manner  of  Mr.  Hersey's  own  Into  the  Valley.  TheJ 
accurate  approximation  of  soldier  speech  rhythmsl 
the  disenchanted  knowledge  that  the  bulk  of  the 
American  army  is  fighting  and  fighting  well  with- 
out having  any  war  aim  beyond  that  of  proving 
itself  a  good  competitor  in  a  ghastly  business,  make 
A  Bell  for  Adano  excellent  realism.  Mr.  Hersey 
believes  in  the  war,  and  believes  in  the  ability  of 
the  United  States  to  do  a  good  deal  for  Europe  and^ 
the  world.  But  he  is  as  truthful  as  Ernie  Pyle  in, 
the  presence  of  facts,  even  when  the  facts  go' 
against  his  wishes. 

As  a  fledgling  novelist,  Mr.  Hersey  shows  mag- 
nificent promise.  Joppolo  is  a  not  very  compli- 
cated person,  and  most  of  the  other  characters  in  A 
Bell  for  Adano  are  unsubtle  types.  But  Mr.  Hersey 
handles  his  theme  with  an  easy  air  of  competence. 
His  use  of  colloquialisms  reminds  one  inevitably 
of  Hemingway,  who  made  a  literary  language  out 
of  the  shorthands  of  common  speech.  The  realism 
is  Hemingway's,  too,  for  Mr.  Hersey's  soldiers,  like 
Hemingway's  "lost  generation"  crowd,  distrust 
the  big  words  like  "noble"  and  "crusade"  and 
"democracy."  This  doesn't  mean  that  Sergeant 
Borth  and  the  vino-drinking  Corporal  Schultz  are 
cynics,  it  merely  means  that  they  refuse  to  be  taken 
in  by  hypocrites.  When  a  man  like  Joppolo  acts  , 
nobly,  they  appreciate  it,  even  though  they  doubt 
it  will  mean  much  in  the  long  run.  Instinctively 
these  Hersey  soldiers  know  that  freedom  is  some- 
thing that  must  come  from  the  local  grassroots  to 
be  real.  They  want  to  get  the  war  over  with  and 
go  home  because  they  know  that  Europeans  won't 
find  their  way  to  basic  liberty  until  they  do  it  by 
their  own  act  of  will. 

Reading  these  days  is  an  adventure  in  stimulat- 
ing perspectives.  The  net  effect  of  Mr.  Hersey's 
book  is  to  make  one  feel  that  decades  must  pass 
before  Europe  recovers  its  old  belief  in  free  will 
and  individual  responsibility.  One  reflects  that 
there  aren't  enough  Joppolos  to  go  around  to  per- 
suade Europeans  that  there's  more  in  Emerson  and 
Thoreau  than  there  is  in  Marx,  and  more  in  The 
Federalist  Papers  than  there  is  in  Plato.  Strangely 
enough,  however,  one  derives  a  more  hopeful 
feeling  about  Europe  from  John  T.  Flynn's  theo- 
retically pessimistic  As  We  Go  Marching  (Double- 
day,  Doran,  $2). 

Mr.  Flynn-was  an  America  Firster  for  reasons 
that  were  honorable,  even  though  they  failed  to 
reckon  with  the  compulsions  of  history.  But  As 
We  Go  Marching  has  nothing  much  to  do  with  Mr. 
Flynn's  pre-Pearl  Harbor  crusade.  The  main  job 
in  As  We  Go  Marching  is  to  .describe  the  economic 
pathology  thatleads  to  Fascism.     Mr.  Flynn  does 


Books  Are  Weapons  in  the  War  of  Ideas 


4. 


I 


KoufiuAed  Ai^  f  Irf;  |N||I! 


erme 


BY  KONRAD  HEIDEN 


w 


Incomparably  the  most  brilliant  and  comprehensive  treatise  yet  written  about 
the  master  of  the  Third  Reich."  —  George  N.  Shustcr,  N.  Y.  Times 

INot  only  the  most  notable  book  to  be  written  about  National  Socialism,  but 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  ever  to  be  written  by  a  contemporary  about 
his  own  times  ...  A  unique  and  overwhelming  contribution  to  permanent 
literature."  —  Dorothy  Thompson,  Saturday  Review  of  Literature  $3.00 


BY  A.  FLEMING  MacLIESH 

A  book  that  makes  an  Immediate  claim  to  attention  for  its  profundity,  its 
scholarship,  Its  levels  of  characterization  of  a  man  lost  In  the  complexities  of  his 
emotional  and  Intellectual  being  .  .  .  Alive  with  qualities  of  mood,  a  nostalgia  for 
something  lost." — N.  Y.  Herald  Tribune 

A    very    profound    and    fascinating    novel." — Saturday   Review   of 
;yAv\\\\      Literature  $2.75 


I 


/¥  ^(xcu^tcH  THc^Uk  ^cte^a^  ^cCCma^^  ^twid 


HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY  fft^ 


THE    NEW    BOOKS 


To  People 
who  want  to  write 

but  can  H  get  started 

Do  you  have  that  constant  urge  to  write  but  the 
fear  that  a  beginner  hasn't  a  chance?  Then  Hsten  to 
what  the  editor  of  Liberty  said  on  this  subject: 

"There  is  more  room  for  novcoitiers  in  the  -writing 
field  today  than  ever  before.  Some  of  the  greatest 
of  writing  men  and  women  have  passed  from  the 
scene  in  recent  years.  Who  will  take  their  places? 
Who  will  be  the  new  Robert  W.  Chambers,  Edgar 
Wallace,  Rudyard  Kipling,  and  many  others  whose 
work  we  have  published?  It  is  also  true  that  more 
people  are  trying  to  >vrite  than  ever  before,  but 
talent  is  still  rare  and  the  writer  still  must  learn 
his  craft,  as  few  of  the  newcomers  nowadays  seem 
willing  to  do.  Fame,  riches  and  the  happiness  of 
achievement  await  the  new  men  and  women  of 
power." 

50  Years  Old^  Sells  First  Siory  4 
Months    Before    Completing    Course 

"For  thirty  years  I  floundered  in  and  out 
of  various  pursuits,  vainly  seeking  one 
which  would  he  satisfactory.  With  my 
enrollment  in  N.I. A.,  the  quest  of  years 
ended.  The  sale  of  my  first  feature  article 
to  Indianapolis  Star,  four  months  before  I 
completed  the  course,  thrilled  and  inspired 
me.  So,  thanks  to  N.I. A.,  I  sit  on  top  of 
the  world  —  at  fifty."  —  Helen  C.  Tyrell, 
Bourbon,  Ind. 

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Copyright  1943  Newspaper  Institute  of  A  merica 


this  by  looking  closely  at  the  late  nineteenth  and 
early  twentieth  century  history  of  Italy  and  Ger^ 
many,  the  two  great  pioneer  Fascist  states.  Then 
he  combs  over  recent  history  in  America  in  an 
attempt  to  determine  just  how  we  stack  up  against 
Italian  and  German  developments  in  the  pre- 
Fascist  era.  One  gets  the  idea  that  the  basic 
wealth  and  the  fantastic  productiveness  of  America 
are  all  that  has  saved  us  from  our  own  version  of 
Fascism.  But  one  also  gets  the  feeling  that  a  cycle  \ 
has  closed  in  Italy:  whatever  follows  out  of  the  war 
on  the  Italian  peninsula,  it  can  hardly  be  the 
"dynamism"  of  Mussolini's  imagination.  The 
people  are  too  desperately  tired  of  what  has  gone  \ 
on  during  the  past  two  decades  for  that. 

Flynn  thinks  Fascism  grows  out  of  a  combina- 
tion of  deeply  held  popular  notions,  none  of  them 
particularly  evil  in  original  motive.  When  people 
get  the  idea  that  a  market  system  can  be  "planned," 
and  when  they  insist  on  running  to  their  politicians 
for  gifts  of  purchasing  power  created  through  pub-  '^i 
lie  debt  and  continually  unbalanced  budgets,  ^ 
they  unwittingly  set  the  stage  for  Fascism.  For 
"planning"  demands  coercion  according  to  the 
necessities  of  the  plan,  and  a  vast  and  continually 
expanding  accretion  of  public  debt  cannot  be  main- 
tained without  using  force  to  prevent  inflation  and  ,j 
to  collect  larger  and  larger  amounts  of  tax  money 
to  service  the  bonds.  Italy  be^an  her  fateful  ex- 
periment with  the  continuing  unbalanced  budget 
soon  after  the  triumph  of  Mazzini,  Cavour,  and 
Garibaldi;  Depretis,  Crispi,  and  Giolitti  were  all 
"tax,  borrow,  spend,  and  elect"  boys.  Mussolini 
came  in  to  "close"  the  system  by  falsifying  the 
books  of  the  government  and  by  establishing  mili- 
tarism as  the  last  dose  in  "public  works."  The 
German  course  was  very  similar  to  the  Italian,  with 
local  variations  such  as  the  persecution  of  the  Jews 
added  to  make  Nazism  even  more  obscene  than 
Italian  "corporativism." 

During  the  Hoover  (yes,  the  Hoover)  and  the 
Roosevelt  administrations,  the  United  States  has 
been  following  the  pattern  established  by  Depretis, 
Crispi,  and  Giolitti  in  Italy,  and  by  the  Weimar 
Republic  in  Germany.  Mr.  Flynn  proves  his 
case  absolutely,  if  his  comparative  method  is 
valid.  I  am  a  little  more  hopeful  than  Flynn 
about  the  immediate  future,  however,  for  the 
United  States  is  a  fat  empire,  not  a  crowded  nation 
situated  on  what  Frank  Simonds  called  "the  lean 
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clearly  understood  way,  with  spending  channeled 
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bridges,  and  public  power  that  brings  in  cash  for 
the  outlay.     Where  money  goes  into  dead-weight 


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&• . 


James  Aldridge 

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THE 


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debt  in  bad  years,  taxes  must  be  collected  to  com- 
pensate for  this  in  eood  years.  The  budget  must 
be  balanced  over  the  period  of  the  business  c\-cle 
even  if  it  is  not  balanced  e\er\-  year.  Xo  doubt 
the  Xew  Deal  once  hoped  to  emulate  the  Swedes  in 
contri\-ing  to  use  the  debt  d\-namically  yet  safely. 
But  neither  the  congressmen  nor  the  executive 
nor  the  many  American  pressure  groups  have  as 
\et  showTi  any  signs  of  invoking  the  discipline 
needed  to  make  government  spending  safe  for 
democracy. 

Mr.  Flynn  does  not  look  at  Sweden,  which  may 
be  where  he  is  unfair  to  at  least  some  of  the  Stuart 
Chase-ites.  But  neither  has  the  X'ew  Deal  looked 
at  Sweden,  so  who  can  say  that  Mr.  Fl\-nn  is  wTon? 
to  \\"orr\"? 

Oddments  and  remainders,  thou?h  important 
ones: 

Konrad  Heiden's  Der  Fuehrer  (Houshton 
Mifflin,  S5j:  -\n  enormously  detailed  account  of 
I  Hider's  origins  and  rise  to  power.  Chiefly  \-alu- 
able  as  a  source  book 

R.  L.  Duffus's  The  Innocents  at  Cedro  Mac- 
millan,  S2):  Charming  reminiscences  of  youth  at 
Leland  Stanford  Universin"  in  190~-08.  Duff'us 
'  \\ashed  dishes  in  the  household  of  the  iconoclastic 
economist  Thorstein  \'eblen,  and  thereby  hangs 
an  amusing  tale. 

E.  R.  Stertinius'S  Lend -Lease:  Weapon  for 
J  ictory  (Macmillan,  S3  :  A  news  book  about 
the  most  important  X  in  the  equation  of  the  war. 
-American  industrial  production  has  been  the  final 
straw  on  the  Hiderian  camel's  back.  Mr.  Stetn- 
nius  tells  us  how  the  straw  was  put  there,  and  adds 
some  interesting  stuff  about  "lend-lease-in-re- 
verse.'' 

IX  BRIEF 

By  Katheriiie  Gauss  Jackson 

Fiction 

The  Signpost,  by  E.  .Arnot  Robertson. 

Probably  no  one  who  has  not  actually  shared  the 
experience  \vill  ever  know — however  desp>erately 
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taken  part  in  the  batde  of  the  air  over  Germany. 
In  this  lovely  stor\- — a  combination  of  tenseness  and 
serenir.' — Miss  Robertson  at  least  makes  the  acti- 
rude  of  one  man  in  the  R„AF  credible  and  heart- 
breaking. The  pilot  goes  to  spend  a  leave  in 
neutral  Ireland,  in  a  tONvn  he  has  known  as  a  boy; 
meets  a  beautiful,  tragedy-driven  French  girl  on 
the  way:  and  the  stor\"  ?oes  on  from  there.  The 
book  is  saying  that  even  where  the  world  seems 
most  peaceful  there  is  no  real  peace  except  what 
man  can  create  Nsithin  himself.  But  it  tells  a  lot 
about  England,  Ireland,  and  France  in  wartime, 
and  a  charming  love  ston."  at  the  same  time. 

Macmillan,  $2.50 


Books  Are   W eapons  in   the   War  of  Ideas 


Harpcrfe 


VOL   188     ^^0   1126     March  1944 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 

Two  First-hand  Reports 

I 

BOUGAINVILLE  LANDING,  by  Harold  Azine 


Early  on  the  morning  of  November  7,  1943,  United  States  Marine  units  invaded  the  island  of 
Bougainville,  the  last  Japanese  stronghold  in  the  Solomons.  The  following  account  was  written 
later  the  same  day  by  a  Marine  Corps  Combat  Correspondent  (with  the  rank  of  Technical  Sergeant) 
who  took  part  in  the  landing;  it  is  based,  he  says,  ^^ mainly  on  my  notes  written  at  the  moment  of 
observation  and  partly  on  my  memory  (after  my  fountain  pen  was  lost),  which  I  have  dared  to  trust 
only  for  a  few  hours. '^^ — The  Editors 


I  AST  night  was  moonless,  cloud-covered 
and  black.  The  ships  of  our  task 
^  force  knifed  through  the  waters  in 
a  rapid  last-lap  approach  to  their  dawn 
objective — Empress  Augusta  Bay  on  the 
western  shore  of  Bougainville.  For  sev- 
eral days,  moving  northward  through  the 
islands,  we  had  watched  our  size  and 
strength  grow  as  additional  segments  of 
sea  power  had  joined  in  and  become  part 
of  what  was  now  the  mightiest  invasion 
force  ever  assembled  in  this  part  of  the 
world.  In  a  few  hours  it  would  strike  its 
big  blow,   a  merciless  shelling  of  Cape 

Copyright,  1944,  by  Harper  & 


Torokina,  the  stretch  of  beach  running 
northwest  from  there  to  the  muddy  Koro- 
nokina  River,  and  little  Puruata  Island 
about  a  half  mile  out  in  the  bay. 

The  coming  operation  had  been  pre- 
computed  to  the  minute.  Everything 
down  to  the  last  foreseeable  detail  had  been 
explained  to  the  men  who  were  to  take 
part  in  it.  Day  before  yesterday.  Lieu- 
tenant Colonel  Alan  Shapley,  of  San 
Francisco,  commander  of  Landing  Team 
Number  10 — made  up  of  the  Marine 
Raiders  on  our  transport — had  told  his 
men  over  the  ship's  public  address  system: 

Brothers.    All  Rights  Reserved, 


290 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


".'  :  :  The  day  of  secrets  is  over,  and 
before  we  land  each  and  every  man  will 
know  exactly  what  he  is  doing  and  also 
what  others  are  doing  all  around  him. 
This,  of  course,  is  as  it  should  be,  for 
that  is  the  American  way  of  doing  business. 

"On  D-day,  which  is  the  first  of  No- 
vember, at  H-hour,  which  is  about  7:30 
in  the  morning  ...  we  are  going  to  land 
on  what  we  shall  call  Beach  Green  2  on 
the  island  of  Bougainville.  This  beach  is 
on  Empress  Augusta  Bay.  .  .  .  We  are  go- 
ing to  drive  in  and  seize  a  beachhead  by 
destroying  any  and  all  Japanese  that  op- 
pose us.  We  are  going  to  enlarge  this 
beachhead.  Then  we  are  going  to  hold 
this  area,  come  hell  or  high  water,  while 
vital  facilities  are  built.  .  ,  ; 

"Naturally,  we  [Raiders]  are  not  alone. 
.  .  .  Other  Combat  Teams  land  at  the 
same  time  and  abreast  of  us.  There  will 
be  Marines  to  the  right  of  you,  to  the 
left  of  you,  and  four  days  after  we  land, 
many  more  Marines  come  in  behind  us. 
Even  in  the  air  above  you  will  be  Marine 
planes.  Then  after  this  come  Army  troops, 
veterans  of  the  Munda  [New  Georgia]  op- 
eration. 

"In  the  seas  about  us  .  .  .  the  Navy  is 
on  the  job,  hoping  for  Jap  naval  units  or 
reinforcements  to  make  an  appearance. 
There  are  battleships,  carriers,  cruisers, 
destroyers,  submarines,  and  PT  boats 
ready  and  waiting.  .  .  . 

"Admiral  Halsey's  headquarters  have 
announced  that  Kahili  and  Balldale  air- 
fields in  southeastern  Bougainville  have 
now  been  knocked  out  of  commission  and 
they  will  keep  them  that  way.  Buka  in 
northwest  Bougainville  is  getting  hit  daily 
and  will  get  more  before  and  when  we  land. 
.  .  .  General  MacArthur's  Air  Force  has 
been  pasting  Rabaul  with  great  success. 
The  day  before  we  land  and  the  day  we 
land,  Rabaul  is  really  going  to  get  it.  In 
spite  of  this,  however,  we  must  expect 
some  air  attacks.  .  .  .  Dig  those  foxholes. 

"We  have  just  a  few  hours  to  unload 
these  ships.  .  .  .  There  won't  be  any  more 
supplies  for  several  daysi  .  i  . 

"This,  then,  is  the  picture.  The  details 
will  be  given  to  you  by  your  unit  com- 
manders. .  .  .  Now,  for  God's  sake,  don't 
get  trigger-happy.  When  you  let  one  go 
be  sure  a  Jap  stops  it.  .  .  . 


"To  the  Seabees  that  go  with  us — we  are 
damn  glad  you  are  on  our  side !  To  all  of 
you — hit  fast,  hit  hard,  and  hit  for  keeps! 
Best  of  luck  to  all  of  you." 

The  men  had  clustered  together  near 
the  loudspeakers  to  hear  the  message. 
They  listened  in  silence.  When  it  was 
over  the  groups  broke  up  slowly  and  with- 
out demonstration  of  any  sort.  The  men 
moved  from  the  loudspeakers  to  the  rails 
of  the  ship,  to  their  quarters,  or  to  the 
weather-deck  conferences  which  unit  sub- 
commanders  called  together  to  explain 
the  more  minute  aspects  of  the  operation. 
Most  of  the  men  had  expected  it  would  be 
Bougainville,  but  several  paid  off*  on  bets 
that  our  objective  was  to  be  Rabaul. 

Yesterday — Sunday,  October  31,  the 
day  before  the  landing — the  shipboard 
activities  of  the  troops  had  changed  in 
nature.  There  were  hardly  any  pinochle 
or  small-stake  poker  games  and  there  was 
a  great  deal  more  daylight  sleeping  and 
cleaning  of  weapons.  Even  the  bullets 
were  cleaned  and  oiled,  each  man  care- 
fully grooming  his  own  instruments  of 
death. 

All  five  church  services,  two  Catholic 
and  three  Protestant,  had  been  attended 
in  overflow  numbers  with  Jewish  boys  also 
present.  Lieutenant  General  Alexander 
A.  Vandegrift  and  Rear  Admiral  Theo- 
dore S.  Wilkinson,  commanders  respec- 
tively of  the  land  and  naval  forces  involved 
in  the  operation,  both  attended  the  ten 
o'clock  Protestant  service  and  joined  the 
others  in  singing  "Jesus,  I  Love  Thee." 

Noon  chow  had  been  a  "victory  dinner" 
thrown  for  the  Raiders  by  the  ship's  crew. 
It  was  a  very  special  kind  of  feed  for  a 
troopship,  the  menu  consisting  of  cold 
orange  juice  (canned),  meat  loaf,  mashed 
potatoes,  creamed  peas,  carrot-and-cab- 
bage  salad,  chocolate  cake,  maple-nut- 
flavored  ice  cream,  a  cigar,  a  package  of 
cigarettes,  and  a  small  package  of  candy. 
Each  man  was  given  a  chow-line  chit  or 
ticket  which  he  surrendered  upon  re- 
ceiving his  metal  food  tray.  The  purpose, 
of  course,  was  to  prevent  anyone  from 
going  through  the  line  more  than  once. 
We  ate  the  special  meal,  as  we  did  all  other 
meals,  standing  up  to  a  chest-high  table  or 
bar  in  an  unbearably  hot  and  muggy  mess 
hall  below  decks. 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


291 


Sunday  afternoon  there  were  more 
eleventh-hour  huddles  of  Raider  platoons 
and  squads,  the  men  crowding  in  close  to 
their  leaders  to  see  maps  showing  positions 
of  the  new  Jap  rifle  pits,  machine-gun 
trenches,  and  pillboxes  along  the  beach 
which  were  awaiting  our  arrival.  Some 
of  these  conferences  were  held  in  the  junior 
officers'  wardroom,  with  various  outfits 
taking  turns  in  the  room;  others  were 
conducted  on  the  open  decks  and  in 
miscellaneous  nooks  and  corners  of  the 
ship.  I  managed  to  sit  in  on  six  group 
meetings:  an  aircraft  identification  class 
for  gun  crews;  a  meeting  of  the  radio  and 
telephone  communications  unit;  a  confer- 
ence of  the  medical  corpsmen  who  would 
treat  the  wounded  during  the  landing  and 
subsequent  fighting;  a  meeting  of  the 
several  companies'  first  sergeants,  who 
discussed  the  method  of  handling  daily 
casualty  reports;  and  a  meeting  of  a  rifle 
platoon  whose  leader  sternly  warned, 
"Don't  any  of  you  guys  go  calling  me 
'Lieutenant'  when  we're  in  the  bush!" 
This  drew  a  big  laugh  from  all  hands,  for 
the  Japs  have  a  vicious  affection  for 
Marine  officers  and  always  draw  first  bead 
on  a  man  who  wears  insignia  or  is  referred 
to  by  rank. 

Earlier  I  had  informed  Captain  Robert 
Neal  that  I  wanted  to  attach  myself  to  his 
company  of  Raiders,  Company  E,  during 
the  first  day's  operation  so  I  could  get  close 
coverage.  Sunday  evening,  at  his  in- 
vitation, I  attended  a  meeting  of  the  com- 
pany's platoon  leaders,  who  were  to  give 
their  operational  plans  a  final  checkup. 
The  discussion  started  with  a  review  of  the 
plan  by  Captain  Neal  which  was  followed 
by  questions  and  verification  queries  by 
the  several  platoon  leaders. 

Briefly,  our  action  guide  was  this: 
Company  E  would  hit  the  shore  in  the 
second  assault  wave,  get  across  the  open 
beach  and  into  the  jungle  underbrush  for 
protection  as  soon  as  possible,  re-form 
there,  and  then  deploy  into  skirmish 
formation  for  an  advance  up  the  trail 
leading  inland,  where  we  were  to  pick  a 
site  for  a  temporary  command  post.  Our 
job  during  the  first  day  would  be  to  protect 
this  command  post. 

The  meeting  ended.  Reveille  was 
scheduled  for  3:30  next  morning,  but  it 


was  still  too  early  to  go  to  bed.  A  bridge 
game  was  started  and  Captain  Neal  made 
a  little  slam  in  hearts,  but  no  one  seemed 
much  interested.  I  do  not  think  there 
was  any  fear  in  it,  but  a  certain  negativc- 
ness  seemed  to  have  settled  on  the  group. 
Tomorrow  these  extremely  young  men 
would  have  to  give  commands  involving 
the  lives  and  perhaps  deaths  of  other 
young  men,  that  was  all.  It  was  no  time 
to  play  cards.  The  game  broke  up  and 
they  tried  to  talk  about  extraneous  mat- 
ters. That  was  tasteless  too.  The  leaders 
of  Company  E  said  good  night  and  went 
to  their  staterooms. 


II 

Nov^  the  first  dark-gray  streaks  of  dawn 
begin  to  appear  off  our  starboard 
bow.  It  is  still  too  dark,  however,  to  see 
more  than  the  obscure  outline  of  the  ship 
nearest  us  in  the  convoy.  The  Raiders  on 
this  transport  are  abandoning  their  fitful 
sleep  on  the  hard,  bare  decks.  It  has 
been  raining  and  those  who  slept  without 
overhead  cover  are  wet  to  the  skin.  Their 
weapons  have  been  stowed  below  or  under 
tarpaulins  or  in  the  companionways  of  the 
ship  to  keep  them  out  of  the  weather. 
These  men  are  accustomed  to  physical 
hardships,  many  having  been  out  here  in 
the  south  Pacific  now  for  nearly  two  years. 
To  their  own  bodily  discomfort  they  give 
no  thought,  but  their  guns  have  been  kept 
dry  and  clean  and  sleek  with  a  light  oil 
coating.  Slowly  the  men  pull  their  per- 
sonal gear  together  and  strap  up  their 
packs  in  the  darkness.  They  go  to  the 
mess  hall  for  a  hot  breakfast  consisting 
mainly  of  cereals  and  starches,  stuff  that 
sticks  to  a  man's  ribs.  It  may  be  a  long 
time  before  we  can  eat  our  next  meal, 
which,  in  any  case,  will  be  cold  rations. 
A  few  men  go  to  the  head  to  wash  and 
brush  their  teeth,  but  not  many.  From 
here  on  in,  personal  cleanliness  is  next  to 
nothing. 

For  the  past  two  hours  I  have  been 
standing  on  the  boat  deck,  sleep  being  out 
of  the  question  for  me.  My  rifle,  bed- 
roll, and  pack  are  stored  in  an  inside 
passageway.  Five  or  six  times  during  the 
night  I  have  gone  inside  to  smoke  and  to 
recheck    my    stuff.     First    Sergeant   Joe 


292 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Weisnewski  has  told  me  what  the  Raiders 
put  into  their  landing  packs  and  I  have 
followed  his  advice  down  to  the  last  item. 
Mine  contains  a  sock  full  of  rice  and  a 
sock  full  of  tea  (a  man  can  live  maybe  two 
weeks  on  that  much),  three  cans  of  meat 
and  vegetable  rations,  three  packages  of 
K  rations,  a  ration  bar  of  concentrated 
chocolate,  four  pairs  of  woolen  socks,  a 
bottle  of  mosquito-repellent  for  my  face 
and  hands,  a  toothbrush  and  small  can  of 
dental  powder,  a  bar  of  soap,  one  face 
towel  (already  dirty),  a  roll  of  toilet  paper, 
a  large  eating  spoon,  a  small  blackout 
flashlight,  six  packs  of  cigarettes  and  four 
boxes  of  matches  in  a  waterproof  rubber 
bag,  and  my  rifle-cleaning  equipment.  On 
Joe's  advice  I've  eliminated  such  un- 
necessaries  as  mess  gear,  shaving  gear, 
change  of  dungarees,  and  blankets.  Un- 
der Joe's  supervision  three-quarters  of  my 
pack  space  is  filled  with  food.  In  my  cor- 
respondent's dispatch  case  there  are  three 
notebooks,  several  pencils  and  a  pen,  a 
small  tin  containing  white  and  yellow 
pills — salt  tablets  to  replace  what  I  will 
lose  in  excessive  perspiration,  atabrine 
pills  to  suppress  malaria  if  I  get  it,  and 
halzone  tablets  to  purify  my  own  water. 
My  dispatch  case  also  holds  a  one-eighth- 
pint  bottle  of  medical  brandy  for  chill 
or  nervous  tension,  an  extra  first-aid  kit 
with  a  bandage  and  sulfa  powder  for 
wounds  and  morphine  for  pain,  more 
cigarettes,  and  two  extra  clips  of  ammu- 
nition. I  am  wearing  half-boots  and  a 
camouflaged  green-and-brown-splotched 
jungle  "zoot  suit."  My  belt  holds  a 
water  canteen,  another  first-aid  kit,  a 
sheathed,  foot-long  hunting  knife,  a  wicked 
two-foot  machete  knife,  and  an  ammuni- 
tion pouch. 

The  Raiders  are  equipped  similarly, 
but  their  ordnance  is  difl'erent  from  mine. 
Instead  of  the  comparatively  light  semi- 
automatic rifle  which  I  carry,  they  are 
lugging  heavy-steeled,  blue-black,  ugly 
chunks  of  firepower,  and  belts,  pouches, 
and  cases  of  ammunition.  They  are  in 
the  Jap-killing  business. 

Now  the  dawn  light  seeps  upward  and 
the  night  sky  retreats  from  the  purple 
waterline  along  the  eastern  horizon.  Our 
ship  changes  her  course  in  a  starboard 
direction   and   the  ship's   mainmast,   sil- 


houetted against  the  diluting  sky,  sud- 
denly resembles  a  gigantic,  towering  cross. 
It  takes  a  moment  for  the  symbolism  of 
the  huge  forward-moving  cross  to  come 
home  to  me,  but  when  it  does  I  am  com- 
pletely oblivious  to  all  other  things.  It  is 
one  of  those  rare  occasions  when  a  man  is 
torn  with  yearning  for  capacities  which  he 
does  not  possess,  when  he  sickens  with 
frustration  because  he  knows  the  signifi- 
cance and  beauty  of  what  he  is  solitarily 
beholding  can  never  be  got  out  of  him 
in  proper  fullness  to  others  in  the  world.  I 
do  not  try  to  call  the  attention  of  anyone 
else  to  what  I  see. 

It  has  become  light  enough  to  see  the 
other  ships  of  our  convoy.  It  is  also  pos- 
sible now  for  enemy  scouting  planes  to 
spot  our  advancing  task  force,  but  we  see 
no  planes,  either  hostile  or  friendly.  Al- 
though we  know  Bougainville  lies  dead 
ahead,  the  land  is  not  yet  visible.  The 
men  no  longer  move  about  the  ship  casu- 
ally as  in  recent  days.  They  are  gathering 
at  predesignated  rendezvous  points,  as- 
sembling into  landing  units,  and  standing 
by  for  orders.  My  plan  is  to  observe  the 
coming  shelling  attack  as  long  as  I  can 
from  the  boat  deck,  then  to  go  to  Landing 
Net  Number  One,  where  the  men  of  Com- 
pany E  will  disembark  into  the  small 
landing  boats. 

Almost  at  the  same  instant,  several  men 
near  me  shout  that  they  see  land  ahead. 
I  peer  forward  through  the  imperfect, 
half-gray  light  and  I  also  see  it.  The 
low-lying  dark  patches  which  a  moment 
before  had  appeared  to  be  clouds  now 
emerge  as  inland  mountains,  their  peaks 
lost  in  the  blue  morning  haze.  We  seem 
to  be  very  close  to  them,  although  dis- 
tances are  deceiving  at  sea.  One  Raider 
yips  out  a  shrill,  "Yahooooo!"  Another, 
in  a  ghost-story- telling  voice,  says  "Bou- 
gainville, h-e-e-r-e  we  c-o-o-m-e!"  The 
men  in  the  organized  landing  parties 
crowd  the  rails: 

"There  she  is,  by  God!"  "It  won't  be 
long  now,  mate!"  "When  in  hell  do  they 
start  the  shelling?"  "See  any  planes?" 
"Look,  a  volcano!"  "It  looks  just  like  any 
other  goddam  island!"  "Where  are  the 
fireworks?" 

Now  most  of  the  task-force  ships  move 
into  a  single-file  formation.     Several  de- 


_i 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


293 


stroycrs  remain  spread  out  on  our  star- 
board and  porl  flanks,  keeping  a  lookout 
for  the  Jap  submarines.  Our  transport 
is  the  sixth  or  seventh  ship  in  the  Indian 
file.  It  is  possible  by  this  time  to  see  the 
vague  greenish  shoreline.  The  ship's  gun 
crews  and  sky  watchers  glue  their  eyes  to 
the  ominous  emptiness  above  us.  Now 
we  are  moving  at  reduced  speed,  and  the 
long  file  of  ships  begins  to  weave  in  a 
snake  line,  follow-the-leader  fashion.  On 
the  boat  deck  we  are  waiting  for  our  lead- 
ing warships  to  start  their  shelling,  but  so 
far  nothing  has  happened.  If  the  Japs 
have  any  coastal  artillery  they  aren't  let- 
ting us  know  about  it  either.  The  shore- 
line appears  as  innocent  and  peaceful  as 
it  might  on  any  other  morning  from  the 
deck  of  a  peacetime  pleasure  cruiser.  On 
the  bridge  over  our  heads,  General  Vande- 
grift  and  Admiral  Wilkinson  and  staff 
and  ship's  officers  are  at  the  forward  rail, 
evidently  watching  and  waiting  just  as  we 
are.  They  know  when  our  own  attack 
will  begin,  but  probably  they  are  just  as 
much  in  the  dark  as  ourselves  with  regard 
to  what  the  enemy's  size,  strength,  and 
action  will  be. 

Our  whole  task  force  is  now  well  inside 
Empress  Augusta  Bay.  The  men  on  the 
boat  deck  are  becoming  tense.  Something 
has  got  to  happen  pretty  soon.  When 
will  we  let  loose  with  our  big  guns?  Or 
will  the  Japs  blast  away  at  us  first?  It's 
about  time  our  air  support  showed  up! 
Now  we  can  distinguish  tiny  Puruata 
Island  from  the  mainland  behind  it.  We 
are  getting  in  close.  The  morning  sky  to 
starboard  begins  to  glow  pink  and  laven- 
der. It's  light  enough  to  smoke  on  open 
decks  without  worrying  about  the  black- 
out.    Still  no  planes.  .  .  . 

Our  leading  destroyer  fires  the  opening 
salvo  at  5:46  a.m.  We  see  two  brilliant 
flashes  against  the  shoreline  background 
and  a  moment  later  two  muffled  reports 
reach  our  ears  through  the  soft  morning 
air. 

The  invasion  of  Bougainville  has  begun. 

Ill 

FULL  bombardment  hasn't  started  yet. 
The  first  salvo  is  not  followed  up  by 
additional  firing  and  there  is  no  immediate 


response  from  the  enemy.  Obviously  our 
warship  has  fired  in  an  attempt  to  draw 
out  and  locate  the  Jap  batteries  if  there 
are  any  such  to  oppose  us.  But  there's 
been  no  reply.  Our  ships  continue  their 
slow,  sneaking  approach  toward  the  beach. 
The  public  address  loudspeakers  click 
alive  and  a  voice  says:  "Synchronize 
watches.  .  .  .  One  minute  past  seven." 
The  men  with  wrist  watches  grab  their 
winding  stems  and  then  look  at  each  other 
and  at  the  loudspeakers  in  slight  bewilder- 
ment. The  loudspeakers  click  on  again: 
"Correction.  .  .  .  That  was  one  minute 
past  six.  One  minute  past  six."  We 
figure  the  announcer  should  have  his  head 
chopped  off — now  is  not  a  time  for  any- 
one to  be  making  mistakes. 

We  see  the  first  plane.  It's  a  bomber, 
one  of  our  own.  It  flies  across  Puruata 
Island  and  over  the  mainland  beach  at 
high  altitude,  but  it  drops  no  bombs.  It 
merely  circles  once  and  goes  off. 

It  doesn't  occupy  our  attention  long, 
because  now  things  begin  to  happen 
in  earnest.  Suddenly  and  simultaneously 
our  naval  guns  go  to  work.  Where  there 
was  complete  quiet  a  moment  before, 
there  is  total  din  now.  Screaming  shells 
are  pouring  into  the  mainland  shore  and 
Puruata  Island  at  a  terrific  rate,  incal- 
culable to  any  human  being.  Tracer 
shells  from  the  smaller  guns  hurtle  toward 
the  targets  in  whizzing,  luminous  flocks — 
as  if  thousands  of  brightly  burning  bulbs 
in  a  Broadway  electric  sign  had  suddenly 
torn  loose  from  their  sockets  and  rocketed 
away  in  wild  confusion.  The  ships  of  the 
firing  line  weave  around  in  crazy  patterns, 
circling,  zigzagging,  then  making  short, 
swift  runs  parallel  to  the  shore  during 
which  they  let  go  their  powerful  broad- 
sides. Some  of  the  shells  hit  shy  of  the 
beach  and  send  up  spires  of  water.  Those 
that  go  home  explode  into  the  jungle 
thickness.  I  have  never  before  seen  a 
full-scale  naval  shelling.  Marines  who 
were  on  Guadalcanal  when  the  Japs 
shelled  it  from  the  sea  have  told  me  it  was 
a  terrible  experience.  Only  now,  how- 
ever, do  I  begin  to  appreciate  what  they 
meant.  I  ofi'er  up  silent  thanks  that  I  am 
at  the  right  end  of  this  bombardment. 

There  is  no  answering  fire  from  the 
shore.  


294 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Now  our  planes  begin  to  appear  in 
twos  and  threes,  crisscrossing  in  the  sky 
ahead  of  us.  A  group  of  TBF's  descends 
on  Cape  Torokino  off  to  our  right  and 
their  thousand-pounders  crash  among  the 
Jap  pillboxes.  Another  wave  of  TBF's 
follows  and  drops  more  bombs  in  the  same 
place.  We  feel  the  blast  concussions  as 
far  out  as  our  ship.  By  this  time  our 
planes  are  bombing  and  strafing  the  main- 
land beach.  They  sweep  over  again  and 
again,  pouring  bullets  and  explosives  into 
whatever  is  under  them. 

There  is  not  a  Jap  plane  to  be  seen. 

So  far  it  looks  like  a  pushover.  Our 
naval  fire  is  not  answered.  Our  planes 
are  not  challenged.  But  the  Japs  know 
this  is  not  a  hit-and-run  operation.  They 
know  it's  an  invasion.  And  an  invasion 
isn't  an  invasion  until  land  forces  come 
ashore  to  stake  out  a  claim  to  the  soil. 
The  Japs  may  be  holding  their  fire  and 
aircraft  back  until  our  loaded  landing 
boats  start  skimming  across  the  water  to- 
ward them,  intending  to  let  everything  go 
then  when  it  will  hurt  the  most.  That 
remains  to  be  seen. 

We  don't  have  long  to  wait.  Suddenly 
the  naval  shelling,  which  had  seemed 
about  as  heavy  as  it  possibly  could  be,  is 
stepped  up  sharply  from  every  section  of 
the  bay,  the  transports  joining  their  fire- 
power to  that  of  the  warships.  Now  hell 
has  broken  loose  for  fair.  It  is  the  climax 
and  final  stage  of  the  barrage.  In  the 
midst  of  the  punishing  cacophony,  our 
loudspeaker  announces,  "All  boat  crews 
.  .  .  man  your  boats!"     It  is  6:37. 

Blue-clad  Navy  coxswains  who  will  pilot 
the  landing  boats  climb  aloft  into  their 
tank  lighters.  The  crews  who  will  lower 
the  small  craft  from  the  transport  into  the 
water  stand  by  for  their  order  to  lower 
away.  A  bunch  of  scouting  dogs  below 
us  on  A  deck  begin  to  bark  excitedly, 
evidently  agitated  by  the  nerve-racking 
rattle  of  guns  on  our  ship,  which  has  just 
joined  in  the  universal  bombardment  of 
the  shore. 

It  is  6:40.  Still  no  reply  from  the  en- 
emy. But  now  we  see  black  puffs  of  flak 
bursting  round  our  planes  over  the  main- 
land.    The  Japs  are  there  all  right.  .  .  . 

At  6:41  the  loudspeaker  voice  com- 
mands: "Lower  all  boats!'!     Navy  crews 


spring  into  action.  Wire  cable  spools 
slowly  revolve.  Winches  lift  the  land- 
ing craft  out  of  their  berths  and  swing 
them  out  over  the  water.  One  tank 
lighter,  gathering  momentum  from  the 
roll  of  the  mother  ship,  begins  to  swing  to 
and  fro  on  the  lift  hooks,  smashing  through 
a  small  section  of  railing.  The  petty 
oflficer  in  charge  loudly  curses  his  luck  in 
salty  language,  but  he  gives  the  right 
orders  at  the  right  time  and  his  crew 
brings  the  craft  under  control. 

It  is  time  for  me  to  leave  my  vantage 
point  on  the  boat  deck  and  go  to  Landing 
Net  Number  One  where  Company  E 
is  to  go  over  the  side.  I  begin  to  stuff* 
some  furiously  scribbled  notes  into  my 
dispatch  case.  First  Lieutenant  Lawrence 
Bangser,  a  husky,  black-haired  demolitions 
specialist,  says,  "I'd  like  to  read  that 
story  when  it's  finished." 

I  say,  "So  would  I." 

As  I  reach  the  place  on  A  deck  forward 
where  Company  E  is  to  go  over,  the  loud- 
speaker orders:  "Lower  all  debarkation 
nets!"  The  men  in  the  first  assault  wave 
begin  climbing  down  the  treacherous  rope 
netting  at  6:57.  They  fill  the  waiting 
landing  craft,  which  shoves  off*  to  make 
way  for  the  next  tank  lighter  to  come 
alongside  and  take  on  its  passengers. 

Now  the  men  in  Company  E  begin  to 
go  down  the  net,  three  or  four  together. 
Second  Lieutenant  Maitland  turns  to  me 
and  smiles  broadly.  "O.K.,  Azine,  over 
you  go."  He  knows  I've  never  gone 
down  one  of  these  tricky  rope  ladders  in 
my  life.  He  grabs  my  rifle  and  gives  me 
a  helping  hoist  over  the  rail.  My  feet  are 
on  the  crossropes.  I  hold  on  with  one 
hand  and  reach  out  with  the  other  to  take 
my  rifle  back  from  Lieutenant  Maitland. 
He  grins  again  and  motions  me  down. 
He's  going  to  carry  the  thing  himself.  I 
don't  stop  to  argue.  My  landing  pack 
becomes  very  cumbersome  and  heavy  as 
I  scramble  down  the  ropes.  It  seems  like 
a  long,  long  way  down  to  the  boat,  al- 
though I  know  it's  not  more  than  fifty  or 
sixty  feet.  Finally  my  feet  touch  the 
afterdeck  and,  without  stopping  to  breathe 
a  sigh  of  relief,  I  leap  behind  the  armored 
bulkhead.  I  look  up  and  see  Lieutenant 
Maitland  and  other  Raiders  coming  down 
the  net.     They  do  it  with  a  dexterity  that 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


295 


I  am  qualifird  only  to  envy.  Other  men 
are  coming  down  other  landing  nets  and 
jamming  other  boats  all  down  the  length 
of  our  transport.  The  same  thing  is  in 
progress  on  the  other  transports  of  the 
task  force. 

IV 

THE  shelling  has  continued  incessantly 
throughout  all  this.  Our  planes  arc 
still  the  sole  occupants  of  the  sky.  The 
jap  shore  defenses,  as  far  as  I  can  tell, 
are  still  mum. 

Our  landing  boat  now  joins  one  of  the 
groups  which  are  waiting  for  the  signal 
to  shove  off.  The  Marines  are  crouched 
down  behind  the  protective  bulkheads  as 
close  as  possible  to  the  deck.  What  talk- 
ing they  do  must  be  done  in  shouts  to  be 
heard  over  the  deep-throated  roar  of  the 
outboard  motors  of  our  boat  and  others 
near  us.  Our  coxswain,  Seaman  First 
Class  John  E.  Russell,  from  Indiana, 
is  at  the  wheel  on  the  poopdeck,  the  only 
man  exposed.  He  keeps  glancing  back 
at  the  transport,  presumably  for  a  panto- 
mime communication  from  someone  there. 
I  yell  at  him  to  give  me  the  word  when  we 
are  about  to  shove  off  for  the  beach.  He 
nods  his  head  and  winks,  indicating  he 
i  will.  Someone  taps  me  on  the  shoulder. 
He's  the  second  man  of  the  two-man  boat 
crew.  He  points  to  a  machine  gun 
mounted  on  the  gunwale  near  me.  "Can 
you  work  that  gun?"  he  shouts. 

"Yes." 

"O.K.;  take  it." 

I  get  up  behind  the  gun; , 

Now  a  group  of  troop-filled  boats  sud- 
denly start  a  beeline  course  toward  the 
shore.  It's  the  first  assault  wave  going 
in.  The  boats  skim  over  the  sun-var- 
nished surface  at  high  speed,  swishing  up 
large  wakes  in  the  calm  water  of  the  bay. 
We  remain  behind.     It  is  our  turn  next. 

When  the  first  wave  is  about  halfway  to 
the  beach,  the  motor  of  our  boat  suddenly 
deepens  into  a  roar  and  Coxswain  Russell 
swings  our  bow  around  toward  shore. 
The  Raiders  tighten  their  grips  on  their 
weapons  and  crouch  lower  in  the  boat. 
No  one  is  talking  now.  Coxswain  Russell 
gives  me  a  slow  Hoosier  wink  and  cocks 
his  thumb  and  forefinger  at  the  mainland 
beach.     We  are  going  in.     It  is  7:22. 


Our  motor  coughs  once,  then  it  takes 
hold  deep  and  solid.  We  begin  to  move 
shoreward,  quickly  picking  up  to  full 
speed.  I  unleash  the  machine  gun  and 
pull  back  the  cocking  lever  twice.  Then 
I  poke  my  helmeted  head  above  the  star- 
board gunwale,  exposing  only  my  fore- 
head and  eyes.  The  first  assault  wave  has 
nearly  reached  the  mainland  beach  ahead 
of  us.  Landing  boats  of  other  Marine 
detachments  have  already  run  up  on  Cape 
Torokina  and  Puruata  Island,  and  men 
are  racing  across  the  sand  toward  the  jun- 
gles. There  seems  to  be  fire-fighting  but 
I  cannot  tell  for  sure.  Now  our  boat  is 
passing  Puruata  Island.  The  landing 
boat  abreast  of  us  on  starboard  is  pouring 
machine-gun  fire  into  Puruata,  but  I  can- 
not see  what  target  is  being  aimed  at  so 
I  do  not  fire  my  own  machine  gun  for 
fear  of  hitting  our  men  already  ashore 
there. 

Now  we  are  past  the  island  and  ap- 
proaching the  mainland  beach.  Sud- 
denly two  geysers  of  water  spout  up  dead 
ahead  of  our  boat.  Then  there  are  sev- 
eral more  off  our  starboard.  Jap  stufT! 
For  the  first  time  we  know  definitely  that 
the  landing  is  being  opposed.  Bullets 
begin  to  whinnng  .  .  .  whinnng  .  .  . 
whinnng  directly  over  our  boat.  Noth- 
ing hits  us.  The  closest  call  is  a  shell 
explosion  about  fifteen  yards  off  our  port 
stern.  They  must  be  throwing  mortars  at 
us.  I  keep  my  machine  gun  aimed  sky- 
ward against  the  worst  possibility — straf- 
ing planes.     But  none  appears. 

Now  the  tank  lighters  which  went  in  on 
the  first  wave  begin  to  go  past  us  on  their 
return  trip  to  the  transport.  The  Ma- 
rines they  have  taken  ashore  are  already  in 
the  jungle.  We  are  still  about  one  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  beach.  We  can  hear 
small-arms  fire  ahead  of  us.  There's  go- 
ing to  be  something  doing  when  we  get 
there,  that's  sure. 

Coxswain  Russell  is  revving  down  our 
motor  now  and  the  boat  reduces  speed 
preparatory  to  running  up  on  the  beach. 
Every  man  rivets  his  eyes  forward  on  the 
steel  landing  ramp  which  in  a  moment  will 
crash  down  and  become  a  bridge  from 
the  boat  to  the  shore.  I  abandon  the 
machine  gun,  grab  my  rifle,  jump  down 
to  the  deck,  and  tensely  take  up  a  posture 


296 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


of  kneeling  readiness  like  the  others. 
The  boat  bumps  the  bottom  gently  once, 
once  more,  and  then  plows  into  the  sand 
with  a  grinding  jolt.  There  is  a  screech- 
ing sound  of  chains  and  the  flat  bow-ramp 
falls  outward  and  dt)wn  to  the  sand, 
which  it  meets  with  3.  resounding  smack. 
The  first  thing  we  see  is  twenty  yards  of 
open  beach  which  ends  in  a  tangle  of 
green  undergrowth. 


THE  men  at  the  extreme  front  of  the 
boat  are  on  the  beach  in  a  split 
second,  streaking  toward  the  bush.  The 
rest  of  us  are  at  their  flying  heels.  Our 
single,  desperate  aim  is  to  get  the  hell  ofl* 
that  exposed  strip  of  danger  and  into  the 
cover  of  the  jungle.  During  the  fraction 
of  a  minute  it  takes  me  to  traverse  the 
strip  of  beach,  my  senses  record  only  one 
impression:  the  sand  is  black.  Aside  from 
this,  the  moment  is  one  of  absolute  mental 
and  emotional  nothingness. 

I  do  not  look  for  an  opening  in  the 
undergrowth,  but  crash  headlong  into  the 
first  foliage  with  which  I  make  physical 
contact.  My  weight  and  momentum 
carry  me  about  six  feet  into  the  wall  of 
tangled  creepers,  vines,  and  bushes. 
Then  my  feet  give  way  and  I  turn  side- 
ways, breaking  my  fall  with  an  elbow. 
There  are  Raiders  of  E  Company  on  both 
sides  of  me  and  ahead  of  me.  All  the 
men  are  prostrate,  some  lying  still  and 
peering  intently  ahead,  others  crawling 
rapidly  forward,  still  others  setting  up 
machine-gun  tripods,  mounting  the  weap- 
ons, and  inserting  long  belts  of  ammu- 
nition. Men  are  still  crashing  into  the 
jungle  from  the  beach  behind  us.  Tommy 
guns  and  other  automatic  weapons  are 
chattering  sporadically  at  a  distance  I 
estimate  to  be  thirty  or  forty  yards  ahead 
of  us.  There  are  intermittent  heavier 
explosions  which  sound  like  grenades  or 
mortar  shells.     Things  are  hot. 

I  am  not  a  member  of  any  specific 
weapon  team,  so  I  do  not  know  exactly 
what  to  do  next.  The  best  thing,  I  decide, 
is  to  crawl  a  bit  farther  into  the  jungle  and 
try  to  spot  one  of  the  officers  of  E  Company 
who  might  know  something  about  the 
general   situation.     I   crawl   forward   for 


approximately  twenty  feet  and  stop  when 
I  see  Joe  Weisnewski.  He  has  an  ugly, 
bleeding  bruise  under  his  left  eye.  I 
make  it  over  to  him  on  my  hands  and 
knees. 

"What  happened  to  your  cheek.  Ski?" 
I  ask  him. 

"Damned  if  I  know." 

"What's  doing  up  there  ahead  of  us?" 

^'Doesn't  sound  like  much.  Some 
Nambus  and  snipers  maybe."  (The 
Nambu  is  a  Japanese  light  machine  gun.) 

"Who's  up  there?"  I  ask. 

"F  and  H." 

Those  companies  were  the  first  Raider 
landing  wave  which  went  in  ahead  of  us 
on  this  particular  segment  of  the  beach. 
Our  present  position  is  supposed  to  be 
about  two  hundred  yards  up  the  beach 
from  Cape  Torokina.  From  that  direc- 
tion we  now  hear  the  sound  of  heavy-gun 
discharges.  It  is  too  soon  for  our  own 
men  to  have  landed  any  of  our  heavier 
stuff",  so  they  must  be  Jap  guns.  If  so, 
our  boys  are  probably  having  an  un- 
pleasant time  of  it  on  the  cape.  I  turn 
again  to  Joe: 

"Ski,  what's  the  scoop?"  I  ask. 

"We've  missed  the  trail — landed  too  far 
north." 

"Are  we  fouled  up?" 

"No,  it's  just  down  toward  the  cape  a 
piece.  We'll  be  moving  down  as  soon  as 
it  secures  a  little  around  here,"  he  says. 

That  means  waiting.  Gradually  the 
small-arms  firing  up  ahead  diminishes, 
but  the  heavy  booming  on  Cape  Torokina 
continues.  In  this  section  platoon  leaders 
are  rounding  up  the  men  of  their  com- 
mands. The  every-man-for-himself  phase 
of  the  landing  is  over  and  the  troops  are 
quickly  re-forming  into  combat  units.  In 
less  than  twenty  minutes,  Company  E  is 
shipshape — except  for  one  lad  who  keeps 
calling  for  someone  named  Moe. 

"Moe!"  he  yells,  "Moe  .  .  .  Moe  .  .  . 
goddamn  it  .  .  .  Moe!" 

"Who's  Moe?"  I  ask  him. 

He  looks  at  me  for  a  moment. 

"Huh?" 

"Who's  Moe?"  I  repeat. 

"He's  the  number  two  man  on  this 
goddam  machine  gun!"  he  exclaims. 
He  turns  away  and  again  trumpets,  "Moe 
.  .  .  hey,  Moe!" 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


297 


Now  the  situation  in  our  sector  of  the 
beach  sccins  fairly  quiet.  We  feel  it  is 
safe  enough  to  get  off  our  stomachs  and 
stand  upright.  The  men  of  Companies 
F  and  G,  having  cleaned  up  enemy 
resistance  in  the  vicinity  ahead,  begin  to 
filter  out  l)ack  toward  the  beach.  I  see 
no  casualties  among  them.  Slowly  we 
make  our  way  out  of  the  underbrush  and 
into  the  open,  where  once  again  we  get  a 
broad  view  of  the  bay  area. 

Our  planes  are  circling  in  the  skies 
overhead,  keeping  a  lookout  for  enemy 
aircraft.  Far  out  in  the  bay  the  transports 
are  unloading  their  cargo  holds,  and  dozens 
of  heavily  laden  landing  craft  are  shuttling 
back  and  forth  between  the  beach  and  the 
big  ships.  Already  boxes  of  rations,  am- 
munition, and  equipment  are  piling  up 
along  the  water's  edge. 

The  fighting  now  seems  to  be  confined 
to  the  cape  area,  which,  instead  of  being 
only  two  hundred  yards  from  us,  is  about 
five  hundred  yards'  distance.  Ski  was 
right  in  what  he  told  me.  Somehow  a 
miscalculation  has  been  made,  and  we 
have  landed  at  a  point  about  three  hun- 
dred yards  north  of  the  trail's  opening. 
The  Raiders'  job,  first,  is  to  move  along 
the  beach  toward  the  cape  until  we  come 
to  the  trail,  then  to  penetrate  inland  at 
least  six  hundred  yards  so  that  we  may 
establish  an  outer  line  of  defense  in  the 
jungle.  F  and  G  Companies  will  be  the 
vanguard,  and  E  Company  will  secure  the 
command  post  somewhat  behind  the  de- 
fense line.  The  men  of  F  and  G  now 
start  moving  off  down  the  beach.  We  of 
E  Company  remain  behind  temporarily, 
giving  the  advance  units  time  to  spread 
out  into  a  thin  single  file. 

We  are  waiting  on  the  open  beach  when 
we  spot  the  first  Jap  planes  of  the  day.  I 
see  three  of  them,  Nakagima  torpedo 
bombers  with  their  fixed  landing  gears. 
They  hurtle  out  over  the  bay  area,  evi- 
dently heading  for  our  ships,  which  are 
anchored  some  distance  out.  Our  de- 
stroyers closest  to  the  shore  get  their  guns 
into  action  instantly.  A  dirty  black 
puff  of  smoke  suddenly  bursts  out  laterally 
from  the  engine  of  one  Jap  plane.  In  a 
moment  both  of  its  wings  and  the  under- 
side of  its  fuselage  are  ringed  with  stream- 
ing banners  of  bright  orange  flame.     The 


stricken  Nakagima  careens  wildly  toward 
Puruata  Island  and  then  begins  climbing 
skyward  in  fiery  agony.  It  is  a  beautiful, 
fascinating  thing  to  watch.  I  am  so 
engrossed  in  the  sight  that,  for  an  instant, 
I  do  not  notice  the  sudden  frenzied  yelling 
of  the  Raiders  around  me  on  the  beach. 


VI 

IN  ONE  and  the  same  instant  I  hear  the 
electrifying  sound  of  a  diving  plane 
and  experience  a  flash  of  fear  for  my  life. 
I  am  less  than  five  yards  from  the  wall  of 
jungle  growth  which  borders  the  beach 
where  I  am  standing.  The  men  all 
around  me  are  diving  into  the  under- 
growth. I  spin  around  toward  the  jungle 
and  again  I  plow  my  way  into  it  as  far  as 
my  moving  weight  will  carry  me  against 
the  resisting  green  tangle.  A  creeper 
catches  the  pack  on  my  back  and  pulls  me 
up  short.  I  do  not  have  time  to  get  my 
knife  out  to  cut  it,  but  lunge  ahead  until 
the  creeper  snaps  and  releases  me  for 
another  pile-driving  crash  farther  into  the 
underbrush.  I  trip  and  fall  flat  on  my 
face. 

The  whole  world  is  filled  with  the 
terrifying  noise  of  the  approaching  plane. 
I  can  distinctly  hear  the  staccato  bursts  of 
the  strafing  machine  guns,  coming  closer 
every  second.  I  lie  where  I  fall.  My 
body  stiffens  against  the  earth  and  I  try  to 
press  myself  down  into  it.  My  eyes  are 
closed  and  my  nose  is  flattened  against  the 
ground.  My  mouth  is  full  of  dirt  and 
twigs  which  I  gfind  between  my  teeth.  A 
whirling  montage  of  still  lifes  goes  through 
my  mind  .  .  .  my  mother  and  dad  sitting 
on  the  porch  swing  facing  London  Road  in 
Duluth  ...  a  gold-edged  rectangular  in- 
surance policy  .  .  .  my  wife.  May,  wearing 
a  green  suit,  standing  at  the  Olney  subway 
entrance  in  Philadelphia  .  .  .  the  long 
brown  iron-ore  carriers  on  Lake  Superior. 
These  things  and  several  others  which  I 
now  fail  to  recall  whiz  through  my  con- 
sciousness with  the  unmatchable  speed  of 
thought.  Then  I  am  cognizant  again  of 
the  machine-gun  fire.  I  suffer  a  horrible 
anticipation  of  the  bullets  spattering 
through  my  body.  I  imagine  swift,  burn- 
ing stabs  in  the  small  of  my  back,  across 
my  hips.     I  do  not  consciously  pray,  but  I 


298 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


experience  one  instant  of  profound  and 
wordless  supplication  to  God.  That  I 
am  going  to  die  under  the  hail  of  ap- 
proaching bullets  seems  certain.  There 
is  nothing  to  do  but  lie  here.   .   .  . 

The  bullets  never  reach  me,  nor  the  men 
near  me. 

In  a  moment  we  know  the  source  of  our 
salvation.  Still  prostrate,  we  hear  the 
sound  now,  not  of  one,  but  of  two  planes. 
One  of  our  guys  is  after  the  bastard !  Be- 
cause of  the  solid  jungle  roof,  we  cannot 
see  anything  above  us.  We  follow  the 
ensuing  dogfight  by  listening  to  the  inter- 
zooming  plane  engines.  They  are  clearly 
distinguishable:  the  Jap  is  soprano;  ours 
is  bass.  The  dogfight  moves  out  over  the 
bay.  Later  we  learn  that  Tojo  was  shot 
down  by  our  plane. 

The  Raiders  are  scrambling  to  their  feet. 
Again  we  make  our  way  out  of  the  bush 
into  the  open  sand.  Hugging  the  fringe  of 
the  jungle,  our  single-file  line  slowly  nego- 
tiates its  course  toward  Cape  Torokina, 
every  so  often  ducking  quickly  behind  the 
undergrowth  as  a  burst  of  snipers'  bullets 
sings  overhead.  We  can  hear  concen- 
trated firing  from  the  direction  of  the  trail. 
F  and  G  are  there  already. 

A  runner  from  one  of  the  leading  com- 
panies comes  back.  He  reports  that  F 
and  G  have  reached  the  opening  of  the 
trail,  advanced  inward  a  short  distance, 
and  are  now  in  contact  with  the  Japs. 
They  are  being  held  up  by  stubborn  mor- 
tar and  machine-gun  resistance.  Captain 
Neal  decides  to  send  up  his  special  weap- 
ons platoon  to  help  wipe  out  the  Jap  nests. 
Lieutenant  Maitland  comes  over  to  me, 
points  at  the  platoon,  and  says:  "If  you 
want  a  story,  go  along  with  them." 

First  Lieutenant  Burtman,  leader  of  the 
platoon,  is  at  the  head  of  the  line.  I  fall 
in  somewhere  in  the  middle.  We  move 
as  rapidly  as  possible  through  the  ankle- 
deep  sand,  coming  to  a  halt  on  the  bank  of 
a  small  lagoon  which  is  fed  by  a  shallow 
stream.  There  is  no  jungle  protection 
here  and  it  is  necessary  for  the  Raiders  to 
traverse  the  next  fifty  yards  of  open  beach 
at  a  dead  run  to  reduce  the  risk  of  being 
hit  by  sniper  fire.  The  men  take  ofi* 
across  the  edge  of  the  exposed  lagoon  one 
by  one — spaced  about  fifteen  paces  apart. 
The  husky  youngster  immediately  ahead 


of  me  is  carrying  a  heavy  weapon  and  is 
loaded  down  with  several  large  pouches  of 
ammunition,  but  he  streaks  across  like  a 
greyhound.  I  begin  to  understand  the 
value  of  the  hard  training  these  Raiders 
get.     They  are  athletes. 

Luckily,  every  man  gets  across  safely. 
Now  we  are  near  the  opening  of  the  trail. 
The  men  at  the  head  of  the  line  turn  off" 
the  beach  and  become  hidden  from  my 
view  as  they  enter  the  jungle,  still  in  single- 
file  formation.  When  I  reach  the  open- 
ing, I  see  the  first  Jap  fortifications,  a 
machine-gun  pillbox  consisting  of  earth 
and  logs  and  camouflaged  with  dried 
grass  and  leaves,  and  a  zigzag  rifle  pit  or 
trench  about  eighty  feet  in  length.  Wood- 
en boxes  of  Jap  small-caliber  ammunition 
are  piled  around  these  entrenchments — 
which  evidently  were  abandoned  in  a 
hurry  shortly  before  or  during  our  naval 
shelling.  A  litde  farther  up  the  trail  we 
come  to  three  straw-thatched  huts,  living 
quarters  for  the  Japs  who  have  been  here. 

We  shed  our  packs  and  begin  crawling 
forward.  The  men  are  releasing  the  safety 
catches  on  their  weapons.  I  pull  back 
the  operating  handle  of  my  semi-auto- 
matic and  let  it  ram  home,  inserting  a 
bullet  into  the  chamber.  We  creep  for- 
ward foot  by  foot  on  both  sides  of  the 
trail.  We  hear  our  high-voiced  tommy 
guns  crackling  fiercely  up  ahead,  but  from 
here  we  can't  see  what's  going  on.  We 
continue  our  snake-belly  advance  forward, 
keeping  a  sharp  lookout  in  every  direction, 
not  forgetting  to  search  the  leafy  limbs  of 
the  banyan  trees  for  hidden  snipers. 

Suddenly  a  figure  comes  into  open  view. 
His  jungle  "zoot  suit"  marks  him  as  a 
Marine.  He  is  lurching  unsteadily  along 
the  trail  toward  us.  His  nose,  cheeks, 
mouth,  and  chin  are  bathed  in  blood.  He 
stumbles  past  me  and  a  corpsman  leaps  out 
of  the  bush,  grabs  him  by  the  arm,  and  pulls 
him  down  alongside  the  trail.  The  wound- 
ed man  balances  on  his  knees  while  the 
corpsman  digs  out  a  cleansing  solution, 
bandages,  and  tape.  The  bridge  of  the 
man's  nose  has  been  hit  by  a  Jap  bullet 
which  neatly  grooved  out  a  quarter-inch 
of  skin  and  cartilage.  It  is  not  a  serious 
wound.  The  corpsman  finishes  his  job 
quickly  and  sends  the  man  back  to  the 
beach  for  further  treatment.     (I  see  this 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


299 


same  Raider  biick  at  the  front  two  hours 
later.) 

Meantime,  the  fighting  up  ahead  con- 
tinues without  letup.  The  air  is  full  of 
angry,  spitting,  sputtering  bursts  from 
weapons  of  many  types.  I  see  nothing  to 
shoot  at,  so  I  hold  my  fire.  But  several  of 
the  sharper-eyed  Raiders  in  my  vicinity 
let  go  once  in  a  while  at  real  or  perhaps 
fancied  targets. 

THIS  is  jungle  skirmishing.  It  is  the 
kind  of  warfare  Marines  have  mas- 
tered since  they  first  struck  against  the 
Japs  on  Guadalcanal  more  than  a  year 
ago.  It  is  hard,  inside  fighting — half 
against  the  enemy,  half  against  nature. 
It  is  fighting  that  makes  unceasing  de- 
mands on  your  eyes  and  ears  and  nervous 
system.  The  enemy  is  wily,  treacherous, 
skilled,  resourceful,  and  usually  fearless. 
The  jungle  works  the  strength  out  of 
your  body  and  sometimes  gets  into  your 
mind,  especially  at  night.  In  this  kind  of 
fighting  there  is  no  compromise  either 
with  the  Jap  or  with  the  jungle.     You  go 


on  fighting  against  one  and  enduring  the 
other  because  there  is  nothing  else  to  do. 
You  find  your  strength  in  your  instinct  to 
survive,  in  your  comrades,  and  sometimes, 
when  you  remember  it,  in  the  purpose  for 
which   your  country  sent  you   out  here. 

These  jungle  battles  may  last  for  only  a 
few  minutes  or  they  may  last  for  days. 
This  particular  skirmish  along  the  trail 
leading  from  Empress  Augusta  Bay  into 
the  Bougainville  jungle  lasts  about  three 
hours.  When  it  is  over  the  Raiders  have 
driven  the  Japs  back  into  the  hinterland 
and  secured  our  section  of  the  beachhead, 
so  that  a  command  post  may  now  be 
established  and  the  next  phase  of  the 
operation  properly  based.  The  same  situ- 
ation prevails  up  and  down  the  coast 
where  other  Marine  units  have  landed  and 
fought  their  way  into  the  jungle.  Only  on 
Cape  Torokina,  where  the  Japs  are  still 
putting  up  stifFresistance,  is  there  any  close- 
up  fighting  at  the  moment  of  this  writing. 

The  Raiders  say  the  enemy  will  try  to 
come  back  in  here  tonight.  That  will 
be  another  story. 


II 


TARGET:  PLOESTI,  by  Captain  William  D.  Banks 


WE  TOOK  off  at  dawn.  Our  airfield 
was  a  small,  crude  affair  in  Libya 
that  had  been  thrown  together 
after  the  Italians  were  pushed  out.  At 
the  time  it  was  crowded  with  Liberator 
bombers,  and  every  one  that  could  fly 
was  pressed  into  service  for  the  Ploesti 
mission.  My  plane,  the  "Sad  Sack," 
was  one  of  them.  After  one  last  briefing, 
we  had  checked  over  the  Sad  Sack  as  she 
had  never  been  checked  before.  This 
was  to  be  our  longest  and  toughest  mis- 
sion, and  we  figured  we'd  have  enough 
trouble  without  mechanical  difficulties. 
When  we  got  to  the  plane  for  the  take-off 
our  ground  crew  were  still  working  her 
over.  They  had  been  up  hours  ahead  of 
us,  putting  the  finishing  touches  on  her 
with  the  loving  care  of  a  lot  of  mothers. 
They  had  been  nursing  the  old  Sad  Sack 


along  for  months,  and  were  just  as  anxious 
as  we  were  to  have  her  get  up  to  Rumania 
and  back. 

Everything  worked  perfectly.  The  Sad 
Sack  took  the  air  easily  and  gracefully 
and  we  started  climbing  to  meet  the  other 
planes  that  were  gathering  round  our 
rendezvous  spot.  The  sky  was  dark  with 
big  B24's.  They  were  coming  in  from 
all  directions,  circling  about  and  swinging 
into  position.  It  took  over  an  hour  for 
all  of  them  to  arrive  and  get  into  their 
places.  When  our  formation  was  finally 
made  up  we  turned  and  headed  straight 
out  over  the  Mediterranean  for  Rumania. 

My  co-pilot,  Carl  Root,  and  I  had  a 
system  we  had  been  using  for  the  five 
months  we  had  been  flying  together  in 
this  area.  I  piloted  for  half  an  hour  and 
then  rested  while  he  took  over.     It  gave 


300 


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us  both  something  to  look  forward  to. 
We  settled  ourselves  comfortably  in  the 
pilot's  compartment  and  started  counting 
the  minutes,  Carl  waiting  to  take  the  con- 
trols while  I  looked^  forward  to  the  half- 
hour's  rest.  Ther  we  went  through  the 
old  "pilot  to  navigator"  routine  over  the 
intercom.  The  boys  were  all  present 
and  ready  to  go:  Bombardier  Joe  Souza, 
Navigator  Teddy  Stewart,  Engineer  "Pop" 
Pleasant,  Radioman  Walt  Golec,  Assistant 
Radioman  and  Gunner  Earl  Rice,  Waist 
Gunner  Henry  Richotte,  Armorer-Gun- 
ner "Carburetor"  Carbery,  and  Tail 
Gunner  Wilson  Cain.  I  could  tell  that, 
like  me,  they  were  doing  some  pretty 
heavy  thinking  about  this  long-distance 
job. 

HAD  been  practicing  for  this 
mission  ever  since  our  trip  over 
Rome,  July  19th.  And  this  was  August 
1st.  For  an  ordinary  mission  briefing  is  a 
matter  of  minutes  or  possibly  a  few  hours, 
but  for  this  one  we  were  briefed  for  almost 
ten  days. 

Engineers  had  marked  off  areas  dupli- 
cating Ploesti  out  on  the  desert,  and  al- 
most every  day  we  spent  hours  practicing 
over  them.  Low-level  bombing  was  some- 
thing new  for  these  high-altitude  bombers, 
but  the  Liberators  were  the  best  planes 
we  had  for  the  job,  so  we  had  to  develop 
our  own  technique.  It  scared  us  all  at 
first,  skimming  along  ten  feet  ofi*  the 
ground  in  a  big,  four-engine  B24,  but 
after  a  few  days  of  it  we  learned  not  to 
mind,  and  rather  enjoyed  the  thrill.  One 
other  thing  it  taught  us:  there's  nothing 
as  safe  and  convenient  as  high-altitude 
bombing. 

We  had  spent  the  rest  of  our  time  with 
intelligence  specialists  who  reconstructed 
the  whole  Ploesti  area  in  accurate  scale 
on  a  big  table  and  proceeded  to  teach  us 
what  oil  refining  is  and  how  to  put  it  out 
of  commission.  A  couple  of  these  men 
had  helped  build  the  Ploesti  fields,  so  we 
could  safely  assume  that  they  knew  what 
they  were  talking  about.  We  went  into 
all  the  intricacies  of  refining  processes 
and  could  have  qualified  for  good  jobs  in 
the  oil  business  by  the  time  we  got  through. 
We  learned  where  every  cracking  tower, 
every  refining  and  distillation  plant,  and 


every  power  plant  was,   and  practicall)|  - 
memorized  the  position  of  every  oil  tani 
in  Rumania.     They  taught  us  what  the 
oil  fields  would  look  like  from  a  low-flying, 
plane,   too.     They  made  both  slow  and 
fast  movies  of  the  model  oil  fields,  and  ran, 
them  ofi"  for  us  so  many  times  that  we^ 
could  see  smokestacks  rushing  at  us  in  our 
sleep.     Part  of  the  time  was  spent  discuss- 
ing the  problems  of  low-level  bombing,}!  j 
and  the  reasons  for  it.     The  higher-ups 
had  decided  that  it  would  be  cheaper  to 
hit  the  oil  fields  once  from  a  low  altitude 
than  to  go  after  them  continually  from^ 
safer  but  less  effective  heights.  ; 

We  had  been  given  all  sorts  of  escape - 
kits,  containing  money  in  the  denomina- 
tions of  every  country  we  could  possibly 
reach   by   plane.     They   also   had   small 
steel  files,  compasses,  vitamins,  and  many 
other   useful   items   to   help   us   back   to 
Libya  if  we  were  forced  down.     It  was  • 
suggested  that  it  would  be  useless  to  carry 
revolvers  because  we  wouldn't  be  able  to 
use  them,  but  one  of  the  pilots  said  later,  1 
"I  don't  know  whether  or  not  you  guys  i 
are  going  to  carry  guns,  but  everybody  in  g 
my  plane  is  going  to,  and  we're  coming  i 
out    shooting."     We    went    into    all    the  { 
fine  points  of  international  law.     They  i 
warned  us  to  let  ourselves  get  captured  if  ij 
we  had  to  land  in  enemy  territory,  and  h 
then  try  to  escape.     If  we  were  caught  in  j  J 
civilian  clothes  after  we  had  been  cap-  - 
tured  once,  we  could  expect  to  be  interned 
again,  but  if  we  were  captured  in  civilian 
clothes  for  the  first   time,  we  could  be   | 
shot  as  spies.     All  these  precautions  had  .' 
seemed  a  little  gloomy  at  the  time,  but 
now  that  we  were  on  our  way  it  gave  us  ^ 
some  feeling  of  security  to  know  all  the  ^ 
possible  avenues  of  escape. 

N  the  rear  of  the  ship  the  boys  were  kid-    : 
ding  each   other   as   usual,   bandying 
such  witticisms  as  "I'm  too  young  to  die. 
Honest,  Judge,   I'm  too  young  to  die."    , 
Joe  Souza  had  to  go  through  the  same 
old  stuff'  because  of  his  Boston  accent.    , 
Pop  Pleasant,  whose  job  it  is  to  hand  out    P 
the   rather   tasteless   lunch   rations,    was 
taking   the   boys'   orders.     One   thought 
he'd  have  a  banana  split.     Another  would 
settle    for    two    dinners,    while    another 
hankered  for  three  breakfasts  and  some- 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


301 


body's  voice  kept  shrieking  "Blue  plate!" 
But  beneath  all  this  joking  was  a  lot  of 
serious  thought.  This  was  going  to  be 
no  field  day  and  we  knew  it. 

As  time  went  on  we  began  to  get  tense. 
We  were  nearing  our  target  and  the  dis- 
tance was  starting  to  tell.  Several  of 
the  planes  had  had  trouble  and  turned 
back  already.  Every  once  in  a  while  I 
would  look  off  to  my  left  and  see  one  or 
two  Liberators  feather  a  prop,  wheel  out 
"  of  formation,  and  start  for  home.  A  little 
later  one  of  the  crew  would  call  over  the 
interphone,  "Another  plane's  turned  back!" 
Most  of  them  went  under  us.  We  could 
see  them  about  halfway  down  between 
us  and  the  sea,  headed  back  to  the  base, 
trying  to  make  it  to  safe,  Allied  land  be- 
fore they  piled  into  the  Mediterranean. 
Others  would  turn  back  close  enough  for 
'  us  to  see  the  men  in  the  plane.  We 
'  waved  good-by,  knowing  how  they  felt  and 
hoping  they  would  get  back  safely.  The 
Sad  Sack,  never  in  better  condition,  flew 
straight  on  toward  Rumania. 

Then,  almost  before  we  knew  it,  we 
were  over  the  mountains  and  hills  of 
Greece.  We  kept  our  altitude  as  low  as 
possible,  climbing  over  the  mountains 
and  flying  down  the  valleys.  We  were 
so  low,  in  some  places,  that  we  could  see 
the  people  in  their  villages  standing  around 
and  gaping  up  at  us.  We  could  even  see 
that  they  had  on  their  Sunday  clothes. 
We  passed  some  wide  fields  of  corn  and 
grain  that  looked  for  all  the  world  like 
our  own  Middle  West.  Still  keeping 
only  a  few  feet  off  the  ground,  we  went  on 
up  into  Bulgaria.  Everything  was  as 
quiet  and  peaceful  as  if  there  were  no 
world  war.  We  didn't  see  a  single 
enemy  plane  or  one  puff  of  anti-aircraft 
fire.  We  crossed  the  "blue  Danube," 
but  it  looked  brown  to  us.  Then  we 
went  even  lower.  We  were  approaching 
the  oil  fields. 

II 

^UR  group,  led  by  Colonel  "Killer" 
Kane,  wasn't  as  big  as  it  had  been 
when  we  started  earlier  in  the  morning, 
for  some  of  our  planes  were  among  those 
that  had  been  forced  to  turn  back.  I  was 
leading  the  third  element,  on  the  Colonel's 
left,  as  we  roared  down  from  the  foothills 


towards  our  oil  field.  We  kept  our  for- 
mation, a  little  tighter  now,  and  headed  in 
for  the  target.  There  were  a  lot  of  clouds 
in  the  sky,  and  the  sun  that  had  been 
bright  all  the  way  up  was  gone.  We  went 
down  even  lower,  and  started  clipping  the 
tops  off  the  trees. 

Smoke  was  rising  to  meet  us  as  we  ap- 
proached the  refineries.  The  Germans 
had  had  time  to  set  out  some  smudge 
pots,  but  they  didn't  bother  us.  The 
smoke  from  the  oil  tanks  that  had  already 
been  hit  was  a  lot  worse,  and  the  sky  was 
full  of  ack-ack.  When  we  plunged  in  to- 
ward our  refinery  the  smoke  was  so  bad  that 
we  couldn't  see  a  thing  on  the  ground. 

Our  target  was  a  power  plant.  If  you 
hit  that,  you  knock  out  the  whole  refinery. 
Oil  tanks  make  a  satisfying  explosion  and 
a  lot  of  smoke,  but  they  aren't  as  good 
strategic  targets  as  power  plants.  Our 
pinpoint  was  a  smokestack,  and  we  had 
memorized  its  location  so  well  that  we 
didn't  need  to  see  it  until  the  last  minute. 
All  we  needed  was  a  split  second  to  sight 
it.  And  we  had  to  get  it  with  the  first 
try;  there  would  be  no  time  to  turn 
around  for  another  run  this  trip. 

Somebody  ahead  of  us  had  bombed 
our  target  by  mistake.  We  all  felt  sick 
when  we  saw  the  oil  tanks  exploding  and 
great  swirls  of  smoke  pouring  up  from  the 
ground.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but 
try  to  hit  it  again.  I  muttered,  "Here  we 
go,  boys,"  and  started  our  run.  Oil  tanks 
were  still  going  off  right  under  us,  and  on 
both  sides  German  ack-ack  batteries  were 
firing  in  unison.  We  were  so  low  that 
they  were  actually  trained  down  on  us. 

We  kept  straining  our  eyes  for  that 
stack.  We  couldn't  see  it  yet,  and  I  be- 
gan to  worry.  It  looked  as  if  we  weren't 
going  to  get  the  damned  thing  after  all, 
and  we  couldn't  even  tell  if  the  others  had 
hit  the  right  spot.  We  just  plowed  on, 
sweating  blood  and  not  saying  a  word. 
The  Sad  Sack  was  bristling  with  guns 
for  this  mission,  and  we  were  firing  every 
one  of  them  as  we  roared  in.  The  whole 
plane  shuddered  with  the  fire.  The  din 
was  tremendous,  but  over  it  I  heard  Pop 
Pleasant  yell  that  he'd  seen  his  tracers 
knock  out  a  whole  battery. 

Finally  I  decided  to  pull  away.  We 
had   finished   our   run   and   hadn't   even 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


seen  our  pinpoint.  At  that  moment  Joe 
Souza  yelled.  He  had  spotted  our  smoke- 
stack and  power  plant  through  an  opening 
in  the  smoke.  I  held  her  steady  for  a 
split  second  while  Joe  sighted  and  let  his 
bombs  go,  and  ther  I  almost  jumped  out 
of  my  seat.  Carl  shouted,  "Jesus!"  and  I 
pulled  back  with  all  the  strength  I  had. 
Right  in  front  of  us,  square  in  the  middle 
of  the  windshield  and  looming  up  almost 
out  of  sight,  was  the  tallest,  hugest  smoke- 
stack I  have  ever  seen. 

My  heart  dropped  into  my  boots  and 
jumped  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth  as  we 
drove  at  it.  Shaking  all  over  with  the 
racing  of  her  motors,  the  Sad  Sack  leapt 
up  and  climbed  for  the  top  of  it.  I 
prayed  as  she  lost  speed  and  the  stack 
rushed  at  us.  We  cleared  it  as  if  we  were 
pole-vaulting.  I  wiped  the  sweat  from 
my  eyes  and  almost  took  time  off  to  cheer 
as  we  dropped  down  on  the  other  side 
and  sped  away. 

We  must  have  missed  it  by  inches,  but 
it  saved  our  lives.  The  Germans  had 
just  got  our  range  perfectly,  and  let  go 
with  a  tremendous  ack-ack  barrage  at  the 
moment  we  pulled  up.  The  two  planes 
behind  us,  which  didn't  have  to  pull  up 
over  their  low  targets,  were  knocked  down 
by  the  same  fire.  (Apparently  that's  the 
way  the  Germans  got  most  of  our  planes — 
waited  for  them  at  the  end  of  their  run.) 
But  it  was  the  Sad  Sack's  lucky  day.  We 
had  hit  our  target  too,  though  at  the 
moment  that  seemed  incidental. 

As  we  pulled  away,  I  saw  one  of  the 
planes  of  my  element  in  trouble.  The 
pilot  was  right  over  his  target  and  had  had 
to  feather  a  prop.  I  thought,  "Oh  oh. 
There  he  goes."  But  a  second  later  I 
saw  Killer  Kane  feathering  a  prop  too, 
and  getting  along  very  nicely.  So  I 
forgot  about  the  other  plane,  and  wasn't 
surprised  when  it  joined  us  later.  There 
were  B24's  going  down  all  around  us  now. 
We  saw  two  fall  right  in  front  of  us  that 
had  apparently  climbed  up  out  of  forma- 
tion and  been  hit  by  pursuit  planes.  The 
ground  was  spotted  with  them,  including 
some  that  had  managed  to  land  safely. 
The  crews  of  these  last  were  beside  them, 
watching  the  planes  burn  and  waving  to 
us  as  we  went  by.  We  hated  to  leave  them 
behind,  but  it  was  good  to  see  that  some  of 


the  men  were  still  alive.  We  ducked 
even  closer  to  the  ground  and  scooted  for 
home. 

HI 

THERE  wasn't  much  left  of  our  section 
as  we  started  back,  and  two  of  the 
planes  had  only  three  engines  working. 
German  fighters  were  circling  above,  but 
we  stayed  too  low  for  them  to  tangle  with 
us.  When  one  of  them  tried  a  pass  at  the 
Sad  Sack,  I  couldn't  resist  the  temptation 
to  pull  up  and  give  him  a  burst  with  the 
fixed  guns  we  had  rigged  up  for  the  oc- 
casion. He  whizzed  by,  I  leveled  back 
into  formation,  and  Carl  Root  chuckled, 
"What  the  hell  are  you,  a  pursuit  pilot?" 

We  followed  the  rise  and  fall  of  the 
land  again,  and  it  wasn't  long  before  we 
had  outdistanced  the  fighters  and  were 
over  peaceful  countryside.  As  we  skimmed 
over  the  flat  Danube  Valley  the  farmers 
were  out  in  their  fields,  waving  to  us  as  if 
they  knew  what  we  had  been  doing  and 
thoroughly  approved.  We  passed  so  close 
to  them  that  it  was  like  speeding  by  in  a 
car.  I'm  sure  that  if  I  ever  see  them 
again  I'll  recognize  them.  I'm  afraid  we 
took  some  of  their  corn  tops  with  us, 
though,  and  Pop  Pleasant  even  claims 
we  threshed  their  grain.  A  few  of  their 
trees  are  prematurely  bare  in  the  upper 
branches. 

But  the  rest  of  the  trip  was  no  joyride. 
Some  of  the  B24's  were  so  badly  shot  up 
that  Colonel  Kane  decided  to  head  for 
Turkey  instead  of  risking  the  long  flight 
over  active  enemy  territory.  We  weren't 
at  all  happy  at  the  prospect  of  being  in- 
terned for  the  duration,  but  we  couldn't 
pull  out  and  make  both  us  and  the  rest 
of  the  formation  easy  meat  for  enemy 
fighters. 

It  began  to  rain.  We  were  leaving  the 
Danube  Valley  and  nearing  some  moun- 
tains, so  we  had  to  start  climbing.  The 
Sad  Sack  was  purring  along  smoothly  on 
all  four  engines,  reminding  us  again  that 
we  had  the  best  damned  ground  crew  in 
the  Air  Forces.  But  the  two  planes  that 
had  lost  an  engine  had  to  start  lightening 
their  load  for  the  climb.  It  startled  us 
at  first  to  see  equipment  fly  out  of  the  two 
planes  and  float  back  under  us.  We 
thought  the  planes  were  disintegrating  in 


THE    MOMENT    OF    ATTACK 


303 


midair.  The  crews  threw  out  everything 
that  was  loose  or  that  could  be  yanked 
loose,  and  we  left  behind  us  a  long,  wob- 
bling trail  of  seats,  tanks,  belts,  shoes, 
boxes,  and  first-aid  kits  with  gauze  band- 
ages unrolling  in  great  circles,  figure- 
eights,  and  curious,  sometimes  beautiful 
designs. 

As  we  went  over  one  little  railroad 
town  they  surprised  us  by  sending  up 
light  pufTs  of  the  first  ack-ack  we  had 
seen  since  we  left  the  target.  It  was 
too  small  and  inaccurate  to  bother  us 
much,  but  it  made  us  mad.  To  play 
safe  we  had  to  duck  over  behind  a  hill  and 
bypass  the  town.  We  reached  the  foot- 
hills and,  flying  at  the  lowest  possible 
speed  to  keep  in  formation  with  the  crip- 
pled planes,  we  kept  easing  the  Sad  Sack 
over  the  hills  and  climbing  to  make  it 
over  the  mountains  ahead. 

Somehow  we  cleared  the  mountains. 
The  Colonel's  navigator,  Lieutenant 
"Baron"  Whalen,  outdid  his  own  record. 
Without  even  a  map  of  the  area,  he  led 
us  between  the  mountain  peaks  with  only 
a  few  feet  to  spare.  I  don't  know  how 
the  two  crippled  planes  got  over  some  of 
those  ridges,  but  I  know  the  Sad  Sack 
almost  scraped  her  belly  on  a  couple  of 
crags,  and  the  others  couldn't  have  made 
it  by  any  more.  When  darkness  came 
we  were  out  over  the  water  again,  and 
one  of  the  injured  planes  had  to  feather 
another  prop,  leaving  it  with  only  two 
engines  working.  A  few  minutes  later 
Wilson  Cain  called  on  the  intercom  to 
tell  me  that  the  plane  had  pulled  out  of 
formation.  We  hated  to  see  it  go  after 
fighting  its  way  over  the  mountains  and 
getting  so  close  to  neutral  land,  but  it 
was  too  dark  now  for  us  to  help  or  even 
watch.  So  we  headed  for  Cyprus.  We 
heard  later  that  the  plane  made  a  water 
landing  near  the  coast  of  Turkey  and 
that  most  of  the  crew  swam  to  land  and 
were  interned. 

IV 

I  HAD  never  landed  at  Cyprus  before,  but 
when  we  came  down  there  that  night  it 
looked  even  better  to  me  than  my  own 
driveway  back  in  Columbus,  Ohio.  The 
Sad  Sack  landed  easily  and  softly,  pulled 
to  a  stop  without  even  hurting  the  tires. 


and  we  switched  off  the  motors.  For 
five  long,  delicious  minutes  Carl  and  I 
just  sat  there,  almost  crying  to  be  back 
on  land.  We  didn't  speak  a  word — just 
leaned  back  in  our  seats  and  absorbed  the 
sedative  quiet  of  the  pilot's  compartment. 
For  fifteen  hours  we  had  been  in  an  ear- 
splitting  roar,  weaving,  climbing,  diving, 
praying  our  way  over  mountain  tops  and 
that  smokestack,  every  nerve  strained  and 
on  the  alert.  Now  there  was  calm,  almost 
sacred  peacefulness.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  things  I  remember. 

When  we  finally  climbed  down,  we 
were  so  stiflf  from  sitting  for  all  those 
hours  that  we  had  to  hold  on  to  the  plane 
to  keep  from  falling  over.  The  British 
put  us  up  on  crude,  makeshift  beds  of 
boards  covered  with  thin  blankets,  but  I 
dropped  immediately  into  a  deep,  restful 
sleep. 

The  next  morning  we  spent  hours  re- 
fueling the  plane.  The  airfield  didn't 
have  any  fueling  apparatus,  and  we  had  to 
fill  her  up  with  piddling  little  five-gallon 
cans  of  gasoline.  It  was  one  hell  of  a  job. 
We  finally  got  her  refueled  and  checked 
over,  and  took  off  at  noon.  It  was  an 
easy  run  down  to  Tel  Aviv,  our  last  stop 
before  our  home  field. 

When  we  discovered  a  bad  tire  at  Tel 
Aviv  and  knew  we  couldn't  go  on,  we 
weren't  sorry.  We  were  more  than 
ready  for  a  few  days  of  relaxation,  and 
Tel  Aviv  was  a  better  place  for  it  than  our 
airfield  out  in  the  desert.  As  we  saw 
Killer  Kane  off  for  home  he  promised  to 
fly  us  back  a  tire,  but  not  too  soon.  We 
asked  him  to  tell  our  ground  crew  that 
we  were  well  and  happy.  We  imagined 
the  ground  crews  weren't  too  happy 
themselves.  They  had  seen  all  our  planes 
take  oflf  for  the  mission,  had  seen  some 
return  without  getting  to  the  target,  but 
so  far  hadn't  seen  one  plane  get  back  that 
had  actually  got  to  the  oil  fields. 

When  the  Colonel's  plane  took  the  air 
and  climbed  for  home,  I  turned  to  my 
crew  and  took  out  a  fat  wad  of  "escape 
money"  I  had  with  me,  figuring  that  if  we 
had  to  account  for  it  we  could  say  we'd 
had  to  escape  from  a  few  dives.  All  of  us 
remembered  what  we  had  been  told  in 
briefing,  that  even  if  we  had  one  hun- 
dred per  cent  losses  the  mission  would  still 


304                                           HARPER'S  MAGAZINE 

be  considered  a  success.     We  were  men  It  may  sound  paradoxical,  what  with  all 

who  hadn't  been  expected  to  live  and  had  the  destruction  we  cause,  but  the  job  of  [ 

lived  just  the  same.     We  felt  a  warm  per-  the  Air  Forces  is  to  save  lives,  and  we 

sonal  satisfaction  not  only  because  we  had  knew  that  indirectly  we  had  saved  a  good 

come  through  with  no  injuries  except  a  many. 

few  holes  in  the  Sad  Sack,  but  also  because  I  gave  the  money  to  my  crew  and  said, 

we  had  knocked  oi  t  a  whole  lot  of  Ger-  "I  don't  want  to  see  a  sober  man  within 

many's  oil  supply  for  some  time  to  come,  the  hour."     I  didn't. 


Attention:  Department  of  State 

ONE  of  the  first  steps  in  the  improvement  of  our  Latin-American  re- 
lations should  be  the  expansion  and  improvement  of  our  consular 
service.  It  is  with  chagrin  that,  in  city  after  city  in  South  America,  the 
citizen  of  the  United  States  finds  that  he  must  turn  to  the  friendly  Brit- 
ish consul  if  he  needs  advice  or  aid.  Now  that  the  war  has  cut  off 
European  commercial  relations,  there  are  manifold  opportunities  to 
stimulate  our  business  south  of  the  Rio  Grande.  Not  only  that,  but 
the  spread  of  Nazi  and  fascist  influence  makes  it  imperative  that  we 
keep  an  eye  on  things  there.  German  agencies  overflow  with  at- 
taches. It  would  be  wise  to  make  now,  as  a  counter-move,  a  fivefold 
or  sixfold  increase  in  our  own  consular  service. 

The  work  of  our  consuls  need  not  be  arduous;  aside  from  an  occa- 
sional service  to  a  North  American  traveler,  they  would  have  little  to 
do  but  maintain  friendly  contacts,  pick  up  commercial  information, 
and  watch  the  German  and  Italian  and  Japanese  infiltrations.  But  it 
is  important  that  they  be  numerous  and  alert.  The  worst  kind  of  con- 
sul is  the  bored  kind — the  dissatisfied  fellow  who  would  much  rather  be 
stationed  in  Europe  and  hates  the  climate  and  the  local  conditions  any- 
how. 

I  propose  the  appointment,  as  consuls,  of  naturalists.  Far  from  be- 
ing bored,  naturalists  would  feel  privileged  to  be  sent  to  a  station  in  the 
jungle  or  to  a  town  in  an  Andean  valley.  They  could  serve  the  cause 
of  science  well,  for  our  universities  have  become  so  fascinated  with  ex- 
perimental biology  that  the  no  less  necessary  descriptive  sciences,  which 
underlie  biology  in  general,  now  need  strengthening;  even  if  the  consul 
were  only  a  collector  he  would  have  an  opportunity  to  pick  up  new  bio- 
logical material.  But  my  suggestion  aims  higher:  it  is  to  send  young 
men  trained  in  the  natural  sciences  on  three-year  contracts,  with  pay 
sufficient  to  permit  them  to  marry,  take  along  their  wives,  and  thus 
double  the  forces  available  both  for  scientific  studies  and  for  social  con- 
tacts. 

Naturalists  generally  command  respect  in  Latin  America.  They  are 
men  of  natural  curiosity,  eager  to  pick  up  information.  They  would 
be  likely  to  learn  and  speak  the  language  of  the  country.  Their  service 
abroad  would  enhance  their  future  work  in  classroom  or  laboratory  and 
would  simultaneously  serve  our  national  interest.  -♦^  Karl  Patterson 
Schmidt 


WENDELL   WILLKIE:    MAN    OF   WORDS 


FRED    ROD ELL 


ii^^yr^uE  thing  that  puzzles  open-minded 
I    citizens   about  Wendell  Willkie   is 

JL  this:  Is  he  just  a  pretty  smooth  guy 
or  has  he  really  got  something  on  the 
ball?"  So  wrote  William  Allen  White,  the 
sunflower  sage  of  the  G.O.P.,  back  in  the 
spring  of  1 940. 

In  the  spring  of  1 940,  it  was  natural  that 
open-minded  citizens  should  be  puzzled 
about  this  man  who  had  shot  out  of 
national  near-obscurity  ,o  become,  within 
a  matter  of  months,  a  leading  candidate 
for  the  Republican  presidential  nomi- 
nation. But  almost  four  years  have  gone 
by  since  then,  years  during  which  Willkie 
has  been  neither  obscure  nor  silent.  Once 
more  he  is  a  leading  candidate  for  the 
Republican  presidential  nod.  And  again, 
or  still,  many  and  many  an  open-minded 
citizen  is  asking  himself  the  same  question 
about  Wendell  Willkie:  "Is  he  just  a 
pretty  smooth  guy  or  has  he  really  got 
something  on  the  ball?" 

This  persistent  elusiveness  in  Willkie' s 
character,  this  now-you-see-it-now-you- 
don't  impression  people  still  get  about  him, 
seems  strange  at  first  blush.  It  seems  all 
the  more  strange  in  that  no  figure  in  the 
public  eye  today  can  even  compete  with 
Willkie  when  it  comes  to  giving  every 
appearance  of  downright  and  deep  sin- 
cerity. In  his  writings,  in  his  speeches, 
and  particularly  in  person,  he  is — or  seems 
to  be — the  soul  of  open  honesty.  Yet 
people  wonder.     And  in  the  key  to  their 


wondering  lies  the  key  to  Candidate  Will- 
kie's  strength — and  to  his  weakness. 

For  the  fact  is  that  there  is  almost 
nothing  by  which  Wendell  Willkie  can  be 
weighed  except  his  writings  and  his  speeches 
and  his  personality.  Leaving  aside  a  few 
remnants  of  his  record  as  president  of 
Commonwealth  &  Southern — a  record 
never  known  nor  understood  by  many  and 
now  forgotten  by  all  but  a  few — there  is 
nothing  by  way  of  standing  accomplish- 
ment to  serve  as  a  measure  of  what  Willkie 
says.  There  is  nothing  good  or  bad, 
tangible  or  intangible,  in  these  United 
States  to  which  people  can  point  and  say 
this  is  Wendell  Willkie's  work. 

The  reason,  little  appreciated,  is  a 
simple  one.  Willkie  must  be  judged  by 
his  words  because,  so  far  as  deeds  are  con- 
cerned, his  career  to  date  adds  up  to  a 
series  of  brilliant  failures. 

They  begin  as  far  back  as  his  college 
days,  when  he  made  his  name  on  the 
campus  by  leading  the  "barbs,"  or  non- 
fraternity  men,  in  a  quixotic  crusade 
against  the  fraternity  system.  They  in- 
clude his  seven-year  presidency  of  Com- 
monwealth &  Southern,  where  he  fought 
two  ill-fated  campaigns  simultaneously: 
the  first,  his  spectacular  set  of  sorties  on 
behalf  of  the  utility  industry  against  the 
TVA,  the  REA,  the  public  utility  holding 
company  act,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  New 
Deal  power  program;  the  other,  and  less 
well  known,  his  fruitless  attempt  to  squeeze 


306 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


out  dividends  for  the  common  stock- 
holders of  his  company.  (G.  &  S.  com- 
mon has  not  paid  a  penny  since  1 932,  the 
year  before  Willkie  became  the  company's 
head  man.)  His  bid  for  the  White  House 
failed,  but  brilliantly.  The  degree  of  his 
success  in  his  efforts  since  to  unite  his 
party  under  his  own  leadership  is  spot- 
lighted by  the  low  regard  in  which  he  is 
held  by  most  Republican  politicos  today. 
Even  One  World,  for  all  its  astronomical 
sales  figures,  was  a  triumph  of  words 
alone;  it  has  not  perceptibly  affected 
official  or  popular  sentiment  about  the 
place  of  the  East  in  the  postwar  world. 

That  Willkie  has  profited  from  every 
defeat,  that  he  has  climbed  to  personal 
prominence  on  a  ladder  of  failure,  is 
characteristic  of  the  man.  The  college 
politician  who  for  three  years  inveighed 
against  the  evils  of  the  fraternity  system 
was  eventually  invited  to  join — and  joined 
— the  most  exclusive  fraternity  on  the 
campus.  The  white  knight  of  the  private 
utilities,  after  losing  every  battle  he  fought 
against  the  New  Deal,  was  chosen  to 
champion  all  the  anti-New  Deal  forces  of 
the  nation  at  the  polls.  Though  the 
Republicans  lost  the  election,  Willkie  won 
for  himself  no  Landonlike  also-ran  ob- 
scurity but  the  status  of  a  full-blown  na- 
tional figure.  His  trip  and  his  book  have 
not  altered  the  course  of  empire  nor  the 
plans  of  those  who  chart  it,  but  they  have 
built  him  into  an  international  figure  as 
well. 

Willkie's  words  have  carried  him  far  and 
may  yet  carry  him  farther.  They  may 
carry  him  beyond  bright  failure  after 
bright  failure  to  ultimate  success.  But  be- 
fore they  do  so,  a  great  many  still  uncer- 
tain citizens  will  have  to  make  up  their 
minds  about  the  man.  Unfortunately 
and  inevitably,  they  will  have  little  but 
words  to  look  to  if  they  would  probe  the 
personality  or  even  examine  the  life  to 
date  of  Wendell  Willkie. 

II 

WILLKIE  was  practically  weaned  on 
words.  Those  who  meet  him  for 
the  first  time  today  are  impressed  not  so 
much  by  the  big-shaggy-bear  manner  nor 
the  look  of  wide-eyed  sincerity  as  by  the 
almost  aggressive  articulateness.     "Shoot 


some  questions  at  me,"  he  will  say,  with 
the  air  of  initiating  a  parlor  game.  He' 
loves  to  talk  and  he  got  the  love  early. 

He  grew  up  in  a  talkative,  classic-quot-' 
ing,  uninhibited  household  with  the  con- 
stant verbal  give-and-take  of  a  lawyer 
father,  a  lawyer  mother,  three  brothers, 
and  two  sisters  all  around  him.  The  open- 
forum  atmosphere  of  this  El  wood,  Indiana,  [ 
home  even  carried  into  the  dining  room^ 
where,  if  the  discussion  was  hot  enough, 
the  food  could  get  cold. 

By  the  time  he  went  off  to  the  State 
university,  Willkie  had  already  developed 
a  complete  lack  of  speaking  self-con- 
sciousness, a  readiness  of  repartee,  and  a  ] 
passion  for  face-to-face  debate — none  of 
which  has  hurt  him  since.  At  college  his 
debating  was  both  curricular  and  extra- 
curricular; he  would  argue  either  campus 
politics  or  world  politics  at  the  drop  of  a 
hint.  His  first  job  after  he  graduated  was 
a  talking  job — as  a  high-school  teacher; 
his  subjects  were  history  and  debating. 

But  Willkie  had  neither  the  training  nor  , 
the  temperament  to  climb  up  from  the 
bottom  in  the  teaching  profession,  with  its 
emphasis   on  degrees    and    research   and  . 
academic    publications    rather    than    on 
plain  ability  in  the  classroom.     A  vora- 
cious reader  with  a  quick  superficial  grasp  . 
of  what  he  reads,  he  has  never  had  the 
scholar's   patience  to   dig  deep.     So  he 
switched    to   the   talker's   profession,   his 
family's  profession,  the  law. 

The  First  World  War  briefly  inter- 
rupted his  career  at  the  start.  But  even 
war  could  not  force  him  to  let  his  forensic 
talents  go  to  rust.  He  returned  from 
overseas  with  a  captaincy,  won  in  part  at 
least  by  the  considerable  skill  with  which 
he  defended,  before  courts  martial,  soldiers 
who  had  gone  A.W.O.L. 

Then  for  ten  unexciting  years  Willkie 
worked  his  way  ahead  as  a  corporation 
lawyer  in  Akron,  Ohio.  He  was  a  good 
lawyer  but  never,  even  in  embryo,  a  great 
one.  He  argued  no  famous  or  important 
cases;  he  never  (until  1943)  appeared  be- 
fore the  U.  S.  Supreme  Court.  Nor  was 
he  a  wizard  at  weaving  tightly-reasoned 
written  briefs  out  of  the  tomes  in  a  law 
library — the  most  exacting  and  painstak- 
ing of  legal  tasks. 

What   Willkie    was   good    at   was   the 


WENDELL   WILLKIE:    MAN   OF   WORDS 


307 


negotiating  of  deals  for  clients  around  the 
conference  table  and  the  presenting  of 
petitions  to  the  Ohio  Public  Utilities 
("Commission  (for  already  most  of  his  work 
was  for  the  utilities).  Though  he  argued 
court  cases  from  time  to  time,  he  was  more 
jt  home — and  his  brand  of  persuasiveness 
was  more  effective — in  the  informal  air  of 
a  conference  room  or  a  commission  hear- 
ing than  in  the  calculated  stiffness  of  a 
( ourtroom.  He  was  also  good  at  corral- 
ling new  clients  for  his  firm — a  regular 
salesman  sort  of  job,  albeit  a  delicate  one  in 
the  law.  On  the  side,  he  indulged  his 
weakness  for  speechmaking  from  the  plat- 
forms of  the  Democratic  Party  and  the 
American  Legion,  in  both  of  which  organi- 
zations he  was  active,  and  in  opposition  to 
the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  which  he  detested.  His 
future  bouts  with  the  New  Deal  were  fore- 
shadowed when  he  took  part  in  the  big 
national  (and  unsuccessful)  utility  lobby 
to  kill  government  investigation  of  the  in- 
dustry. 

Thus  Willkie  talked  his  way  ahead  and 
talked  himself  into  people's  notice.  And 
one  of  those  who  noticed  him  and  was 
persuaded  of  his  talents  was  a  Midwestern 
utility  magnate  named  B.  C.  Cobb.  In 
the  summer  of  1929,  when  the  boom  was 
on  the  brink,  Cobb  helped  the  Morgan 
interests  and  others  to  form  a  giant  utility 
holding  company  called  Commonwealth 
&  Southern.  An  Ohio  power  and  light 
company,  long  a  client  of  Willkie's  firm, 
became  one  of  the  big  links  in  the  Com- 
monwealth &  Southern  system;  B.  C. 
Cobb  became  Commonwealth  &  South- 
ern's first  chairman;  Willkie  discovered 
that  he  had  talked  himself  out  of  his  na- 
tive Midwest  into  New  York  and  the 
job  of  chief  counsel  for  Commonwealth  & 
Southern. 

Typically,  he  left  behind  in  Ohio  no 
tangible  accomplishments  for  people  to 
look  to  other  than  a  few  impermanent 
business  arrangements,  a  few  ephemeral 
utility  rate  structures  he  had  helped  put 
across,  a  few  minor  court  decisions  he  had 
won.  In  all  those  ten  years  his  name  had 
appeared  in  the  New  Tork  Times  just  once 
— on  the  list  of  Ohio  delegates  to  the 
Democratic  National  Convention  of  1924. 
But  Willkie  himself  was  headed  onward  and 
upward. 


Ill 


THE  kind  of  lawing  that  Willkie  did  in 
New  York  for  three  and  a  half  years 
was  the  same  sort  he  had  done  back  in 
Ohio,  but  on  a  larger  scale.  There  were 
no  big  lawsuits;  there  was  no  searching 
and  sweating  and  pondering  in  the  law 
library.  But  there  were  plain  and  fancy 
financial  deals  to  be  put  through,  includ- 
ing the  final  stages  of  the  formation  of 
Commonwealth  &  Southern.  And  amus- 
ingly, Willkie's  first  job  as  counsel  was  to 
go  straight  back  to  Ohio  and  argue  for 
permission  for  part  of  the  big  merger  be- 
fore his  old  friends  of  the  Ohio  Public 
Utilities  Commission. 

Most  of  his  work,  however,  centered  in 
and  around  the  tall  buildings  at  the  bottom 
of  Manhattan.  If,  in  that  tight  little  com- 
munity, his  talent  for  talking  things  across 
was  winning  for  him  a  circle  of  influential 
friends,  the  rest  of  the  nation,  the  State, 
even  the  city  still  knew  nothing  about 
him.  The  columns  of  the  Times  remained 
clean  of  his  name  until  suddenly,  in 
January,  1933,  it  was  announced  in  the 
financial  section  that  a  Wendell  Willkie 
had  been  elected  president  of  Common- 
wealth &  Southern. 

That  Willkie  and  PVanklin  Roosevelt 
assumed  their  very  different  presidencies 
in  the  same  year  was  not  entirely  a  coinci- 
dence. The  halcyon,  high-wide-and- 
handsome  days  of  Wall  Street  were  a 
thing  of  the  past;  a  Democrat  who  talked 
about  "economic  royalists"  was  about  to 
enter  the  White  House;  the  Federal  gov- 
ernment had  already  started  investigating 
the  utilities  and  was  sniffing  with  special 
interest  at  the  big  holding  company  sys- 
tems. And  Commonwealth  &  Southern's 
well-watered  financial  structure  could  not 
stand  too  much  sniffing. 

In  short,  C.  &  S.,  its  several  and  useful 
strings  to  Republican  Washington  about 
to  be  cut,  was  going  to  need,  if  not  a  friend 
in  court,  at  least  someone  who  would  not 
be  summarily  kicked  out  of  court.  Who 
better  to  represent  them  as  contact  man, 
front  man,  and  head  man  combined  than 
the  Midwesterner  with  the  winning  way 
who  happened  to  be  that  rara  avis,  a 
financial-district  Democrat? 

Willkie  and  his  backers  have  always  re- 


308 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


sented  the  statement  that  he  was  a  front- 
man  president.  They  insist  that  he  really 
ran  Commonwealth  &  Southern.  But 
the  plain  fact  is  that  Willkie,  although  he 
was  an  able  advocate  of  financial  ar- 
rangements once  they  were  explained  for 
him  by  others,  never  sufficiently  mastered 
the  intricacies  of  corporation  finance  to 
manage  with  his  own  mind  so  exclusively 
financial  a  business  enterprise  as  a  holding 
company. 

As  to  this,  Willkie  himself  is  the  best 
witness.  Testifying  at  a  government  in- 
quiry in  1938  about  certain  financial  mat- 
ters directly  affecting  his  company,  and 
obviously  and  sincerely  confused  by  the 
line  of  questioning,  he  finally  conceded 
with  a  smile:  "I  make  not  the  slightest 
pretense  of  being  an  expert.  I  know 
nothing  except  what  the  men  associated 
with  me  tell  me." 

Then  again,  perhaps  the  best  concrete 
example  of  Willkie's  naivetd  in  the  field  of 
finance  is  the  little  tale  he  used  to  dust  ofi" 
time  and  again — in  speeches,  in  inter- 
views, before  Congressional  committees — 
to  illustrate  the  generosity  of  holding 
companies  in  general  and  of  C.  &  S.  in 
particular  toward  the  operating  companies 
under  them.     It  went  like  this: 

Back  in  1933,  when  bonds  were  hard 
to  sell  at  a  good  price.  Central  Illinois 
Light,  one  of  the  operating  companies  in 
the  C.  &  S.  system,  wanted  to  sell  $9,300,- 
000  worth  of  bonds.  C.  &  S.  bought 
them,  held  on  to  them  for  a  year  or  two, 
then  sold  them  to  the  public  for  $10,000,- 
000.  It  sold  them  at  a  lower  rate  of 
interest,  thus  saving  money  for  its  sub- 
sidiary. Moreover — as  a  Willkie  clincher 
— it  turned  back  the  $700,000  profit, 
"every  dime  of  it,"  to  Central  Illinois 
Light. 

But  it  happens  that  Commonwealth  & 
Southern  owned  100%  of  the  common 
stock  of  Central  Illinois  Light.  So  all  that 
C.  &  S.  accomplished  by  handing  over 
$700,000  to  the  operating  company  was  to 
increase  by  exactly  that  amount  what  its 
investment  in  that  highly  profitable  con- 
cern was  worth;  it  was  no  gift.  Further- 
more, Central  Illinois  Light  paid  divi- 
dends on  its  common  stock  regularly. 
So  the  whole  annual  saving  on  the  lower 
bond   interest   came   right   straight   back 


every  year  in  the  form  of  dividends  to 
Commonwealth  &  Southern  itself. 

Willkie  would  scarcely  have  used  this 
pet  example  of  his  before  financially 
informed  audiences,  as  he  did,  if  he  had 
understood  that  the  chief  beneficiary  of 
the  entire  deal  was  his  allegedly  magnani- 
mous holding  company. 

Yet  it  is  more  to  Willkie's  credit  than  to 
his  discredit  that  he  did  not  really  run 
C.  &  S.  while  he  was  its  president.  The 
company  has  never  been  a  financial  success 
and  even  its  preferred  stock,  millions  of 
dollars  in  arrears,  has  sold  for  years  at  way 
below  par.  Willkie  is  wont  to  blame  all 
this  on  the  New  Deal — its  taxes,  its  regu- 
lations, its  competition  in  the  form  of  the 
TVA.  Actually,  it  was  New  Deal  regula- 
tion, or  the  threat  of  it,  that  forced  C.  & 
S.  to  fix  up  a  few  of  the  more  glaring  flaws 
in  its  finances  and  so  become  a  slightly 
sounder  concern.  And  it  was  New  Deal 
competition,  or  the  threat  of  it,  that 
taught  C.  &  S.  the  highly  lucrative  lesson 
that  lower  electric  rates  mean  greater 
consumption  of  electricity  and  bigger  net 
profits. 

If  Willkie  needed  prompting  in  finance, 
he  needed  none  in  the  art  of  public 
relations.  And  as  head  of  one  of  the 
nation's  twenty-five  largest  corporations, 
he  had  finally  found  a  podium — and  with 
it  a  forum — fit  for  his  talents.  If  he  had 
been  picked  as  president  of  C.  &  S.  partly 
to  maintain  friendly  contact  with  newly 
non-Republican  Washington,  both  the 
contact  and  the  friendliness  were  short- 
lived. The  New  Deal,  making  no  gra- 
cious exception  of  C.  &  S.,  went  right  after 
the  utilities  and  Willkie  went  right  after 
the  New  Deal. 

Once  more,  the  New  Tork  Times  is  re- 
vealing. From  1934  through  November, 
1939 — that  is,  up  to  the  approximate  date 
when  he  became  a  full-fledged  candidate 
for  the  Presidency — the  man  who  had 
been  mentioned  in  the  Times  only  twice 
before  in  his  life  was  written  about  no  less 
than  163  times  in  its  pages.  Of  these  items, 
all  but  a  dozen  dealt  with  his  speeches, 
statements,  appearances  in  Washington, 
and  other  publicity-priming  activities 
directed  either  against  the  New  Deal's 
regulatory  and  power  programs  or  else — 
which  amounted  to  the  same  thing — to 


WENDELL    WILLKIE:    MAN   OF   WORDS 


309 


defense  of  the  utility  industry  and  its 
practices. 

Once  more  too,  Willkic  himself  is  the 
best  witness  as  to  what  his  major  energies 
were  devoted  to  from  1 934  on.  For  it  was 
as  early  as  January,  1935,  in  a  speech 
before  the  Economic  Club  of  New  York, 
that  he  made  the  much-quoted  statement 
of  his  then  credo:  "I  want  to  say  to  you 
that  no  duty  has  ever  come  to  mc  in  my 
life,  even  that  in  the  service  of  my  country, 
which  has  so  appealed  to  my  sense  of  social 
obligation,  patriotism,  and  love  of  man- 
kind as  this,  my  obligation  to  say  and  do 
what  I  can  for  the  preservation  of  public 
utilities  privately  owned." 

But  Willkie  and  his  Commonwealth  & 
Southern  system  did  not  fight  for  the 
utilities,  and  against  the  New  Deal,  with 
words  alone.  They  unwittingly  added  a 
new  word  to  the  language  in  the  "spite- 
lines"  they  built  to  block  the  RE  A  from 
bringing  electricity  to  farmers.  One  C. 
&  S.  company,  in  its  desperate  effort  to 
ward  off  the  TVA,  illegally  subsidized  a 
newspaper  in  Chattanooga,  Tennessee. 
Lawsuit  after  lawsuit  was  tossed  at  the 
whole  New  Deal  program,  with  the  TVA 
the  favorite  target. 

In  fact,  just  as  Willkie  was  now  the  chief 
spokesman  for  his  industry,  so  his  C.  &  S. 
system  took  the  lead  in  the  utilities'  legal 
attack  against  the  government.  And 
although  Willkie  himself  did  not  handle 
any  of  these  lawsuits,  he  must  have  O.K.'d 
the  advisability  of  most  of  them,  and  at 
least  kept  in  close  touch  with  the  three  big 
ones  that  went  to  the  Supreme  Court. 
The  C.  &  S.  companies  lost  every  case. 

As  a  direct  consequence  of  these  failures, 
Willkie  was  finally  forced  into  a  role  he 
loved  and  knew  how  to  play.  His 
Tennessee  Electric  Power  Company,  un- 
able to  beat  off  or  compete  with  the  TVA, 
had  only  one  choice  left.  That  was  to  sell 
out  to  the  government.  The  job  of  bar- 
gaining for  a  high  price  went  automati- 
cally and  inevitably  to  Willkie. 

He  made  a  good  job  of  it,  too;  in  fact  it 
might  be  called  the  one  real  success  of  his 
career  even  though  it  was  a  minor  victory 
after  a  major  defeat.  He  bargained  in 
private  and  in  public;  he  drew  out  the 
bargaining  and  the  concomitant  publicity 
for  months;  and  he  eventually  got  almost 


$20,000,000  more  for  Tennessee  Electric 
Power  than  an  independent  New  York 
auditing  firm,  hired  by  TVA  with  Willkic's 
personal  approval,  figured  the  property 
was  worth. 

His  smartest  move,  at  one  point  when 
the  negotiations  seemed  stalled,  was  his 
headlined  offer  to  let  the  New  Deal's  SEC 
set  the  sales  price.  That  this  would  al- 
most surely  have  been  illegal,  that  it  would 
have  held  things  up  for  many  extra 
months,  that  even  then  it  might  have 
proved  fruitless  since  Willkie,  acting  for 
C.  &  S.,  had  no  authority  to  bind  Ten- 
nessee Electric  Power's  other  investors 
beforehand  to  whatever  figure  the  SEC 
might  set — all  this  mattered  little.  The 
country  was  impressed  by  Willkie's  ap- 
parently extraordinary  fairness.  Only 
one  ungenerous  newspaper  reporter,  who 
had  sat  in  on  the  discussions  from  the  start, 
commented:  ''Willkie  wasn't  negotiating. 
He  was  campaigning." 

And  even  after  the  TVA,  tired  of  the 
whole  business  and  anxious  to  get  on  with 
its  program,  finally  agreed  to  pay  $21,000,- 
000-odd  more  than  its  original  offer 
(though  $27,000,000-odd  less  than  Will- 
kie's original  asking  price),  Willkie  had 
one  spectacular  play  to  make  before  he 
left  the  field.  On  August  15,  1939,  in 
newspapers  all  over  the  country,  appeared 
a  full-page  ad  entitled  "Tonight  at  Mid- 
night." It  told,  with  something  less  than 
complete  impartiality  and — a  nice  touch 
— more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger,  the  story 
of  the  sale  of  Tennessee  Electric  Power. 
It  was  conspicuously  signed  by  Wendell 
Willkie. 

Willkie  used  to  call  the  TVA  "the  most 
useless  and  unnecessary  of  all  the  alpha- 
betical joyrides."  Instead  of  cursing  it, 
he  should  have  blessed  it.  For  it  was  the 
climax  of  his  fight  with  the  TVA  that 
first  brought  him  into  the  front-page  spot- 
light, made  business-minded  men  through- 
out the  nation  aware  of  him,  and  started 
the  boom  rolling  toward  his  nomination 
for  the  Presidency. 

IV 

THERE  were  other  factors.  There  were 
the  anti-New  Deal  articles  that  Will- 
kie— suddenly  finding  a  facility  with  the 
written  as  well  as  the  spoken_word — had 


''f 


510 


HARPERS    MAGAZINE 


been  turning  out  for  the  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  the  Atlantic  Monthly^  the  Reader's 
Digest.  There  was  his  genial,  well-in- 
formed, quick-witted  performance  on  the 
''Information  Please^'  radio  program  and, 
earlier,  his  more  serious  debate  with  New 
Dealer  Robert  Jackson,  broadcast  to  the 
plaudits  of  a  Willkie-packed  audience 
by  the  "Town  Meeting  of  the  Air." 
There  was  General  Hugh  Johnson's  syndi- 
cated suggestion  of  him  as  a  potential 
President  and  Willkie's  bait-snapping  re- 
ply: "If  the  government  keeps  taking  my 
business  away  at  its  present  rate,  V\\  soon 
be  out  of  work  and  looking  for  a  job. 
Johnson's  offer  is  the  best  I've  had  yet." 
And  there  were,  particularly,  the  articles 
in  Fortune  magazine  about  him  and  by  him. 

From  Fortune  too  came  Russell  Daven- 
port, another  word-artist,  to  act  as  inti- 
mate adviser  and  private  foil  to  Willkie. 
And  from  his  clerkship  in  a  Wall  Street 
law  office,  enthusiastic  and  uninvited, 
came  young  Oren  Root,  Jr.,  to  found 
those  literal  phenomena  known  as  the 
Willkie  Clubs  and  head  up  the  amateur 
aspects  of  the  nomination  campaign. 

What  followed  has  been  called  a  "spon- 
taneous uprising  of  the  station-wagon  set." 
Certainly  the  wildfiring  support  of  Willkie 
before  his  nomination — as  distinguished 
from  the  votes  he  later  received  as  nominee 
— came  almost  entirely  from  the  upper  and 
upper-middle  income  groups.  But  the 
power  that  propelled  the  bandwagon  was 
not  altogether  amateur  and  spontaneous. 
Behind  the  scenes  worked  several  pro- 
fessional idea-salesmen,  including  Bruce 
Barton  and  even  Steve  Hannagan  of 
bathing-beauty  fame.  The  financial  dis- 
trict, led  by  the  Morgan  firm,  lent  its 
deliberately  unobtrusive  influence.  And 
towering  over  all  of  them  toiled  that 
amateur  in  politics  but  past  master  of 
publicity  and  personal  persuasion,  Willkie 
himself. 

William  Allen  White,  who  was  for  him, 
wrote  of  him  at  the  time:  "Don't  let  that 
adolescent  smile  deceive  you,  for  it  rhymes 
with  guile  and  he  has  got  plenty  of  it." 
Whether  it  was  the  smile  or  the  guile  or 
the  ebullient  eloquence,  Willkie  sold  him- 
self wherever  he  went.  The  last  place  he 
went,  in  defiance  of  tradition,  was  to 
Philadelphia  for  the  Republican  conven- 


tion. And  there  it  was  not — as  is  so  ofter 
claimed — the  wildly  cheering  well-to-do. 
packed  in  the  galleries,  but  Willkie  in  per-, 
son,  talking  to  delegates  and  talking  toi  n 
pests,  radiating  charm  and  confidence  and 
sincerity,  who  clinched  his  own  nomination. 

Willkie  was  now  on  the  crest.  Political 
analysts  have  opined  that  if  the  election 
had  been  held  during  the  weeks  immedi- 
ately following  the  convention,  Willkie 
would  have  won.  Even  New  Dealers, 
though  a  trifle  frightened,  were  secretly 
pleased  along  with  the  rest  of  the  nation 
that  the  perennially  unpopular  party  poli- 
ticians should  have  been  whipped  by  a 
tyro  at  their  own  game.  Fanned  by  an^ 
overwhelmingly  anti-Roosevelt  press,  the- 
flames  of  Willkie  enthusiasm  spread. 

It  was  Willkie  himself  who  all  but  put 
out  the  fire.     His  acceptance  speech  from 
his  old  home  town  of  Elwood  fell  flat  over 
tens  of  millions  of  radios.     For  once,  and 
at  perhaps  the  most  important  point  of  his 
career,   Willkie's   words   had   failed   him. 
Whether  it  was  the  formality  and  momen-  = 
tousness  of  the  occasion,  to  which  Willkie  '< 
with  his  genius  for  v/inning  more  intimate 
audiences    was    not    so    accustomed,    or 
simply  the  fact  that  his  radio  delivery  was 
poor,  the  content  and  especially  the  man- 
ner of  the  speech  dropped  his  stock  to  a  i 
low  from  which  it  never  completely  re-  i 
covered. 

Willkie  tried  desperately  to  come  back.  ' 
Aware  that  his  strongest  appeal  had  al- 
ways been  to  a  group  that  could  see  him, 
he  undertook  a  cyclonic  30,000-mile  tour  - 
during  which  he  talked  himself  literally 
hoarse  and  almost  voiceless.     Anxious  to 
please  and  eager  to  win,  he  grew  careless 
of  consistency;  tailoring  his  words  to  his  • 
on-the-spot  listeners,  he  contradicted  him-  ' 
self    time    and    again.     He    ignored    his 
earlier  praise  of  parts  of  the  New  Deal, 
then    tempered    only   by   criticism   of  its 
inefficient    management,    and    began    to 
damn  it  from  top  to  bottom.     An  ardent 
internationalist,    fully   in   sympathy   with 
the  Roosevelt  foreign  policy,  he  even  threw 
out  isolationist  hints  in  isolationist  strong- 
holds.    The   thing  was  to  use   the  right 
words  in  the  right  places  and  pound  them 
across.     "Just  campaign  oratory"  was  his 
later  apolog^^  for  some  of  what  he  had  said. 
But  the  campaign  oratory — voluminous, 


WENDELL    WILLKIE:    MAN    OF   WORDS 


311 


rilliant,    erratic — proved    not    enough. 

IMblicly,    Willkie    took    his    defeat    with 

extraordinary  grace  in  the  tradition  of  the 
,good    loser.     Privately    he    was    disillu- 

sioned,  deeply  hurt,  and  more  than  a  litde 
,  bitter;  he  had  been  so  sure  he  was  going  to 

win. 


o  Willkie — at  least  from  the  standpoint 
of  acquiring  a  business  address — went 
back  to  the  law.  In  Akron,  when  he  had 
become  a  partner  in  the  firm  of  Mather 
and  Nesbitt,  its  name  had  been  changed  to 
Mather,  Nesbitt,  and  Willkie.  Later, 
,hen  he  had  come  to  New  York  to  join 
the  Weadock  and  Weadock  firm  as  "kept" 
counsel  for  Commonwealth  &  Southern, 
the  firm  had  become  Weadock  and  Will- 
kie. This  time  Willkie's  name  went  first, 
not  last;  Miller,  Owen,  Otis,  and  Bailly  of 
15  Broad  Street,  New  York,  became  Will- 
kie, Owen,  Otis,  and  Bailly. 

For  it  was  primarily  the  prestige  of  the 
Willkie  name  that  the  firm  wanted — plus 
any  new  business  the  name,  or  the  man, 
might  bring  in.  Willkie  was  never  expect- 
ed to  carry  his  share  of  the  legal  work — 
nor  has  he  done  so.  From  a  front  man  he 
had  graduated  into  a  figurehead. 

He  has  performed  precisely  the  same 
function  as  chairman  of  Twentieth  Cen- 
tur\'-Fox  Film  Corporation,  a  title  he  took 
on  more  recently.  The  picture-produc- 
ing company's  former  chairman,  Joseph 
Schenck,  had  just  gone  to  jaiLfor  income- 
tax  fraud.  Twentieth  Century-Fox  pres- 
tige needed  a  bit  of  bolstering.  Willkie 
was  the  answer. 

But  turn  about  is  fair  play,  even  in  the 
realm  of  prestige;  some  time  this  year 
Twentieth  Century-Fox  is  going  to  pro- 
duce a  film  version  of  Willkie's  One  World. 
And  though  Willkie  generously  gave  the 
purchase  price  to  war  charities,  the  per- 
sonal publicity  he  will  receive  from  the 
sho\Ndng  of  the  film  will  be  worth  far  more 
to  him  than  the  S250,000  that  the  com- 
pany of  which  he  is  chairman  paid  for  the 
movie  rights  to  the  book  which  he  wrote. 

As  well  as  holding  two  sinecures,  Will- 
kie has  done  four  or  five  noteworthy  things 
during  the  more  than  three  years  since  his 
defeat  at  the  polls.  One  of  these  also 
involved  the  movies.     It  was  his  defense  of 


the  industry,  as  its  counsel  before  a  Senate 
subcommittee,  against  Senator  Wheelers 
charges  of  pro-war,  pro-Administration 
bias.  Willkie  handled  this  job  success- 
fully, but  in  the  light  of  W^heeler's  un- 
popularity it  was  a  heads-I-win-tails-you- 
lose  proposition  right  from  the  start. 

But  Willkie's  Supreme  Court  argument 
last  year,  against  the  government's  at- 
tempt to  deprive  Communist  William 
Schneiderman  of  his  citizenship,  involved 
no  sure  thing;  the  Court  decided  for 
Schneiderman  by  the  narrow  margin  of 
five  to  three.  And  though  others  than 
Willkie  had  done  all  the  legal  dirty  work  of 
preparing  the  case  and  carrying  it  up  to 
the  highest  tribunal,  there  is  little  doubt 
that  his  forensic  contribution  played  some 
part  in  the  result. 

Nor  was  Willkie's  defense  of  a  Com- 
munist in  the  least  out  of  character.  For 
the  one  field  in  which,  although  never  too 
active,  he  has  steadfastly  stuck  to  his  guns, 
ever  since  the  early  days  in  Ohio  where  he 
learned  to  loathe  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  is 
that  field  in  which  only  a  conservative  who 
is  stupid  is  likely  to  be  illiberal — the  field  of 
civil  liberties. 

These  two  legal  appearances  of  W^illkie's 
took  up  ver\'  little  of  his  time;  both  kept 
him  in  the  spotlight  while  they  lasted. 
The  same  speed  and  the  same  spotlighting 
characterized  his  two  trips  abroad — the 
first  his  quick  visit  to  blitzed  London  to 
see  Winston  Churchill  and  be  photo- 
graphed in  a  pub;  the  second,  of  course, 
his  forty-nine-day  junket  around  the  globe, 
memorialized  in  his  phenomenally  best- 
selling  book,  One  World, 

One  World  has  been  called  an  unsophis- 
ticated travelogue.  Its  author  has  been 
criticized,  and  with  no  little  warrant,  for 
wooing  the  liberals  the  easy  way — by 
preaching  progressive  stuff  for  the  antip- 
odes instead  of  talking  or  working  for 
progressive  ends  in  this  country,  where  the 
same  sort  of  slant  might  not  go  down  so 
well  with  some  of  his  supporters.  And 
yet,  just  by  contrast  to  the  murky  state- 
ments and  the  ominous  silences  about 
American  foreign  policy  that  the  people 
had  been  getting  from  official  Adminis- 
tration sources,  Willkie's  uninhibited  hu- 
manitarian internationalism  carried  a 
fresh  and  simple  appeal. 


312 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


It  is  largely  because  of  the  international- 
ist views  which  he  has  militantly  ex- 
pressed on  many  occasions — the  ardor  for 
whole-hog  American  participation  in  a 
postwar  world  order — that  Willkie  is  mis- 
trusted and  even  hated  today  by  so  many 
Republican  politicians  who  are  more  cau- 
tious and  more  nationalist-minded  than 
he.  It  is  for  the  same  reason  that  many 
liberals,  Left-wingers,  and  New  Dealers, 
who  were  damning  him  as  Wall  Street's 
errand  boy  four  years  back,  have  been 
increasingly  attracted  to  Willkie  as  at 
least  a  second-best  bet  after  F.D.R. 

What  these  liberals  overlook,  or  perhaps 
no  longer  care  about,  is  that  international- 
ism and  a  friendly  feeling  for  Wall  Street 
make  easy  bedfellows.  Financial  Amer- 
ica— as  distinct  from  business  America — 
was  almost  unanimously  war-minded  be- 
fore Pearl  Harbor  and  has  been  almost 
unanimously  world-minded  since.  Nei- 
ther on  this  issue  nor  on  any  other  has 
Willkie  ever  given  any  indication  of  having 
parted  company  with  the  powerful  little 
group  in  lower  Manhattan  that  helped 
push  him  from  obscurity  to  prominence. 
If  he  was  Wall  Street's  spokesman  in  1940, 
he  is  no  less  Wall  Street's  spokesman  in 
1944. 

Yet  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that 
Wendell  Willkie  is  working  for  Wall  Street 
today.  He  is  working  single-mindedly, 
consecrated  as  on  a  crusade,  for  Wendell 
Willkie  for  President.  To  this  end  most 
of  his  energies,  his  time,  and  his  talents 
have  been  shrewdly  devoted  for  the  past 
three  years. 

His  two  headlined  legal  appearances 
and  his  two  breath-taking  trips  were 
planned  with  plenty  of  publicity  in  view. 
His  internationalism,  genuine  as  it  is,  has 
been  flaunted  to  catch  the  liberals;  his 
silence  on  domestic  and  home-front  issues 
has  been  meant  to  help  the  liberals  forget 
how  illiberally  he  talked  in  1940  and  be- 
fore. For  he  figures  that  in  a  November 
showdown  between  himself  and  any  New 
Dealer,  be  it  Roosevelt  or  a  picked  succes- 
sor, he  has  the  conservative  vote  pretty 
well  sewed  up  already — and  he  is  right. 

So  the  bulk  of  his  recent  time  has  been 
spent  in  astutely  building  up  a  compact 
working  organization   and   a   peripheral 


following  to  win  him  the  nomination  over 
the  dead  bodies  of  the  old-line  party  men. 
This  sort  of  work  is  slow,  unglamorous, 
personal-contact  stufl*.  The  weapons  are 
words  and  a  simple  sort  of  charm — and 
Willkie  has  not  forgotten  how  to  use  either. 
But  like  many  men  who  live  with  their 
words — and  this  may  prove  his  Waterloo 
— Willkie  has  come  to  hold  words  cheap. 
To  him  they  are  merely  tools  to  be 
manipulated  toward  an  end;  neither  they 
nor  their  connotations  have  any  particular 
sanctity  in  themselves.  That  meticulous 
regard  for  words  that  men  call  "intellec- 
tual honesty"  has  sometimes  seemed  to 
Willkie,  bent  on  bigger  things,  an  unneces- 
sary indulgence.  His  spoken  and  written 
blasts  against  the  New  Deal's  power  pro- 
gram and  in  defense  of  the  private  utilities 
used  to  be  studded  with  half-truths;  he 
himself  has  laughed  off  some  of  the  less 
than  scrupulous  language  he  used  in  try- 
ing to  win  the  1 940  election.  Today  as  he 
travels  across  the  country,  building  his 
fences  and  corralling  converts,  the  words 
still  flow  to  fit  and  please  the  i-nmediate 
audience.  In  the  South  he  has  called 
himself  "at  heart"  a  Southern  Demo- 
crat; in  W^isconsin  he  was  "at  heart"  an 
old  La  Follette  Progressive. 

And  always  he  talks  with  the  full,  round 
ring  of  sincerity.  For  just  as  Utility 
Magnate  Willkie  once  learned  and  con- 
fessed that  "It's  an  asset  in  my  business  to 
look  like  an  Indiana  farmer,"  so  Candidate 
Willkie  knows  it's  an  asset  in  his  new  busi- 
ness to  look  and  sound  as  though  he 
meant  with  his  whole  heart  every  word  he 
utters. 

There  is  no  doubting  that,  in  William 
Allen  White's  phrase,  Wendell  Willkie  is  a 
pretty  smooth  guy.  Whether  he  really 
has  something  on  the  ball  is  a  question 
that,  for  all  his  fifty-two  years  of  living, 
still  needs  proving  or  disproving.  It 
may  be  that  the  force  of  circumstances, 
plus  the  warm  appeal  of  his  words,  will 
give  him  the  chance  to  prove  it,  beginning 
in  January,  1945 — or  even  in  January, 
1 949.  It  may  be  he  is  fated  to  go  down  in 
history  as  a  voice  forever  crying  in  the 
wilderness  of  the  electorate,  as  a  twentieth- 
century  Henry  Clay,  as  Wall  Street's 
William  Jennings  Bryan. 


I    r 


J  : 


GEOPOLITICS    WITH   THE   DEW   ON   IT 


BERNARD    DEVOTO 


n  T  SOME  tin 
/_\     ary  of 
JTyL  Gilpin 


^T  SOME  time  during  January  or  Febru- 
1846  a  man  named  William 
ilpin  went  back  to  Washington. 
He  had  been  there  some  months  earlier, 
talking  with  members  of  the  Cabinet  and 
with  the  secretive  President  Polk.  Now 
at  the  end  of  winter  he  found  the  city  more 
tense  and  excited,  more  electric  with  pre- 
monition of  great  events  to  come.  Texas 
and  Oregon  were  in  dispute;  California 
might  fall  into  our  hands;  war  with  Mexico 
seemed  likely,  war  with  Great  Britain  all 
but  certain.  Gilpin  drifted  through  the 
committee  rooms,  boardinghouse  parlors, 
and  oyster  bars  that  were  the  centers 
of  political  power  and  political  intrigue, 
preaching  a  gospel  of  expansfon.  He  was 
given  the  privilege  of  the  floor  in  both 
houses  of  Congress,  and  more  than  one 
orator  of  Manifest  Destiny  checked  his 
eloquence  to  turn  to  Gilpin  and  inquire 
whether  he  had  the  facts  right. 

Gilpin  was  important  to  Washington  at 
that  moment  because  he  had  visited  Ore- 
gon. He  had  so  much  to  say  about  the 
West  that  finally,  on  March  2,  1846,  the 
Senate  Committee  on  Post  Offices  and  Post 
Roads  made  some  of  it  official  by  reading  a 
long  letter  from  him  into  the  record.  It 
led  up  to  a  recommendation  that  the  gov- 
ernment open  mail  service  between  the 
Missouri  frontier  and  the  settlements  in 
Oregon,  a  proposal  sufficiently  breath- 
taking but  modest  compared  to  some 
which  Gilpin  was  to  make  later  on.     The 


whole  letter  is  a  document  in  nationalism, 
a  compendium  of  the  intoxicating  dreams 
of  the  1840's — that  mixed,  turbulent,  in- 
tense decade  when  there  seemed  to  be  no 
limit  to  American  achievement  and  no 
necessary  bound  to  American  hope.  It 
ends  with  a  declaration  about  "the  mission 
of  the  North  American  people,"  to  which 
we  shall  return. 

The  Dictionary  of  American  Biography  says 
that  Gilpin  was  a  visionary,  which  is 
true  enough.  But  events  may  bring  him 
back  out  of  history's  twilight  and  show 
that  he  was  something  more  as  well. 

William  Gilpin  was  thirty-two  when  he 
preached  the  occupation  of  the  Far  West 
to  an  Administration  that  had  already 
arranged  to  occupy  it.  Born  to  a  wealthy, 
cultivated,  and  politically  influential 
Quaker  family,  he  was  sent  to  school  in 
England.  When  he  returned  he  entered 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania;  H.  H. 
Bancroft  says  that  he  was  tutored  for  it 
by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  but  I  have  been 
unable  to  verify  the  statement.  Later  he 
spent  a  year  at  West  Point.  He  tried  but 
failed  to  get  service  in  Spain  against  the 
Carlists,  read  law  for  a  while,  and  finally 
took  his  commission  in  the  Army  during 
the  Seminole  War.  He  was  ordered  to 
Florida  by  way  of  Missouri  and  there, 
probably,  acquired  the  passion  for  the 
West  that  ruled  his  life.  After  the  war 
he  applied  to  lead  an  Army  exploration 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River — he 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


asked,  that  is,  for  the  role  which  was  to 
be  assigned  to  Fremont  a  few  years  later. 
Political  tensions  and  the  depression  of 
1837  had  chilled  expansionism,  however, 
and  the  Army  could  ^send  no  expeditions 
west.  Gilpin  resigned  and  moved  to  In- 
dependence, Missouri,  the  depot  of  the 
Santa  Fe  trade  and  the  jumping-ofF  place 
for  Oregon.  He  practiced  law,  edited  a 
newspaper,  speculated  in  land — and  stored 
his  mind  with  the  facts  and  fantasies  of  the 
West  as  traders,  trappers,  adventurers,  and 
emigrants  funneled  them  through  Inde- 
pendence. His  desire  to  see  the  wilder- 
ness intensified  and  finally,  in  1843,  un- 
able to  join  a  caravan,  he  started  ofi*  alone. 
Fortunately  Fremont,  just  beginning  his 
second  expedition,  overtook  him.  Gilpin 
traveled  to  Oregon  with  Fremont,  then 
struck  out  alone.  He  saw  more  of  Oregon 
than  Fremont  did,  met  the  British  and 
American  empire-builders  along  the  fron- 
tier of  conflict,  and  in  the  spring  of  '44 
started  back  to  the  States.  He  routed 
himself  through  dangerous  Indian  coun- 
try, much  of  it  far  from  the  trails,  but  he 
got  back  in  time  to  vote  for  Polk  and 
54^  40'. 

Gilpin  had  all  this  behind  him  when  he 
reported  to  the  Senate  in  March,  1846. 
Four  months  later  the  great  wave  had 
broken,  the  westward  flood  was  on,  and 
Gilpin  was  in  the  Army  again.  As  a 
major  in  Alexander  Doniphan's  First  Mis- 
souri, he  marched  with  Stephen  Watts 
Kearny's  Army  of  the  West  to  the  conquest 
of  New  Mexico.  In  October  and  No- 
vember he  led  an  amazing  expedition  to 
the  Canyon  de  Chelly,  and  then  he  went 
on  with  Doniphan  to  fight  the  Battle  of 
Sacramento  and  occupy  Chihuahua.  He 
was  one  of  the  insubordinate  optimists  who 
believed  that  this  regiment  of  farm  boys 
could  go  on  and  take  Mexico  City  as 
well,  but  Doniphan  thought  otherwise 
and  Gilpin  had  to  be  content  with  tamely 
completing  the  most  remarkable  march  in 
American  history.  In  the  winter  of  1847 
and  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1848 
he  was  back  in  the  Indian  country,  bat- 
tling the  Comanche  away  from  the  Santa 
Fe  Trail. 

After  his  Indian  campaign  Gilpin  settled 
down  in  Missouri.  He  was  one  of  the 
little  syndicate  that  laid  out  Kansas  City. 


He  lived  there  till  the  Civil  War,  studying 
the  West,  studying  the  energies  that  were 
remaking  America,  and  developing  a  vast, 
complex  theory  about  the  course  of  civi- 
lization. 

In  1861  Lincoln  made  Gilpin  governor 
of  the  new  Territory  of  Colorado.  He  had 
a  turbulent  term  and  political  pressure  at 
last  forced  his  removal.  But  he  saved 
Colorado  for  the  Union  and  helped  to 
save  New  Mexico.  He  spent  the  rest  of 
his  life  in  Denver;  like  Kansas  City,  the 
town  became  a  bench  mark  in  his  de- 
veloping theory.  Also  he  acquired  the 
famous  Sangre  de  Cristo  Grant,  more  than 
a  million  acres  in  the  San  Luis  Valley  of 
Colorado.  He  made  a  comfortable  for- 
tune from  it  and  it  too  had  a  place  in  the 
system  he  was  working  out,  his  theory 
about  the  United  States  and  the  future. 

That  theory  is  what  concerns  us.  We 
must  keep  in  mind  some  of  the  great 
events  which  Gilpin  either  participated 
in  or  observed  at  first  hand:  the  conquest 
of  the  Far  West,  the  opening  up  of  the  gold 
fields  in  California  and  Colorado  and 
Montana,  the  development  of  silver  min- 
ing in  Nevada  and  Colorado,  the  building 
of  the  railroads  east  of  the  Mississippi 
which  (as  much  as  any  other  single  force) 
won  the  Civil  War  for  the  North,  the 
winning  of  that  war  and  the  preservation 
of  the  internal  empire,  the  building  of 
the  Union  Pacific,  Central  Pacific,  and 
other  transcontinental  railroads,  the  settle- 
ment of  the  West,  the  vast  expansion  of 
industry.  Such  events  were  packed  with 
revolutionary  meaning  for  the  United 
States — and  for  the  world.  He  would 
be  a  confident  man  today  who  thought  he 
understood  them  completely.  Gilpin,  an 
energetic,  versatile  mind,  spent  his  life 
trying  to  understand  them  and  trying  to 
express  the  meaning  he  found  in  them — 
and  even  more  the  meaning  he  sensed  but 
could  not  grasp. 

His  science  was  early  nineteenth  century, 
which  is  to  say  that  much  of  it  was  a 
priori,  deduced,  generalized,  falsely  sys- 
tematized, and  therefore  wrong.  Much 
of  his  extrapolation,  though  based  on 
persuasive  data  and  worked  out  with 
rigorous  logic,  was  sheer  fantasy.  Never- 
theless his  system  contains  also  remarkable 
intuitions  and  anticipations,  and  his  vision 


GEOPOLITICS    WITH    THE    DEW    ON    IT 


315 


of  the  future  in  America,  perfumed  though 
it  is  with  the  optimism  of  a  simpler  age, 
may  be  worth  scrutiny  today.  In  it  one 
sees  America  learning  to  think  continen- 
tally,  at  a  moment  when  the  nation  could 
exult  over  achievements  unlike  anything 
else  in  history.  It  is  an  America  still 
ignorant  of  frustration,  still  confident,  still 
sure  that  the  future  will  be  majestic.  Also 
it  is  an  America  vividly  aware  of  energies 
which,  though  we  have  grown  progres- 
sively to  disregard  them,  have  not  yet 
spent  their  force. 

I  confine  myself  to  two  books,  The 
Mission  of  the  North  American  People,  pub- 
lished in  final  revision  in  1874,  and  The 
Cosmopolitan  Railway,  published  in  1890. 
Gilpin  had  many  talents  but  literary  or- 
ganization was  not  among  them;  the 
books,  though  richly  rhetorical,  are  chaotic. 
In  a  single  article  I  can  only  outline  the 
theory  they  contain,  and  perhaps  the  first 
thing  to  say  is  that  they  constitute,  or 
almost  constitute,  a  geopolitics.  Gilpin 
was  the  first  American  geopolitician,  per- 
haps the  first  of  all  geopoliticians,  if 
we  exclude  the  temporarily  Americanized 
German  Friedrich  List,  w^hose  wTitings 
unquestionably  influenced  him.  But  men- 
tion of  List  highlights  a  fundamental  dis- 
tinction. If  Gilpin  constructed  a  geo- 
politics it  was  a  science  of  peace,  not  of 
war.  If  he  believed  that  the  North  Amer- 
ican people  had  a  divine  mission  he  be- 
lieved that  that  mission  was  to  inaugurate 
an  era  of  lasting  peace. 


II 

M EARED  in  the  science  and  philosophy  of 
^  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, Gilpin  necessarily  assumed  that  there 
was  an  ascertainable  order  in  nature.  A 
work  which  set  out  to  ascertain  that  order, 
Humboldt's  Cosmos,  traveled  the  West  in 
his  saddlebag.  He  found  in  it  confirma- 
tion of  the  ideas  which  his  first  exploration 
of  the  Rockies  had  suggested  to  him,  and 
some  of  his  cornerstones  are  Humboldt- 
adapted  and  -applied.  In  particular  he 
used  Humboldt  on  his  way  to  the  key  idea 
by  which  he  interpreted  the  past  of  civi- 
lization, his  idea  of  the  Isothermal  Zodiac. 
He  explains  that  the  Isothermal  Zodiac 
is   a  belt   averaging   thirty   degrees   wide 


across  the  Northern  Hemisphere.  It  crosses 
the  continents  at  their  widest  expanse  and 
the  oceans  at  their  narrowest  contraction. 
Through  it  runs  the  Axis  of  Intensity, 
an  isothermal  line  representing  a  mean 
annual  temperature  of  52°  Fahrenheit. 
Since  other  factors  as  well  as  latitude 
afi^ect  the  location  of  this  Axis,  it  undulates 
and  does  not  always  run  midway  through 
the  Zodiac,  but  it  can  be  generalized  as  the 
Fortieth  Parallel.  Near  or  actually  on  the 
Axis  have  been  built  the  "primary"  cities 
of  history,  the  dynamic  foci  of  civilization. 

The  Isothermal  Zodiac  extends  south 
from  the  southern  part  of  the  Scandinavian 
Peninsula  to  include  the  inhabited  parts 
of  North  Africa.  It  covers  all  of  Europe 
south  of,  approximately,  St.  Petersburg, 
all  but  the  southern  tip  of  Arabia,  India, 
China,  and  Japan.  An  extremely  im- 
portant fact  is  that  it  contracts  as  it  crosses 
Asia:  most  of  Siberia  lies  north  of  it.  But 
it  curves  northward  asrain  and  crosses  the 
Bering  Sea  to  include  the  southern  quarter 
of  Alaska.  Crossing  Canada  it  contracts 
southward  again,  as  it  does  in  Asia,  but 
the  corresponding  return-curve  takes  in 
Newfoundland  and  part  of  Labrador.  At 
the  southern  limit  it  includes  the  West 
Indies  and  almost  all  of  Mexico. 

The  Isothermal  Zodiac,  Gilpin  says, 
contains  the  climates  and  geographical 
conditions  most  favorable  to  civilization. 
Ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  white  race  live 
within  it.  And  here,  he  points  out,  have 
arisen  and  flourished  all  the  empires  in 
which  "society  has  attained  its  largest 
numerical  strength,  reaching  the  highest 
level  of  intelligence  and  the  longest  dura- 
tion." Furthermore,  "inwards  and  con- 
verging on  [the  Axis  of  Intensity]  have 
always  passed  the  periodical  migratory 
and  military  movements  of  the  human 
masses."  The  empires  which  sum  up 
history  are  "the  Chinese,  the  Indian,  the 
Persian,  the  Roman,  the  Spanish,  the 
British,  and  flnally  the  republican  empire 
of  the  people  of  North  America." 

(He  adopted  Max  Mliller's  primordial 
conception  of  the  Aryan  peoples.  Al- 
though the  modern  German-race  myths 
were  developed  out  of  it,  it  was  originally 
tentative  and  un-Teutonic.  Gilpin  classi- 
fied the  Egyptians  and  the  Jews  as  Aryans. 
He  could  not  make  Aryans  of  the  Chinese, 


cuRLiNCilrr* 


316 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


however,  and  had  further  difficulty  bring- 
ing them  into  his  system.  Their  civiHza- 
tion  seemed  paradoxical ;  certainly  they  had 
imperial  genius  but  it  was  incoherent  and 
limited.  He  expected  more  from  the  Jap- 
anese, who,  he  thought,  must  eventually 
come  completely  within  Aryan  culture.) 

North  America — from  southern  Mexico 
to  the  middle  of  Canada  and  including 
nearly  all  of  the  eastern  and  western  litto- 
rals— lies  within  this  Isothermal  Zodiac. 
A  much  larger  portion  of  this  continent 
than  of  any  other,  Gilpin  points  out,  has  the 
topography,  climates,  and  soils  that  create 
civilization  and  encourage  its  progress. 
That  is  a  fact  of  absolute  importance;  it  is 
one  of  the  imperative,  determining  facts 
of  human  life.  But  there  is  another  equally 
decisive  fact,  the  configuration  of  the  con- 
tinents, on  which  he  establishes  his  second 
master  generalization. 

North  America,  Gilpin  says,  is  a  vast 
bowl;  it  is  concave.  Its  mountain  systems 
are  longitudinal  and  extend  along  its  edges. 
The  Appalachians  at  the  east  and  the 
bifurcated  system  at  the  west — the  Sierra 
Nevada  and  the  Sierra  Madre  or  main 
range  of  the  Rockies — shape  it  so  that  it 
slopes  downward  toward  the  interior  cen- 
ter, the  Mississippi  Valley.  They  also 
give  its  river  systems  coherence.  The 
affluents  of  the  Mississippi  are  themselves 
fed  by  affluents  so  that  their  network 
completely  covers  the  great  valley.  More- 
over the  St.  Lawrence,  the  Columbia,  and 
the  Colorado  have  coherent  systems,  har- 
monize with  the  master  system,  and  per- 
mit access  to  it.  The  result  is  a  natural, 
orderly  system  of  communication.  This 
beneficent  geography  facilitates  trade,  em- 
igration, and  government.  It  tends  to 
amalgamate  peoples,  not  difierentiate  them. 
It  is  centripetal:  it  harmonizes  customs  and 
cultures,  establishes  a  single  language, 
accelerates  the  exchange  of  ideas,  and 
makes  for  unity.  In  North  America  there 
is  a  fundamental  geographical  unity,  a 
continental  unity.  Already  it  has  im- 
posed political  and  cultural  unity  on  the 
United  States,  making  it  a  continental 
nation. 

On  the  contrary,  Gilpin  says,  Europe 
and  Asia  are  inverted  bowls,  they  are  con- 
vex. The  Alps  and  the  Himalayas  are 
not  the  edges  but  the  centers  of  continents. 


They  are  barriers  to  continental  unity. 
Moreover  they  are  latitudinal,  not  longitu- 
dinal, and  so  the  rivers  that  fall  away  from 
them  are  not  interconnected;  they  are 
discrete.  They  do  not  form  a  system. 
They  do  not  facilitate  communication, 
trade,  the  exchange  of  culture,  or  the 
development  of  a  common  consciousness. 
Instead,  the  immutable  facts  of  geography  e 
have  had  a  disintegrating  eflfect.  They  f 
have  broken  up  both  continents  into  a 
multitude  of  small  states,  different  lan- 
guages, jealous,  envious,  and  frequently 
backward  peoples  forced  to  compete  with 
one  another  for  the  means  of  life.  Whereas 
the  configuration  of  North  America  impels 
the  inhabitants  toward  common  centers 
and  integrates  their  life,  that  of  Europe 
and  Asia  drives  them  away  from  centers  and 
forbids  integration.  Hence  in  those  un- 
happy continents  the  history  of  mankind 
has  been  the  history  of  war. 

Here  we  must  move  forward  more  than 
half  a  century  (for  Gilpin's  basic  ideas 
were  formed  by  1850)  and  glance  at  the  j 
findings  of  the  British  geographer.  Sir 
Halford  Mackinder.  Gilpin  tended  to  dis- 
regard South  America  as  a  mere  "feeder"  | 
continent  because  it  is  outside  the  Iso- 
thermal Zodiac.  Mackinder  goes  him 
one  better  by  treating  North  and  South 
America  as  a  mere  island  because  they 
are  outside  what  he  considers  the  funda- 
mental land  mass  of  the  world,  which 
he  calls  the  World  Island.  Gilpin  had 
treated  Europe  and  Asia  as  separate  con- 
tinents; Mackinder  makes  them  a  single 
continent,  the  important  part  of  the  World 
Island. 

Now  Eurasia,  this  single  continent, 
naturally  divides  into  two  parts.  One 
part  is  a  belt  of  lands  running  from 
Japan  along  the  water  margin  to  include 
Scandinavia,  lands  which  have  easy  access 
to  the  oceans.  This  belt  is  partly  oceanic 
and  partly  continental;  Mackinder  calls  it 
the  Inner,  or  Marginal,  Crescent.  North 
of  it  is  a  vast  expanse  which  has  no  access 
to  a  navigable  ocean  but  is  wholly  con- 
tinental; Mackinder  calls  it  the  Pivot  Area 
or  the  Heartland. 

If  you  map  Mackinder's  and  Gilpin's 
divisions,  they  appear  to  be  almost  iden- 
tical. Mackinder's  Inner  Crescent  is  al- 
most exactly  Gilpin's  Isothermal  Zodiac 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


as  It  crosses  the  World  Island.  His  Heart- 
land is  almost  exactly  Russia  and  Siberia 
north  of  the  Isothermal  Zodiac. 

Like  Gilpin,  Mackinder  regards  the 
Inner  Crescent  as  the  most  favorable 
human  habitat,  the  seat  of  civilization, 
and  the  belt  of  empii  e,  past,  present,  and 
to  come.  The  area  north  of  it,  the  Heart- 
land, is  even  more  important  in  his  system 
than  in  Gilpin's.  The  same  facts  of  ge- 
ography, climate,  and  communications, 
though  refined  by  a  more  exact  science  and 
given  a  radically  different  interpretation, 
impel  him  as  they  did  Gilpin  to  formulate 
a  theory  of  civilization.  The  Inner  Cres- 
cent (the  Isothermal  Zodiac)  contains  the 
lands  most  favorable  to  human  life.  Con- 
sequently the  peoples  who  live  there  have 
always  had  to  defend  those  lands  against 
invasion  by  peoples  who  lived  in  the  less 
favorable  Heartland — who  have  periodi- 
cally been  forced  out  to  attempt  conquest. 
History  is  the  story  of  those  invasions  and 
the  resistance  to  them.  But  civilization 
arose,  has  been  maintained,  and  has  pro- 
gressed through  the  necessity  of  the  Inner 
Crescent  to  defend  itself.  Civilization  is 
a  function  of  the  conflict  between  the 
Inner  Crescent  and  the  Heartland. 

Hence  Mackinder's  famous  aphorism  of 
1919:  "Who  rules  East  Europe  commands 
the  Heartland;  who  rules  the  Heartland 
commands  the  World  Island;  who  rules 
the  World  Island  commands  the  World." 
The  present  war  lay  coiled  within  that 
saying.  Mackinder  had  been  forced  to  it 
by  a  belief  that  in  our  time  the  human  race 
had  rounded  a  decisive  turn.  The  Co- 
lumbian era  (the  era  of  exploration  and 
colonization)  had  ended,  there  were  no 
more  new  lands,  and  from  now  on  human- 
ity must  live  in  a  closed  geographical 
system.  His  conception  of  the  World 
Island,  moreover,  produced  another  fun- 
damental thesis,  that  an  era  of  military 
power  had  also  come  to  an  end.  Up  to 
now  imperial  power  had  always  been 
derived  from  sea  power,  with  its  abil- 
ity to  paralyze  trade  and  to  transport 
armies  with  maximum  speed.  But  hence- 
forth the  development  of  railroad  systems 
and  the  probable  development  of  air 
transport  (in  1904,  when  Mackinder  first 
expressed  this  thesis,  he  foresaw  the  im- 
portance of  aviation  but,  strangely,  ignored 


the  automobile)  would  outflank,  frustrate, 
and  overthrow  sea  power.  The  World 
Island  could  now  be  crossed  faster  than  it 
could  be  circumnavigated,  trade  and  sup- 
ply could  move  across  it  secure  from 
navies,  the  bases  on  which  sea  power  was 
absolutely  dependent  could  be  captured 
from  the  land  side,  and  control  by  nations 
of  the  Marginal  Crescent  of,  for  instance, 
Suez,  Gibraltar,  Panama,  or  the  English 
Channel  would  be  irrelevant. 

Haushofer  and  his  school  of  German 
geopolitics  took  over  these  ideas  whole  and 
developed  them  into  the  theory  of  strategy 
in  accordance  with  which  the  Nazi  state 
prepared  for  the  present  war.  In  a  word, 
Mackinder  believed  that  the  development 
of  Russia  was  the  greatest  single  fact  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  that  Russia's  place  in 
the  Heartland  put  her  square  at  the 
strategic  focus,  and  that  the  world  war 
which  from  the  early  1900's  he  felt  to  be 
inevitable  might  indeed  establish  a  world 
empire  if  an  alliance  between  Russia  and 
Germany  should  be  effected — "who  rules 
the  World  Island  commands  the  World." 
Haushofer's  geopolitics  was  aimed  at  com- 
manding the  world  by  ruling  the  World 
Island.  It  set  out  to  restore  the  Drang 
nach  Osten  and  to  repair  the  critical  mistake 
of  1914  by  effecting  the  alliance  with 
Russia  which  had  been  the  policy  of  Bis- 
marck and  in  fact  of  every  prophet  of 
Pan-Germanism  from  List  on.  Unques- 
tionably the  German  General  Staff  ac- 
cepted this  strategy.  German  geopolitics 
must  necessarily  conclude  that  when  the 
Nazi  party  overruled  the  General  Staff 
and  attacked  Russia  it  thereby  lost  the 
world  empire  for  which  it  had  begun  the 
war. 

Presently  we  shall  see  the  place  in  the 
world  system  which  Gilpin  assigned  to 
Russia.  Here  we  must  note  that  he  also 
predicted  the  decline  of  sea  power.  The 
superiority  of  land  transport  which  he  ar- 
gued, however,  was  concerned  with  peace 
— with  commerce,  the  exchange  of  cultures, 
and  the  development  of  brotherhood — not 
with  war.  The  system  of  interior  commu- 
nication which  the  rivers  of  North  America 
provided  was  to  be  improved,  extended,  and 
eventually  superseded  by  a  vast  system  of 
railroads.  As  soon  as  he  returned  from 
helping  to  continentalize  the  nation  with  the 


GEOPOLITICS    WITH    THE    DEW    ON    IT 


319 


conquests  of '46  he  began  to  agitate  for  the 
Pacific  Railway.  Thus  wc  find  him  early 
in  '49,  haranguing  a  party  of  California- 
bound  gold-scckcrs,  demanding  its  im- 
mediate construction  and  prophesying  an 
enormous  increase  in  energy  from  it.  He 
went  on  propagandizing. 

Soon  the  United  States  east  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi was  crisscrossed  by  tracks.  By 
1869  the  first  transcontinental  railway 
was  built.  Others  were  begun.  And  ev- 
ery detail  of  Gilpin's  prophecies  was  ful- 
filled— the  West  was  settled,  the  national 
wealth  multiplied,  a  tremendous  increase 
of  commerce  and  manufacture  followed. 
But  if  so  great  an  advance  was  possible 
in  the  United  States,  where  geography 
was  favorable,  how  important  was  it  to 
triumph  over  unfavorable  geography  else- 
where by  this  same  means!  So  Gilpin 
launched  his  dizziest  dream.  It  is  said 
that  List  was  the  first  prophet  of  the 
Bagdad  Railway.  Gilpin  invented  it  too, 
but  only  as  a  minor  detail.  He  proposed 
what  he  called  the  Cosmopolitan  Railway. 
Quite  literally,  it  was  to  cover  the  earth. 

The  Cosmopolitan  Railway  was  to  cross 
the  three  principal  continents,  keeping 
as  close  as  might  be  to  the  Axis  of  Intensity 
and  emerging  from  the  Isothermal  Zodiac 
only  to  run  up  the  coast  to  Alaska,  cross 
the  Bering  Strait  by  car  ferry,  and  work 
southwestward  to  re-enter  it  at  the  corner 
of  Manchuria  and  Mongolia.  A  main 
branch  was  to  run  to  Calcutta  and  there 
were  to  be  three  trunk  lines  across  Europe. 
Besides  the  main  road  there  were  to  be 
feeders,  one  down  the  Malay  Peninsula 
and  across  Java  and  Sumatra  to  Australia, 
one  (of  two  prongs — across  the  Strait  of 
Gibraltar  and  the  Isthmus  of  Suez)  to 
Africa,  and  one  through  Mexico  and 
Central  America  to  South  America.  On 
reaching  their  respective  continents,  these 
feeders  were  to  be  built  completely  round 
them,  to  unify  the  predictable  internal 
systems. 

Gilpin's  orderly  geography  promised  him 
that  nature  had  provided  a  practicable 
route,  that  there  would  be  no  engineering 
difficulties  greater  than  those  which  the 
Union  and  Central  Pacific  had  sur- 
mounted. National  rivalries  which  might 
have  stood  in  the  way,  he  decided,  would 
vanish   before    the    advance    of  political 


science  which  he  held  to  be  implicit  in 
the  nineteenth  century — primarily  because 
the  victory  of  the  North  had  preserved 
the  continental  republic.  And  though 
the  indicated  capitalization  was  astronom- 
ical it  would  not  prove  to  be  a  serious 
problem.  The  wealth  which  the  building 
of  the  railroad  would  create  need  not  even 
be  mortgaged,  for  construction  was  cer- 
tain to  reveal  orderly  deposits  of  precious 
metals  in  the  Asiatic  mountains,  precisely 
like  those  in  the  Sierra  and  the  Rockies. 

American  experience  made  clear  what 
the  outcome  of  such  a  gigantic  achieve- 
ment would  be.  Agriculture,  commerce, 
manufacture  would  spring  up  in  the  wake  of 
the  Cosmopolitan  Railway;  wealth  would 
increase  many  fold.  But  greater  things 
would  follow.  Barbarism,  ignorance,  tyr- 
anny, injustice,  cruelty  would  yield  to  the 
civilization  thus  brought  to  the  waste- 
lands. The  American  railroads  had  en- 
hanced our  unity,  had  in  fact  welded  it 
forever,  and  therein  was  the  clue  to 
universal  peace.  For  the  true  importance 
of  the  Cosmopolitan  Railway  was  that  it 
would  transcend  the  geographical  con- 
vexity of  Europe  and  Asia.  It  would 
overcome  the  barriers  of  discrete  rivers 
and  latitudinal  mountain  ranges.  It  would 
unify  disparate  peoples,  join  together  those 
whom  nature  had  driven  asunder,  and 
impel  nations  which  geography  had  con- 
demned to  periodic  war  to  work  harmoni- 
ously together  toward  common  ends. 

Ill 

THE  foregoing  is  an  outline,  consider- 
ably simplified,  of  Gilpin's  system. 
Much  curious  lore  and  tropical  fantasy 
supported  it.  I  have  had  to  ignore  argu- 
ments, solutions  of  problems,  and  applica- 
tions of  a  deuces-wild  science  which  he 
considered  fundamental.  But  we  must 
glance  at  one  of  his  ventures  in  pure 
ecstasy. 

When  he  first  began  to  compose  his 
system  he  decided,  like  nearly  everyone 
who  studies  the  United  States,  that  the 
weightiest  fact  in  our  national  life  was 
"the  most  magnificent  dwelling  place 
marked  out  for  man's  abode" — the  Basin 
of  the  Mississippi.  His  theories  of  con- 
figuration  and   climate  calculated   for  it 


320 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


an  imperial  population  of  1,310,000,000. 
Its  22,000  miles  of  navigable  rivers  and 
its  railroads  would  give  it  a  corresponding 
imperial  wealth.  More  fundamental,  how- 
ever, was  the  fact  that  this  great  valley 
had  given  the  United  States  political 
unity.  A  national  personality — and  in- 
cidentally a  national  physique — was  being 
evolved  there.  The  valley  which  had 
made  a  single  race  of  the  Indians  was 
making  one  of  the  Americans.  We  were 
becoming  "a  people  one  and  indivisible 
.  .  .  preserving  the  same  civilization  .  .  . 
imbued  with  the  same  opinions  and  having 
the  same  political  liberties."  The  Basin 
had  shaped  the  United  States  as  a  civiliza- 
tion; it  was  similarly  shaping  North  Amer- 
ica; eventually  it  must  shape  the  world. 

Then  Gilpin  moved  to  Colorado  and 
decided  that,  just  as  the  Mediterranean 
Basin  had  its  Pillars  of  Hercules  opening 
on  the  Atlantic,  so  the  Basin  of  the  Missis- 
sippi had  its  South  Pass  opening  westward 
on  wonderland.  He  would  rename  it  the 
Pillars  of  Washington,  to  signify  its  gran- 
deur. And  when  he  came  to  live  in  the 
part  of  wonderland  called  San  Luis  Valley 
his  ideas,  already  vertiginous,  soared  into 
the  stratosphere.  He  had  laid  out  Kansas 
City  at  the  center  of  the  Mississippi  Basin 
and  so,  he  then  thought,  at  the  center  of 
nature's  order.  But  he  found  that  Denver 
was  an  even  more  important  prime  city 
and  the  area  to  which  it  was  attached  was 
even  more  important  than  the  great  valley. 

That  area  was  the  region  between  the 
main  Rockies  and  the  Sierra  Nevada; 
Gilpin  called  it  the  Plateau  of  North 
America.  Here  his  theories  of  geography, 
geology,  mineralogy,  ethnology,  "thermal 
science,"  rainfall,  agriculture,  mining,  and 
industry  blended  in  incandescence.  Amer- 
ican geographical  conditions,  the  most 
fortunate  in  the  world,  reached  their 
happiest  climax  in  the  Plateau.  Ameri- 
can climates  were  the  most  favorable  but 
for  every  department  of  human  activity 
the  Plateau's  climate  was  the  best  of  all. 
He  had  been  able  to  estimate  the  eventual 
population  of  the  Mississippi  Basin,  but 
the  Plateau  could  support  an  illimitable 
population — there  was  no  upper  limit. 
Likewise  there  was  no  limit  to  its  pro- 
ductiveness, there  was  not  even  a  limiting 
factor,  for  the  crops  would  be  raised  by 


scientific  irrigation,  independent  of  varia- 
tions in  rainfall.  Moreover  the  order  of 
nature  which  ordained  this  supreme  phase 
of  civilization  had  arranged  to  capitalize 
it.  The  mountain  system  was  orderly, 
and  so  the  Plateau  must  contain  culminat- 
ing treasures  of  gold  and  silver,  iron  and 
coal,  many  other  valuable  minerals,  and 
even  precious  stones.  Advancing  science 
was  sure  to  find  the  blueprints  of  this 
treasury — in  fact  Gilpin  revealed  them — 
and  sufficient  sound  money  would  be  pro- 
vided for  every  forward  step.  History 
showed  that  plateaus  were  peculiarly  as- 
sociated with  progress.  Civilization  had 
first  appeared  in  the  Plateau  of  Syria  and 
had  risen  to  a  high  level  in,  for  one  in- 
stance, the  Plateau  of  the  Andes  where 
Cortez  found  the  Incas.  But  the  Plateau 
of  North  America  was  a  climax:  here  the 
Americans  were  destined  to  behold  "the 
most  attractive,  the  most  wonderful,  and 
the  most  powerful  department  of  their 
continent,  of  their  country,  and  of  the 
whole  area  of  the  globe." 

It  has  worked  out  otherwise.  The  min- 
eral order  has  proved  more  capricious 
than  Gilpin  thought,  and  when  a  more 
pedestrian  science  than  his  got  to  work  on 
the  inter-mountain  West  it  was  forced  to 
report  different  findings.  Just  three  years 
after  the  final  revision  of  The  Mission  of  the 
North  American  People  John  Wesley  Powell 
published  some  results  of  a  ten  years' 
study  of  the  arid  region.  Powell,  the 
prophet  of  irrigation,  of  conservation,  of 
intelligent  land  use,  of  community  and 
Federal  development  in  the  West,  and  the 
prophet  of  dustbowls  and  sectional  bank- 
ruptcy as  well — Powell  found  an  order  in 
Gilpin's  wonderland,  but  one  which  set 
immutable  conditions.  Only  certain  areas 
would  support  life,  only  certain  soils  were 
arable,  only  a  fixed  amount  of  water 
existed.  Just  so  many  people  could  live 
in  the  Plateau,  they  must  develop  in- 
stitutions conformable  to  the  conditions, 
they  could  anticipate  just  so  much  increase 
in  wealth — and  the  sum,  compared  with 
Gilpin's,  was  infinitesimal.  The  West  has 
developed  in  accordance  with  Powell's 
vision,  not  Gilpin's. 

Another  element  of  Gilpin's  Western 
apocalypse,  however,  must  be  noted.  One 
of  the  ways  in  which  the  Plateau  of  North 


GEOPOLITICS    WITH    THE    DEW    ON    IT 


321 


America  was  a  focus  of  civilization  was 
that  two  streams  of  emigration  were  meet- 
ing and  merging  there,  the  American  from 
the  east  and  the  Mexican  from  the  south. 
On  the  way  west  from  the  Atlantic  the 
American  people  had  undergone  the 
changes  which  had  made  them  a  new  peo- 
ple, had  unified  them,  and  had  forged  them 
into  a  continental  nation.  On  the  Plateau 
they  were  merging  with  a  people  not  in 
the  least  maritime  and  only  slightly  me- 
chanical but  gifted  at  pastoral  and  mining 
and  agricultural  industries  and  endowed 
with  a  rich  culture,  and  were  being 
changed  again.  This  fusion  would  be 
important  in  the  finer  phase  of  human 
life  that  was  destined  to  appear  on  the 
Plateau,  and  Gilpin  knew  a  way  to  hasten 
its  development.  He  would  accelerate 
the  migration  northward  by  building  a 
railway  down  the  base  of  the  Rockies 
through  Mexico.  At  the  proper  time  it 
would  be  extended  to  South  America 
as  part  of  the  Cosmopolitan  Railway. 

As  his  system  developed  it  was  con- 
tradictory about  Mexico  and  Canada. 
At  first  he  openly  regretted  that  we  had  not 
annexed  all  of  Mexico  following  '46,  was 
willing  to  repair  that  mistake  at  any  time, 
and  predicted  that  we  must  eventually 
take  Canada  either  by  force  or  by  per- 
suasion. Later  he  decided  that  both  na- 
tions would  join  us  in  recognition  of  their 
interests,  and  his  final  conclusion  was  that 
perhaps  Canada  could  remain  outside 
the  system  permanently.  But  usually  he 
thought  of  both  nations  as  subject  to  the 
same  centripetal  forces  that  had  governed 
our  development.  Mountains,  rivers,  cli- 
mates, railroads,  everything  that  had  acted 
on  the  Americans  was  acting  on  the  Cana- 
dians and  Mexicans  to  the  same  end. 

In  short,  the  forces  that  had  made  the 
United  States  a  continental  nation,  a 
political  entity  with  a  common  conscious- 
ness whose  living  space  stretched  from 
ocean  to  ocean,  were  irreversible  and  must 
go  on.  The  nation  was  not  yet  co- 
extensive with  the  continent,  though  the 
continent  was  also  a  harmonious  unit. 
The  procession  of  the  nineteenth  century 
indicated  that  we  must  become  not  only  a 
continental  nation  but  a  continental  peo- 
ple, and  not  merely  the  American  people 
but  the  North  American  people. 


IV 


UNDERNEATH  its  rhctOHC,  Gilpin's  read- 
ing of  the  American  experience  is 
essentially  sound.  Out  of  half-hostile  col- 
onies and  mixed  stocks  the  New  World 
had  indeed  created  a  new  nation  which 
extended  itself  to  the  Pacific  and  main- 
tained its  identity  against  the  disunion 
which  would  have  Balkanized  it,  or  in  his 
word  Europeanized  it.  What  he  called 
the  "pioneer  army"  did  in  fact  move  west- 
ward by  reasonably  regular  stages,  altering 
and  recreating  the  nation.  Behind  it 
another  "army,"  constantly  enlarged  by 
a  rising  birth  rate  and  by  immigration 
from  Europe,  did  in  fact  multiply  the  na- 
tional wealth  by  developing  the  lands 
which  the  pioneers  subdued.  It  is  quite 
true  that  our  succession  of  frontiers  per- 
fected the  instruments  of  self-government, 
democratized  our  society,  diminished  dif- 
ferences that  might  have  been  fatal  in  a 
smaller  land  area,  heightened  our  national 
consciousness,  and  gave  us  an  empire 
within  our  own  boundaries.  1 1  is  quite  true 
that  of  the  forces  which  produced  the 
United  States  by  far  the  most  important 
was  the  land,  the  almost  illimitable  land 
lying  ever  westward  of  the  settlements. 
One  need  not  accept  Gilpin's  teleology  or 
find  his  harmony  in  our  geography,  but 
there  is  no  development  in  our  history 
from  which,  without  paralyzing  error, 
that  geography  can  be  left  out  of  account. 
It  is  fundamental  in  the  democracy,  the 
freedoms,  and  the  continentalism  which  he 
held  to  be  the  foremost  energies  in  our 
system  of  energies. 

It  is  also  true  that  the  occupation  of 
the  Mississippi  Valley  and  the  Far  West 
changed  the  Americans — that  the  con- 
tinental people  were  vastly  diflferent  from 
the  littoral  people.  That  something  simi- 
lar happened  to  the  Canadians  is  also  true. 
The  two  facts  do  not,  however,  necessarily 
foretell  the  development  of  a  North  Amer- 
ican people.  That  idea  is  best  seen  his- 
torically, as  one  of  the  yeasty,  recurring 
sentiments  of  Manifest  Destiny.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  it  took  many  forms, 
some  arrogant,  some  idealistic,  some  down- 
right swinish,  but  it  has  made  no  appeal  to 
the  twentieth  century.  Though  Gilpin 
thought  it  essential  to  his  system,  it  was 


322 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


really  as  irrelevant  to  his  results  as  his 
theory  about  the  orderly  production  of 
gold,  his  "thermal  science,"  or  the  di- 
lemma of  immigration  which  he  was  un- 
able to  resolve.  It  was  not  indispensable 
to  his  climax,  the  far-off  divine  event  to 
which  his  whole  creation  moved. 

Gilpin  observed  another  phenomenon  of 
his  time  which  seemed  to  be  working  to- 
ward that  climax,  the  development  of 
Russia.  He  applied  to  it  the  same  geo- 
graphical incantations  and  he  came  out 
with  a  parallel  that  was  almost  an  equiva- 
lence. In  expansion,  in  increase  of  wealth, 
in  abandonment  of  tyrannies  (serfdom  and 
Negro  slavery),  in  heightening  of  energy, 
the  United  States  and  Russia  were  follow- 
ing significantly  similar  paths. 

Europe  had  moved  westward  to  Amer- 
ica and  the  United  States  had  moved 
westward — to  the  Pacific.  Russia  was 
moving  eastward — to  the  Pacific.  And 
right  there  the  meaning  of  the  world 
drama  was  revealed.  Far  from  being 
the  inconsiderable  island  of  the  outer 
margin  which  Mackinder  was  to  consider  it, 
America  was  in  fact  the  center  of  the  world. 
The  movement  of  civilization — of  com- 
munication, of  trade,  of  progress — was 
twofold,  from  the  east  westward  and 
from  the  west  eastward.  Here  was  the 
United  States,  its  whole  expanse  within 
the  Isothermal  Zodiac,  its  area  perfectly 
bisected  by  the  Axis  of  Intensity.  The 
straight  line  of  world  communication  ran 
square  across  us,  by  rail  from  New  York 
to  San  Francisco,  as  compared  with  the 
uneconomic  detour  by  Cape  Horn  or  even 
Panama.  Beyond  question  that  line  was 
also  the  line  of  empire.  Here  we  were, 
irresistibly  pulled  toward  our  own  finest 
environment,  the  Plateau  of  the  Table 
Lands — toward  Denver,  toward  the  crest 
of  the  Sierra.  On  this  site  our  highest 
phase  would  develop  and  from  it  we  should 
dominate  what  lay  beyond.  Our  final 
orientation  would  have  us  looking  down, 
westward,  from  our  Plateau  toward  our 
Pacific  shore.  The  final  orientation  of 
Russia  would  symmetrically  correspond. 
Therefore,  with  our  system  of  energies 
completed  and  implemented,  there  could 
be  no  doubt  of  our  manifest,  final  destiny. 
Gilpin  quoted,  "the  fulfillment  of  a  master 
role  in  the  history  of  civilization  can  no 


more  be  evaded  by  the  United  States 
than  it  could  be  by  their  prototype,  the 
Roman  republic." 

The  implementation,  however,  required 
one  final  step.     Remember  that  Gilpin's 
system    rested    on    two    theses:    that    the 
geography   of  North   America   was   har- 
monious and  favorable,  and  that  the  geog-  \ . 
raphy  of  Europe  and  Asia  was  unharmo-  -jr 
nious  and  unfavorable.     The  centuries  of  '\i 
warfare  in  the  unhappy  continents  were  a 
result  of  that  geographical  disharmony — 
which  science  at  last  had  power  to  reduce. 
The    construction    of   the    Cosmopolitan 
Railway  would  transcend  the  disharmony  ' 
of  world  geography.     Clearly  Russia  and  ' 
the  United  States  must  construct  it — and  ' 
not  solely  because  they  would  profit  most 
from  it.     "The  extremes  of  customs,  poli- 
tics,  and  cultivation  tend  to  unite"   the 
two  nations,  he  said. 

Probably   there   are   fewer  opportunities  for 
disagreements  and  jealousies  than  may  be  found 
among  any  other  of  the  first  class  powers.  .  .  . 
Both  are  among  the  largest  and  strongest  among 
civilized  powers,  both  in  territory  and  popula-    ? 
tion,  and  both  are  growing  larger  and  stronger 
while  the  other  powers  of  Christendom  are  falling 
into  decay.     Build  this  railway  between  them,     j 
and  America  and  Russia  may  join  hands  against    i 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  on  any  issue,  military,    '| 
commercial,  and  industrial.     Then  indeed  this    "^ 
back  way  to  India  of  which  Columbus  dreamed 
.  .  .  will  become  the  chief  highway  of  the  na- 
tions, the  front  and  finishing  line  of  progress, 
circling  round  the  warm  and  hospitable  Pacific, 
whose  shores  are  pregnant  with  limidess  unde- 
veloped resources,  leaving  the  cold  Atlantic  to    1 
those  who  choose  to  navigate  it.  .  .  ;  ^ 

Well,  the  Dictionary  of  American  Biography    ] 
uses  the  word  "visionary"   and    I   have    j 
already  called  such  bursts  as  the  above 
fantastic,  even  apocalyptical.     Yet  how- 
ever  fantastic    Gilpin's   system    may   be, 
and  however  dubious  the  science  which 
supports  it,   I   think  that   even  Professor 
Toynbee  would  concede  that  it  achieves     , 
a    generalization    about    the    movement 
of  history — perhaps   that   it    is    quite    as 
valid    a   generalization    as,    say,    Oswald 
Spengler's.     But  let  us  come  closer  home. 

Two  or  three  years  after  the  passage 
just  quoted  was  published  two  other  think- 
ers, equipped  with  scientific  theories  more 
up  to  date  than  Gilpin's  but  holding  be- 
liefs about  the  function  of  gold  and  silver 
as  strong  as  his,  set  out  to  discover  the 


GEOPOLITICS    WITH    THE    DEW    ON    IT 


323 


novemcnt  of  history.  Through  the  letters 
Df  Brooks  and  Henry  Adams  during  the 
I890's  Russia,  "that  polar  mystery,"  flick- 
ers like  an  anxious  ghost.  Russia,  Henry 
;aid,  was  "impenetrable"  but  nevertheless 
A^as  "our  true  point  of  interest."  Finally 
.heir  science,  which  happened  to  be  me- 
:hanics,  revealed  the  movement  of  history. 
The  Christian  philosophy  had  once  uni- 
fied Europe  (which  was  chaos  to  Gilpin) 
but  the  increase  of  mechanical  power 
(which  Gilpin  thought  of  as  unifying)  was 
disruptive.  Society  was  breaking  up  and 
two  eccentric  forces  were  hastening  its 
disintegration.  One  of  those  forces  was 
Russia,  the  other  was  the  United  States. 

Fifty  years  after  the  Adams  brothers 
bent  to  their  task  it  is  not  evident  that  their 
scientific  metaphors  were  any  more  valid 
than  Gilpin's.  Their  method  was  es- 
sentially the  same  as  his,  to  pluck  data  out 
of  the  Zeitgeist  and  then  sit  and  think  and 
think  and  think.  If  Gilpin  made  creation 
pivot  on  the  city  of  Denver,  the  Adamses 
were  impelled  to  make  it  pivot  on  the 
frustration  of  their  grandfather.  If  Gil- 
pin's metaphysical  geography  was  not 
quite  watertight,  neither  was  the  me- 
chanics of  the  Adamses,  which  extended 
theses  about  the  equilibrium  of  forces 
into  areas  where  Willard  Gibbs  forbade 
them  to  apply.  From  the  perspective  of 
history  all  three  reflected  the  expectations 
of  their  countrymen,  Gilpin  at  the  height 
of  mid-century  hope,  the  Adamses  at  the 
moment  when  the  failure  of  nerve  called 
fin  de  siecle  was  beginning  to  set  in. 

When  Sir  Halford  Mackinder  constructed 
his  theory  of  imperial  power  he  left  the 
Americas  out  of  account.  He  may  have 
been  looking  down  a  resolutely  British 
nose;  at  any  rate  events  have  shown  that 
he  made  a  mistake,  that  Gilpin  was 
nearer  the  truth.  The  Adams  brothers 
made  an  even  more  serious  mistake.  They 
disregarded  altogether  what  many  millions 
of  Americans  had  accomplished  in  a  full 
century  west  of  the  Back  Bay.  Gilpin 
took  it  into  account.     West  of  the  Back 


Bay  those  millions  had  shifted  the  national 
center  of  gravity  and  with  it,  he  decided, 
the  world  center  of  gravity.  But  it  is 
striking  that  Mackinder,  the  Adamses,  and 
Gilpin,  groping  among  inscrutables  to 
make  out  the  shape  of  the  future,  all  ended 
by  deciding  that  Russia  would  be  mo- 
mentous in  it.  The  Adamses  were  clear: 
Russia  and  the  United  States  were  eccen- 
tric motions  and  would  produce  chaos. 
Gilpin  was  just  as  clear:  between  them 
Russia  and  the  United  States  would  reduce 
world  chaos  to  world  order. 

Come  back  to  him  on  March  2,  1846, 
addressing  the  Senate  Committee  on  Post 
Offices  and  Post  Roads: 

The  untransacted  destiny  of  the  American 
people  is  to  subdue  the  continent — to  rush  over 
this  vast  field  to  the  Pacific  Ocean — to  animate 
the  many  hundred  millions  of  its  people  and  to 
cheer  them  upward — to  set  the  principles  of  self- 
government  at  work — to  agitate  these  herculean 
masses — to  establish  a  new  order  in  human 
aff'airs — to  set  free  the  enslaved — to  regenerate 
superannuated  nations — to  change  darkness  into 
light — to  stir  up  the  sleep  of  a  hundred  centuries 
...  to  emblazon  history  with  the  conquest  of 
peace.  ;  .  . 

And  so  on.  How  rhetorical,  how 
bumptious,  how  offensive!  The  eagle  is 
screaming  with  the  naive  arrogance  that 
long  made  us  a  derision  in  the  eyes  of  more 
sophisticated  peoples.  Doubtless  all  that 
is  true — so  one  is  diffident  about  pointing 
out  that  the  American  people  proceeded 
straightway  to  accomplish  a  large  part  of 
what  Gilpin  was  urging  on  them,  some  of 
it  within  six  months.  Ninety-eight  years 
later,  moreover,  he  might  find  backers  for 
his  notion  that  the  United  States  and 
Russia  were  to  reorient  the  world  and 
shape  the  future  from  their  respective 
shores  of  the  Pacific.  A  few  might  even 
join  him  in  believing  that  they  were  in  a 
position  to  emblazon  history  with  the 
conquest  of  peace.  At  least  the  rhetoric 
serves  to  remind  us  of  a  time  when  the 
American  people  neither  lacked  confi- 
dence in  themselves  nor  dreaded  what 
might  lie  ahead  of  them. 


THE   KIND   OF    FREEDOM   WE   NEED 

A  Letter  from  a  Soldier  Overseas 


JOHN    B.     VORIS 

Techmciariy  Fifth  Grade 


Many  months  after  we  had  published,  in  our  August  issue,  ''Why  Not  Try  Freedom?^''  by 
President  Henry  M.  Wriston  of  Brown  University,  we  received  a  fifty -three-page  letter  replying 
to  it.  This  letter  was  far  too  long — and  too  hurriedly  written — to  publish  in  full.  But  we 
were  so  much  impressed  by  the  fact  that  a  soldier  on  active  duty,  coming  upon  Mr.  Wriston^s" 
article  in  an  old  issue  of  Harper's  somewhere  overseas,  had  felt  impelled  to  sit  down  and  take  it' 
to  pieces,  paragraph  by  paragraph,  writing  on  scratch  paper  {both  sides)  as  he  attacked  what  he 
called  its  ''platitudes,''  "half-truths,''  and  "fallacies,"  and  also  by  the  fact  that  even  under  these 
circumstances  he  had  been  able  to  do  original  and  constructive  thinking  on  the  problem  of  freedom 
in  a  world  in  which  big  business  flourishes,  that  we  resolved  to  print  the  letter  in  condensed  form. 
Our  own  summaries  of  his  text  appear  in  italics. — The  Editors 


MR.  VoRTS  begins  by  setting  up  his  target, 
summarizing  what  seem  to  him  the 
^main  points  of  Mr.  Wriston' s  argu- 
ment: 

The  program  which  Mr.  Wriston  ad- 
vocates boils  down  to  this:  make  the 
common  sense  and  common  honesty  of 
the  common  man  our  common  rehance; 
estabUsh  democratic  processes  as  the 
guide  to  action;  repudiate  administrative 
management;  insist  on  government  by 
the  people;  accept  boldly  the  dangerous 
doctrine  of  freedom,  repelling  every  sug- 
gestion that  safety  is  more  important; 
open  the  avenues  of  opportunity  for  youth; 
banish  privilege;  multiply  production,  do 
not  divide  it. 

Bureaucracy,  Mr.  Wriston  says,  is  in- 
trinsically reactionary.  It  is  reactionary, 
he  maintains,  to  return  the  citizen  living 
in  self-discipline,  freedom,  and  free  insti- 


tutions to  the  authority  of  experts  at  a  dis-' 
tance,  even  if  it  is  done  in  the  name  of 
freedom  from  want.  Call  on  the  common 
man  to  meet  the  hazards  of  freedom  man- 
fully, to  suffer  without  complaint  in  the 
interests  of  liberty.  The  best  form  of 
efficiency  is  the  spontaneous  co-operation 
of  a  free  people. 

All  of  this,  stated  in  these  general  terms, ' 
is,   in  a  way,   above  attack.     It  is  only 
when   we   examine   our   difficulties   with 
more  regard  for  their  very  real  origins  and 
causes  that  we  lose  confidence  in  Mr.  Wris- ' 
ton's  simple  cure. 

THEN  Mr.  Voris  begins  to  shoot  at  the  target. 
First  he  attacks  the  idea  of  '^making  the 
common  sense  of  the  common  man  our  guide." 
It  sounds  well,  he  says,  but  how  practical  is  it? 
The  common  sense  of  the  common  man  cannot 
solve  unaided  such  problems  as  those  of  unem- 


THE    KIND    OF    FREEDOM    WE    NEED 


325 


ployment,  inflation,  world  trade  restrictions.  At 
best,  says  Mr.  Voris,  the  common  man  checks 
and  chooses  those  who,  whatever  their  faults, 
must  exercise  this  initiative  for  him. 

Next,  Mr.  Voris  attacks  the  idea  that  the 
democratic  process  can  always  be  a  guide  to 
action  under  modern  conditions.  How?  he  asks. 
Should  a  town  meeting  decide  on  Federal  public 
works?  Should  workers  or  customers  elect  the 
factory  manager  and  formulate  his  policies? 
Should  a  national  referendum  decide  on  the 
proper  tariff  levels?  Surely,  he  says,  our  only 
hope  is  that  the  people  can  choose  between  those 
leaders  whose  views  are  sound  on  such  complex 
and  technical  issues,  and  those  who  cannot  be 
trusted.  The  more  expert  and  articulate  mem- 
bers of  society  will  continue  to  argue  these  things 
out  and  the  common  man  will  say  yea  or  nay. 

Coming  to  Mr.  Wriston's  proposal  that  we 
should  repudiate  administrative  management  and 
bureaucracy,  and  that,  accepting  the  dangerous 
doctrine  of  freedom,  the  common  man  should  be 
ready  to  suffer  manfully  in  the  interest  of  free- 
dom, Mr.  Voris  warms  to  his  counter-argument: 

Here  is  the  real  core  of  Mr.  Wriston's 
program.  Now  let  us  get  down  to  brass 
tacks.  Just  which  of  these  would  he  do 
away  with:  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission,  government  control  of  food 
and  drug  labeling,  government  super- 
vision of  banking,  government  inter- 
vention in  labor  affairs,  the  TVA,  social 
security,  government  control  of  monopo- 
lies and  utilities?  The  common  man, 
Mr.  Wriston  seems  to  think,  should  be 
willing  to  suffer  that  these  reactionary  and 
freedom-destroying  measures  should  pass 
away. 

But  just  how  much  real  freedom  would 
the  abolition  of  these  things  give  us? 
Freedom  for  us  means  freedom  of  jobs; 
the  freedom  of  action  that  comes  auto- 
matically in  this  country  with  better  in- 
come, automobiles,  better  food,  better 
health,  a  house  with  a  lawn;  freedom  from 
being  pushed  around  by  the  masters  of 
business  in  an  economy  where  jobs  may 
be  scarce.  Freedom  of  speech  and  as- 
sembly, the  right  to  strike,  the  right  to 
vote,  equality  before  the  law — these  are 
the  all-essential  means  of  winning  the  real 
freedom  of  action  we  all  want.  In  gen- 
eral, how  much  have  the  agencies  I  have 
mentioned  circumscribed  real  freedom, 
how  much  have  they  extended  it?     On 


the  result  of  the  judgment  of  the  common 
man  on  this  point  must  Mr.  Wriston 
depend  for  the  common  man's  support. 

I  don't  think  that  even  he  could  main- 
tain that  those  hated  agencies  have,  so 
far  at  least,  run  counter  to  the  hopes  of  the 
common  man.  They  were  created,  usu- 
ally with  public  approval,  specifically  to 
obtain  a  kind  of  freedom  that  the  govern- 
ment could  find  no  less  objectionable 
method  of  obtaining.  The  hand  of  the 
government,  and  of  large  sections  of  the 
public,  was  forced  by  a  necessity  they  were 
not  able  to  resist  in  the  past  and  will  not  be 
able  to  resist  in  the  future. 

Mr.  Wriston's  protests  are  unavailing 
as  long  as  they  do  not  give  a  formula  for 
escaping  these  pressing  situations.  Is  a 
simple  abolition  of  government-in-busi- 
ness a  solution?  Is  this  the  cause  of  our 
troubles?  Did  it  make  low  wages,  unem- 
ployment, overproduction,  or  undercon- 
sumption? Did  it  create  labor  unions 
and  the  conflict  between  labor  and  capi- 
tal? All  these  a  free  economy  developed 
for  itself.  Government  was  a  late  arrival, 
called  in  as  a  last  resort  to  make  all  too 
often  a  bungling  effort  at  helping.  Actu- 
ally, if  the  time  comes  when  the  poverty 
and  insecurity  that  we  are  asked  to  bear 
in  the  interest  of  freedom  form  the  princi- 
pal context  of  our  lives,  even  our  political 
freedom  will  be  irretrievably  lost. 

As  Mr.  Wriston  says,  bureaucracy  is  the 
enemy  of  democracy,  for  authority  is  too 
far  removed  from  the  people  to  be  con- 
trolled by  them  and  the  people's  interest 
and  skill  in  politics  deteriorates.  But  also, 
large  enterprise  of  any  sort  poses  some 
very  difficult  questions  for  democracy. 
Monopolies  in  land  and  resources  are  also 
its  enemies.  The  co-ordination  and  con- 
trol of  large  enterprise — whether  in  manu- 
facturing, merchandising,  or  farming — 
call  for  the  concentration  of  power  in  a 
few  hands.  Monopolies  of  resources  do 
the  same  thing.  And  how  will  I  stand 
equal  before  you  at  law,  in  politics,  or  in 
self-respect,  if  with  a  wave  of  your  hand 
you  can  condemn  me  to  poverty  or  give 
me  fortune? 

In  a  community  where  most  businesses  are 
small  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  achieve  economic 
and  political  independence,  Mr.  Voris  continues. 
The   middle-class  democracy   of  America   has 


326 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


depended  in  the  past  on  ^'an  enlightened  and 
self-confident  middle  class  of  substantial  size, 
made  up  of  shopkeepers,  independent  farmers, 
professional  menP  But  as  political  power  falls 
away  from  this  class — d§ factory  laborers,  farm 
laborers,  and  white-coVar  ^Habof^  of  all  sorts 
become  the  predominant  class  both  in  numbers 
and  (more  gradually)  in  political  power,  and 
the  heads  of  big  business  and  the  officials  of  a 
vast  governmental  system  are  likewise  grasping 
disproportionate  political  power — how  can  our 
freedom  be  maintained? 

It  is  folly,  says  Mr.  Voris,  to  expect  to  do  it 
by  returning  to  small  enterprise.  Big  enter- 
prise is  here  to  stay.  Not  only  is  it  more  effi- 
cient, but  a  nation  of  small  enterprise  would  be 
helpless  militarily  before  better  organized  ene- 
mies and  we  would  lose  even  our  national  inde- 
pendence. No,  says  Mr.  Voris,  our  effiort  to 
maintain  free  institutions  ''must  be  made  within 
the  context  of  modern  industry  and  business. ^^ 
How? 

II 

T.HEN  Mr.  Voris  begins  to  break  new 
ground: 

There  are  certain  conditions  that  must 
be  achieved  if  we  are  to  protect  both  our 
freedom  and  our  progress.  The  common 
man,  on  whose  integrity  everything  de- 
pends, must  have  independence  under  law 
in  his  job.  He  must  be  able  to  speak  his 
mind  in  front  of  his  employer,  to  under- 
take legal  defense  of  his  substantial  rights 
in  his  job,  and  his  employer  must  be 
powerless  to  curb  him.  There  is  no  free 
land  today,  so  his  job — the  basic  economic 
asset  he  possesses — must  be,  like  the  an- 
cient Englishman's  house,  his  unassailable 
castle.  His  job  must  be  established  as  his 
inalienable  property,  so  long  as  he  pro- 
duces efficiently,  regardless  of  the  indi- 
vidual likes  and  dislikes  of  his  employer 
and  fellow  employees.  But  for  ineffi- 
ciency the  employer  must  have  power  to 
punish  him  or  to  curtail  his  income. 

The  civil  service  system  achieves  half 
of  this:  the  employee  is  secure  in  his  job; 
he  often  openly  votes  against  his  govern- 
ment. But  the  government  has  no  effec- 
tive way  of  enforcing  efficiency.  Conse- 
quently government  service  is  often  char- 
acterized by  laziness  and  inefficiency. 

One  means  of  achieving  this  kind  of 
worker  independence  might  be  the  crea- 


tion of  joint  boards,  open  to  employer  and 
employee,  operating  under  strict  imper- 
sonal rules  and  subject  to  review  by  courts 
too  high  to  be  prejudiced. 

The  worker  must  come  more  and  more 
to  identify  himself  with  his  job,  to  feel  that 
the  prosperity  of  the  business  is  his  as  long 
as  he  chooses  to  claim  his  rights  in  it. 
His  objection  to  piece  work  (based  on 
failure  to  trust  his  employer,  failure  of  his 
increased  efficiency  to  improve  his  ulti- 
mate position)  must  be  overcome.  And 
his  piece-work  rates,  once  fairly  estab- 
lished, must  not  be  arbitrarily  questioned 
by  his  employer,  no  matter  how  profitable 
a  thing  the  worker  makes  of  it.  This  idea 
is  essential.  The  unassailable  property 
right  that  a  man  holds  in  his  job — under 
conditions  in  which  energy  and  ability 
bring  their  reward  and  no  other  man  is 
able  to  interfere — must  be  the  keystone  of 
the  new  freedom,  just  as  the  unassailable 
property  rights  of  the  independent  farmer 
in  his  land,  or  merchant  or  professional 
man  in  his  business,  with  which  no  other 
person  or  official  could  interfere,  were  the 
keystone  of  everything  that  made  the  old 
freedom  possible. 

As  farming  becomes  bigger  business, 
some  form  of  co-operative  farming  may  be 
indicated.  Profit-sharing  projects  are  to 
be  welcomed.  Management-sharing  proj- 
ects are  also  desirable  if  they  meet  the 
proper  standards  of  efficiency.  But  I 
am  not  an  industrial  democrat.  The 
manager's  rights  must  be  circumscribed 
sharply,  but  his  rights,  responsibilities,  and 
authority  within  these  limits  should  be 
absolute  and  inalienable  in  businesses  re- 
quiring central  and  expert  management. 
His  right  to  extra  reward  for  extra  achieve- 
ment should  be  unquestioned.  No  as- 
sembly of  ordinary  people  can  efficiently 
manage  a  business;  power  must  be  dele- 
gated under  law  stringent  enough  to  nur- 
ture responsible  independence. 

Of  course  the  positions  of  management 
must  be  open  to  those  best  qualified  to 
fill  them.  Suitable  education  must  be 
generally  available.  Authority  should 
belong  to  those  who  are  able  skillfully  to 
combine  capital  and  labor  and  to  dis- 
charge adequately  their  legal  obligations 
to  both.  Those  managers  who  fail  should 
be  removed.     Inherited  wealth,  the  key 


THE    KIND    OF    FREEDOM    WE    NEED 


327 


to  inherited  privilege,  should  he  limited 
till  it  is  powerless  to  protect  its  holders 
from  the  practical  necessity  of  supporting 
themselves,  if  they  are  of  normal  ability. 
The  right  to  establish  and  control  a  new 
enterprise  should  belong  to  anyone  able 
to  command  the  confidence  of  holders  of 
needed  capital  and  to  discharge  his  legal 
responsibilities  to  capital  and  labor.  In 
case  of  failure  it  should  be  no  defense  that 
the  manager  is  still  in  control  of  capital. 
A  new  manager,  selected  by  methods 
defined  by  law,  should  assume  the  found- 
er's authority  and  right  to  financial  re- 
ward. Needed  public  enterprises,  run  on 
public  capital,  should  be  similarly  man- 
aged, the  standards  of  good  management 
being  carefully  determined  by  disinter- 
ested authority,  and  compliance  therewith 
and  rewards  for  successfully  maintaining 
them  being  determined  by  disinterested  in- 
spection and  being  reviewable  at  court. 


Ill 

THIS  is  a  new  sort  of  ideology  as  against 
the  old  idea  that  a  man's  business  was 
his  property  to  do  with  as  he  pleased,  and 
the  only  independence  that  labor  needed 
was  the  right  to  withhold  labor.  The  old 
idea  lost  its  usefulness  with  the  passing  of 
free  land,  and  will  constitute  little  more 
than  slavery  until  we  can  somehow  or 
other  establish  an  ever-hungry  labor 
market.  The  alternative  to  a  balance  of 
power  between  management,  labor,  and 
the  public  is  dictatorship  by  management. 
Dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  is  an  illu- 
sion: the  dictatorship  becomes  the  man- 
agement and  dictates  in  its  own  interest. 

It  is  a  healthy  thing  that  the  little  man 
should  be  suspicious  of,  and  jealously 
limit,  the  man  of  great  authority.  In 
great  power  there  is  an  inherent  tendency 
to  corrupt.  On  the  other  hand,  w^hen 
the  individuals  of  the  managing  class,  like 
the  professional  men  of  today,  see  their 
rights  limited  but  find  that  their  authority 
within  those  limits  is  safe  and  that  they 
are  able  to  improve  their  situation  by 
efTort  and  efficiency,  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  they  will  fall  in  with  the  new 
scheme  of  things. 

The  agencies  needed  to  give  our  meas- 
ures effect  would  be  by  nature  semijudicial 


rather  than  administrative  and  would 
not  be  so  subject  to  the  charges  of  bu- 
reaucracy as  are  our  present  mushroom- 
ing emergency  agencies.  There  would  be 
a  sizable  industrial-control  establishment, 
but  it  would  not  be  of  a  business-running 
sort  in  competition  with  the  prevailing  kind 
of  business.  Under  law,  men  would  work 
out  production  problems  under  the  stimu- 
lus of  income-making  motives.  Govern- 
ment control  would  be  by  the  legislative, 
rather  than  the  administrative,  branch. 

Of  course  the  working  of  such  a  system 
would  require  continuing  effort  to  perfect 
proper  and  suitable  methods.  Demo- 
cratic political  organization,  freedom  of  the 
press,  conservation  of  national  resources, 
monopoly  in  land  and  other  limited 
sources  of  wealth — these  would  remain  as 
problems  yet  to  be  dealt  with.  But  the 
fact  that  we  had  a  system  that  worked 
would  make  such  problems  much  easier  of 
solution.  And  if  it  were  made  compul- 
sory to  spend  all  uninvested  portions  of 
one's  income,  the  business  policy  of  pro- 
ducing a  large  volume  to  sell  at  low  prices 
would  be  automatically  stimulated.  There 
would  be  an  altogether  encouraging  en- 
vironment for  new  enterprise. 

I  HAVE  come  a  long  way  in  pursuit  of 
Mr.  Wriston,  a  seemingly  endless  way. 
I  have  suggested  many  remedies  that 
occurred  to  me  for  problems  he  has  rec- 
ognized, but  do  not  pretend  to  have  said 
the  last  word.  It  may  be  that  Mr.  Wris- 
ton has  answered  many  of  my  objections 
in  his  book,  but  I  think  not.  I  think  that, 
reacting  emotionally  to  our  so  far  unsuc- 
cessful attempts  at  reform,  he  has  stolen  the 
vocabulary  of  liberalism,  while  his  policy 
would  lead  unintentionally  to  reaction.  He 
has  wished  away  and  ignored  our  new  prob- 
lems, has  assumed  with  shocking  naivete 
that  they  would  yield  to  old  solutions. 
His  disregard  of  our  new  difficulties,  his 
apparent  utter  unconcern  for  the  ''how" 
of  implementing  his  designs,  his  reliance 
on  inspirational  phrases,  noble  in  their 
import  but  not  intended  to  be  taken  as 
the  guide  to  the  more  mundane  secrets  of 
social  and  economic  mechanics — all  this 
in  my  opinion  makes  his  counsel  about  as 
useful  as  the  Kellogg  Peace  Pact  and 
about  as  safe. 


SAN    FRANCISCO    LOOKS    WEST 

The  City  in  Wartime 


JOHN    DOS    PASSOS 


I^   The  West  Faces  East 

rWAS  the  foggy  end  of  a  drizzly  day; 
Along  the  lunch  counter  of  the  Ferry 
Dock  Tavern  gray-haired  men  in  over- 
alls and  leather  jackets  were  eating  oyster 
stew.  A  set  of  hamburgers  sizzling  on 
the  electric  plate  sent  little  wisps  of  the 
smell  of  scorched  beef  up  through  the  cig- 
arette smoke.  From  outside,  through  the 
loosely  slapped  together  boards  of  the 
frame  building,  came  the  hoots  and  howls 
of  steamboat  whistles.  Through  every 
crevice  the  fog  seeped  into  the  tavern, 
bringing  with  it  a  tang  of  rotting  ever- 
greens and  giving  faint  ruddy  halos  to 
the  bare  electric  light  bulbs.  Against  the 
window-panes  and  the  glass  of  the  door 
the  white  fog  pressed  snugly  as  flannel. 

Across  from  the  lunch  counter  every 
stool  along  the  bar  was  taken.  Behind 
the  seated  drinkers  stood  a  row  of  men 
waiting  for  places.  A  skinny  yellow- 
haired  waitress  with  buck  teeth  moved 
back  and  forth  with  trays  of  beer  between 
the  end  of  the  bar  and  the  booths  of  yellow- 
varnished  fir  at  the  back  of  the  room. 
Now  and  then  the  barkeep,  a  weazened 
grizzled  man  with  a  slabsided  look  as  if 
sometime  in  his  life  he  had  been  passed 
through  a  rolling  mill,  made  a  hoarse 
exasperated  noise  like  a  seal's  bark  to  get 
the  thronging  customers  who  were  waiting 


to  quench  their  thirst  at  the  bar  to  make 
way  for  the  girl  and  her  tray  of  empties. 

In  front  of  me  a  stocky  black-jowled 
man  in  a  tightly  buttoned  pea  jacket  was 
addressing  a  very  young  blank-faced  sailor 
who  sat  on  the  next  stool  with  his  blue 
pancake  cap  pushed  far  down  on  his  fore- 
head. 

"You  are  the  most  hated  nation  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,"  he  was  shouting  in  the 
sailor's  ear.  The  sailor  gave  a  gulp  and 
looked  down  glumly  into  his  glass.  The 
black-jowled  man  raised  his  beer  thought- 
fully against  the  light  and  drank  it  down 
and  wiped  his  mouth  with  the  hairy  back 
of  a  hand  that  had  the  points  of  the  com- 
pass tattooed  on  it  in  red,  green,  and 
blue,  and  made  the  assertion  again, 
louder:  "You  are  the  most  hated  nation 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  and  don't  you  for- 
get it." 

"I  only  said  mebbe  it  ud  be  a  short 
war,"  mumbled  the  very  young  sailor. 

"Short  war  hell!"  shouted  the  black- 
jowled  man,  scowling  under  the  visor  of 
his  sea-going  cap  that  had  weathered  a 
streaky  green.  "It's  goin'  to  be  all  war 
from  now  on.  You  got  to  fight  your  way 
to  the  top  yet.  :  ;  .  Another  beer,  Joe," 
he  added  in  a  hoarse  pleading  aside  in  the 
direction  of  the  barkeep,  who  was  staring 
at  him  with  a  sour  look  on  his  flattened 
countenance.     The    barkeep    answered 


SAN    I'RANCISCO    LOOKS    WEST 


329 


with  one  of  his  barking  yawps  and  started 
to  draw  the  beer.  "And  you're  asking 
me,"  the  bkick-jowled  man  went  on, 
looking  up  and  down  the  row  of  weather- 
worn faces  turned  bhuikly,  most  of  them, 
toward  the  dusty  cock-pheasant  that  stood 
guard  over  lh(^  wine  bottles  above  the  bar- 
ivccp's  head,  "you  are  asking  me  why 
you  arc  the  most  hated  nation.  I'll  tell 
you;  it's  because  you  got  the  most  to  eat, 
and  the  most  to  drink,  and  the  most  to 
wear.  You  can  sit  down  with  the  war  on 
and  eat  a  turkey  dinner  if  you  want  one. 
You  can  sit  down  and  drink  a  glass  of 
beer." 

"Like  hell  I  can,"  muttered  one  of  the 
men  waiting  for  a  seat  at  the  bar. 

"You  can  make  yourself  sick  on  wine  or 
get  yourself  a  snootful  of  whiskey.  Maybe 
you  can't  get  a  steak  whenever  you  want  it, 
but  you  can  fill  yourself  right  up  to  the 
neck  with  good  hot  beef  stew.  And  all 
those  colored  peoples  all  over  the  mighty 
oceans,  they  ain't  got  a  goddam  thing. 
The  little  yellow  Japs,  they  fight  on  a 
handful  of  rice.  In  India  they  are  fallin' 
down  dead  in  the  streets  from  hunger. 
The  Russians  live  on  a  potato  a  week. 
The  limeys  ain't  none  too  fat.  Every  port 
you  make  across  the  mighty  oceans  they  are 
hungry  and  wretched  and  they  see  your 
cooks  throwin'  pork  chops  over  the  side. 
.  .  .  That's  why  you  are  the  most  hated 
nation.  .  .  .  You  got  to  fight  your  way 
to  the  top,  boy." 

An  old  bleary  wino  in  a  checked  suit 
who  was  slumped  over  a  glass  of  port  wine 
with  a  beer  chaser  at  the  next  stool  raised 
his  eyes  and  stared  thoughtfully  at  the 
black-jowled  man  and  gave  a  long  shud- 
dering belch  that  made  all  the  flabby 
creases  on  his  neck  quiver.  ''This  beer," 
he  whispered  peevishly,  "makes  a  man 
sick." 

The  very  young  sailor's  face  was  queasy 
pale.  With  a  shaky  hand  he  shoved  his 
cap  down  hard  onto  his  forehead  so  that 
the  band  pressed  the  damp  hair  down  in 
yellow  spikes  over  his  eyebrows.  He 
straightened  himself  up  and  drank  his 
beer  down  at  a  gulp.  His  face  puckered 
up  as  if  it  had  been  castor  oil  he  had  been 
drinking.  "That's  all  right,  pardner,"  he 
said  briskly.  "We'll  take  'em  island  by 
island." 


"Sure  you  will,"  said  the  black-jowled 
man.  "And  you  and  me'U  be  crow's 
meat  before  it's  over.  We  got  to  cross  the 
mighty  oceans  and  hit  'em  in  the  solar 
plexus  .  .  .  but  there  in  the  fog  across 
the  mighty  oceans,  they  are  waiting  to  get 
you.   .   .   .  Joe,  another  beer." 

For  the  first  time  the  barkeep  showed  his 
yellow  teeth  in  a  smile.  He  had  taken  a 
cardboard  sign  out  from  under  the  bar. 
Holding  it  in  both  hands  he  reached  his 
skinny  arms  up  to  place  it  on  the  shelf  in 
front  of  the  pheasant.  He  stood  looking 
up  at  it  with  admiring  approbation  as  if 
he  had  just  finished  lettering  it  himself. 
What  it  read  was  "No  Beer." 

A  gasp  went  along  the  bar.  Already 
the  men  who  hadn't  found  seats  were  filing 
out  of  the  door.  Talk  at  the  tables  and 
along  the  bar  quieted  down.  The  place 
all  at  once  was  as  quiet  as  a  bird  cage  that's 
had  a  cloth  thrown  over  it. 

II.   View  of  the  Pacific 

IF  YOU  happen  to  be  endowed  with  topo- 
graphical curiosity  the  hills  of  San 
Francisco  fill  you  with  an  irresistible  de- 
sire to  walk  to  the  top  of  each  one  of  th^m. 
Whoever  laid  the  town  out  took  the  con- 
ventional checkerboard  pattern  of  streets 
and  without  the  slightest  regard  for  the 
laws  of  gravity  planked  it  down  blind  on 
an  irregular  peninsula  that  was  a  confu- 
sion of  steep  slopes  and  sandhills.  The 
result  is  exhilarating.  Wherever  you  step 
out  on  the  street  there's  a  hilltop  in  one 
direction  or  the  other.  From  the  top  of 
each  hill  you  get  a  view  and  the  sight  of 
more  hills  to  the  right  and  left  and  ahead 
that  ofTer  the  prospect  of  still  broader 
views.  The  process  goes  on  indefinitely. 
You  can't  help  making  your  way  painfully 
to  the  top  of  each  hill  just  to  see  what  you 
can  see.  I  kept  thinking  of  what  an  old 
French  seaman  said  to  me  once,  describ- 
ing with  some  disgust  the  behavior  of 
passengers  on  a  steamboat:  "L^  passager 
c'est  comme  le  perroquet,  qa  grimpe  toujours.^^ 

This  particular  morning  was  a  windy 
morning,  half  sun  and  blue  sky  and  half 
pearly  tatters  of  fog  blowing  in  from  the 
Pacific.  Before  day  it  had  been  raining. 
I  had  started  out  from  a  steamy  little 
lunchroom  where  I  had  eaten  a  magnifi- 


330 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


cent  breakfast  of  eighteen  tiny  wheat  cakes 
flanked  by  broiled  bacon  and  washed 
down  by  fresh-made  coffee.  They  still 
know  how  to  cook  in  old  San  Paco's  town. 
In  my  hand  was  a  list  of  telephone  num- 
bers to  call  and  of  men  to  go  to  see  in  their 
offices.  It  was  nine  o'clock,  just  the  time 
to  get  down  to  work.  Instead  of  turning 
down  in  the  direction  of  offices  and  the 
business  part  of  town,  I  found  I  had 
turned  the  other  way  and  was  resolutely 
walking  up  the  nearest  hill. 

THIS  one  is  Nob  Hill,  I  know  that.  I 
remember  it  years  ago  when  there 
were  still  gardens  on  it  and  big  broken- 
paned  mansions  of  brown  stone,  and  even, 
if  I  remember  right,  a  few  wind-bleached 
frame  houses  with  turrets  and  scalelike 
shingles  imitating  stone  and  scrollsaw 
woodwork  round  the  porches.  Now  it's 
all  hotels  and  apartment  houses,  but  their 
massive  banality  is  made  up  for  by  the 
freakishness  of  the  terrain.  At  the  top, 
in  front  of  the  last  of  the  old  General- 
Grant-style  houses,  I  stop  a  second  to  get 
my  breath  and  to  mop  the  sweat  off  my 
eyebrows. 

Ahead  of  me  the  hill  rises  higher  and 
breaks  into  a  bit  of  blue  sky.  Sun  shines 
on  a  block  of  white  houses  at  the  top. 
Shiny  as  a  toy  fresh  from  a  Christmas  tree, 
a  little  cable  car  is  crawling  up  it.  Back 
of  me  under  an  indigo  blur  of  mist  are 
shadowed  roofs  and  streets  and  tall  build- 
ings with  wisps  of  fog  about  them,  and 
beyond,  fading  off  into  the  foggy  sky, 
stretches  the  long  horizontal  of  the  Bay 
Bridge. 

Better  go  back  now  and  start  about  my 
business.  The  trouble  is  that  down  the 
hill  to  the  right  I've  caught  sight  of  ac- 
cented green  roofs  and  curved  gables 
painted  jade  green  and  vermilion.  That 
must  be  Chinatown.  Of  course  the  thing 
to  do  is  to  take  a  turn  through  China- 
town on  the  way  down  toward  the  busi- 
ness district.  I  find  myself  walking  along 
a  narrow  street  in  a  jungle  of  Chinese  let- 
tering, interpreted  here  and  there  by 
signs  announcing  Chop  Suey,  Noodles, 
Genuine  Chinese  Store.  There  are  ranks 
of  curio  stores,  and  I  find  myself  studying 
windows  full  of  Oriental  goods  with  as 
much  sober  care  as  a  small  boy  studying 


the  window  of  a  candy  store.  The  street 
tempts  you  along.  Beyond  the  curio 
shops  there  are  drug  stores,  groceries  giv- 
ing out  an  old  drenched  smell  like  tea  and 
camphor  and  lychee  nuts,  vegetable  stores, 
shops  of  herb  merchants  that  contain 
very  much  the  same  stock  of  goods  as 
those  Marco  Polo  saw  with  such  wonder  on 
his  travels.  In  another  window  there  are 
modern  posters:  raspberry-and-spinach- 
tinted  plum-cheeked  pin-up  girls  and  stern 
lithographs  of  the  Generalissimo;  a  few 
yellowing  enlargements  of  photographs  of 
eager-looking  young  broad-faced  men  in 
cadets'  uniforms.  The  gilt  lettering 
amuses  the  eye.  The  decorative  scroll- 
work of  dragons  and  lotus  flowers  leads  you 
along.  You  forget  the  time  wondering 
how  to  size  up  the  smooth  Chinese  faces. 
At  the  end  of  the  street  I  discover  that  an 
hour  has  passed  and  that  I  have  been 
walking  the  wrong  way  all  the  time. 

I  come  out  into  a  broad  oblique  avenue 
full  of  streetcars  and  traffic.  Suddenly  the 
Chop  Suey  signs  are  gone  and  now  every- 
thing is  Spaghetti,  Pizze,  Ravioli,  Bella 
Napoli,  Grotta  Azzura,  blooming  in 
painted  signs  along  the  housefronts. 
There  are  Italian  bakeries  and  pastry 
shops  breathing  out  almond  paste  and 
anise.  In  small  bars  men  sit  talking 
noisily  as  they  drink  black  coffee  out  of 
glasses.  Restaurants  smell  of  olive  oil 
and  spilled  wine.  I  cross  the  street  and 
at  the  top  of  another  hill  catch  a  glimpse 
of  a  white  tower  shaped  like  a  lighthouse. 
That  must  be  Signal  Hill. 

As  I  walk  up  through  a  shabby  light- 
gray  cheerful  quarter  where  all  the  door- 
bells have  Italian  and  Spanish  names,  and 
where  the  air  out  of  doorways  smells  of 
garlic  and  floor  polish  and  there  begin  to 
be  pots  of  geraniums  on  the  tops  of  scaly 
walls  that  conceal  small  gardens,  or  car- 
nations now  and  then  on  a  window  sill, 
it  suddenly  feels  like  the  quiet  streets 
back  of  Montmartre  or,  so  many  years 
ago,  Marseilles.  I  reach  the  top  of  Sig- 
nal Hill  just  in  time  to  take  refuge  in  the 
tower  from  a  spat  of  driving  rain. 

From  the  tower  I  look  down  into  a  swirl 
of  mist,  shot  with  lights  and  shadows  like 
the  inside  of  a  shell,  that  pours  in  from  the 
ocean.  Now  and  then  the  hurrying  mist 
tears    apart  long  enough   to  let   me  see 


SAN    FRANCISCO    LOOKS    WEST 


331 


wharves  crowded  with  masts  and  derricks 
or  an  expanse  of  bright  rufTlcd  water — and 
once,  rank  on  rank  of  sullen-looking  gray 
freighters  at  anchor.  Two  young  men  in 
khaki  arc  standing  beside  mc,  squinting  to 
see  through  the  rain-spattered  glass. 

*'Boy,  it  won't  be  long  now,"  says  one. 

"You  mean  before  we  are  stuck  down 
in  the  hold  of  one  of  those  things." 

"You  said  it."  They  notice  that  I  am 
listening.  They  exchange  reproachful 
looks  and  their  mouths  shut  up  tight  and 
they  move  away. 

When  I  leave  the  tower  the  sun  is  be- 
ginning to  burn  through  dazzling  white- 
ness. There  is  blue  in  the  puddles  on  the 
paved  parking  place  on  top  of  the  hill. 
It  has  become  clear  that  this  isn't  any  day 
to  call  up  telephone  numbers  or  to  pester 
people  in  their  offices.  It  is  a  day  to 
walk  round  the  town.  And  the  first 
thing  to  do  is  to  get  a  look  out  through  the 
Golden  Gate. 

I  PLUNGED  down  the  hill  in  the  direction 
of  the  harbor,  lost  my  bearings  in  a 
warehouse  section,  found  myself  beside  a 
little  stagnant  inner  harbor  packed  with 
small  motor  fishing  boats  painted  up 
Italian  style;  and  then  took  a  freshly 
painted  cable  car  to  the  top  of  another 
hill.  I  got  off  and  set  out  along  a  street 
of  frame  houses  that  seemed  to  be  leading 
me  in  the  direction  of  the  ocean.  The 
houses  were  all  alike,  painted  cream  color, 
with  jutting  bay  windows  and  odd  little 
columns  on  each  side  of  the  front  door. 
I  walked  on  and  on  through  the  pleasant 
mild  sunlight,  expecting  to  see  the  ocean 
from  the  top  of  each  rise. 

Eventually  the  sight  of  a  hill  steeper 
than  the  rest,  topped  with  green  shrubbery 
and  tall  gray  pillars  of  blooming  eucalyp- 
tus trees,  made  me  change  my  course. 
From  up  there  you  must  be  able  to  see  the 
ocean  and  the  Golden  Gate  and  every- 
thing. I  got  up  to  the  top,  puffing  after  a 
stiff  climb.  The  hilltop  was  a  park.  All 
the  city  and  the  Bay  clear  to  Oakland  and 
the  bridges  and  the  hills  opened  out  in 
every  direction  at  my  feet.  But  not  the 
Golden  Gate,  though  I  could  see  the  high 
straw-colored  hills  beyond.  And  toward 
the  ocean  there  was  only  a  bright  haze. 

An    old    Mexican    was    raking    fallen 


eucalyptus  leaves  and  scalcd-off  bark  into 
a  bonfire  that  trailed  stinging  sharp  tonic- 
flavored  smoke  across  the  path.  At  the 
very  summit  of  the  path,  cut  off  from  the 
wind  by  a  hedge  of  shiny-leaved  privet, 
four  whiskered  old  men  were  seated  round 
a  green  board  table  playing  cribbage.  It 
was  quiet  and  sunny  up  there.  The  bil- 
lowing blue  smoke  cut  them  off  from  the 
city.  There  is  something  very  special 
about  the  smell  of  burning  eucalyptus 
leaves.  In  the  light  fragrant  air  of  the 
late  morning  the  old  men  sat  in  relaxed 
attitudes  of  passionless  calm.  They  held 
their  cards  with  the  detachment  of  gods 
on  Olympus.  They  weren't  smoking. 
They  weren't  talking.  No  one  was  in  any 
hurry  to  get  along  with  the  game.  Their 
pleasure  wasn't  in  the  sun  or  the  air  or  the 
immense  view.  Maybe  it  was  just  in  be- 
ing alive,  in  the  gentle  ambrosial  coursing 
of  the  blood  through  their  veins,  in  the 
faint  pumping  of  the  heart.  That  may 
have  been  what  the  Greeks  meant  when 
they  wrote  about  the  shadowless  painless 
pleasures  of  the  spirits  in  the  Elysian 
Fields. 

I  had  stopped  in  my  tracks  to  look  at 
the  four  old  men,  and  they  all  four  looked 
up  at  me  and  craned  their  necks  at  the 
same  moment.  They  showed  such  startled 
surprise  at  seeing  me  standing  in  the  path 
that  I  might  have  been  a  spook  from  an- 
other world.  Maybe  I  was.  I  hurried 
off  down  into  the  city  again. 

Eventually  I  had  to  ask  my  way  to  the 
ocean.  Somebody  said  I  ought  to  take  a 
car  to  the  Cliff  House.  Somewhere  in  the 
back  of  my  memory  there  was  connected 
with  that  name  a  park  on  a  cliff,  full  of 
funny  beer-garden  statuary  under  pines — 
and  the  disappointment  as  a  child  of  not 
being  able  to  spot  a  sea  lion  among  the 
spuming  rocks  off  the  headland.  The 
streetcar,  a  full-sized  normal  streetcar, 
rattled  along  through  a  suburban  section 
of  low  stucco  houses  and  across  wide 
boulevards  planted  with  palms,  described 
an  S  through  pines  down  a  steep  slope,  and 
finally  came  to  rest  in  a  decrepit  barn  be- 
side a  lunch  counter.  I  stepped  out  onto 
a  road  that  curved  down  the  steep  slope  to 
the  old  square  white  restaurant,  and  far- 
ther round  the  headland  to  the  broad  gray 
beach,  where  slow  rollers  very  far  apart 


332 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


broke  and  growled  and  slithered  inland  in 
a  swirl  of  gray  water  and  were  sucked  back 
in  spume. 

I  went  out  and  leaned  over  the  parapet 
of  the  observation  platform.  The  blue- 
gray  Pacific  was  clear  far  out  to  where  a 
fog  bank  smudged  the  horizon.  Coming 
round  from  the  Golden  Gate — which  I 
still  couldn't  catch  sight  of — a  gray  patrol 
boat  showed  white  teeth  as  it  chewed  its 
way  seaward  into  the  long  swells.  Still  no 
black  heads  of  sea  lions  bobbing  around 
Seal  Rocks.  ...  A  few  gulls  circled 
screaming  over  the  platform. 

Beside  me  three  very  black  G.I.'s  stood 
in  a  huddle  staring  out  at  the  ocean. 
Farther  along  two  sailors  had  their  backs 
turned  to  the  view  and  were  watching 
with  envious  looks  a  boy  and  girl  in  sweat- 
ers and  slacks  who  looked  like  high- 
school  kids,  and  were  giggling  and  horsing 
and  pushing  each  other  around.  A  ser- 
geant of  Marines,  very  snappy  in  his 
greens,  strutted  out  of  the  building  that 
houses  the  slot  machines;  a  girl  with  a  blue 
handkerchief  tied  round  her  yellow  head 
was  holding  onto  his  arm  with  both 
hands.  For  a  couple  of  minutes  the  two 
of  them  stared  hard  out  to  sea  as  if  their 
eyes  could  pierce  the  fog  bank.  Then 
they  hurried  back  indoors  to  the  slot 
machines. 

Leaning  on  the  parapet  over  the  hushed 
and  heaving  expanse  of  misted  indigo  that 
marks  for  most  Americans  the  beginning 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  I  wondered  what 
these  two  had  been  thinking.  I  suppose 
there's  the  same  question  in  all  our  minds 
when  we  look  westward  over  the  Pacific. 
Beyond  the  immense  bulge  of  the  world, 
is  the  ocean  ours  or  is  it  theirs?  When 
we've  made  it  ours,  what  will  we  want  to 
do  with  it?  The  young  men  in  uniform 
know  they  are  going  to  have  the  answer  to 
that  question  printed  on  their  hides.  No 
wonder  they  keep  their  lips  tight  pressed 
when  they  stare  out  toward  the  western 
horizon. 

IN  THE  restaurant  on  the  level  above,  the 
tables  are  all  full  but  the  eaters  are 
very  quiet.  There  are  many  family 
parties.  Old  people  and  middle-aged 
people  brooding  around  a  young  man  or 
woman  in  uniform. 


At  the  table  next  to  mine  there's  a 
white-haired  man  and  woman  and  a 
stoutish  lady  with  pixie  frames  on  her 
glasses  who's  evidently  a  doting  female 
relative  and  seems  to  be  somewhat  in 
the  way.  They  don't  take  their  eyes  off 
a  first  lieutenant  in  khaki  with  a  close- 
cropped  black  bullet  head  and  ruddy 
cheeks  who  looks  barely  old  enough  to  be 
in  high  school.  The  minute  you  see 
them  you  know  that  the  old  people  have 
come  to  say  good-by.  Maybe  it's  their 
last  meal  together.  They  are  all  trying 
to  be  very  self-possessed.  The  father  is 
always  starting  to  tell  little  jokes  and  neg- 
lecting to  finish  them.  They  keep  for- 
getting where  the  salt  cellar  is  on  the 
table.  The  mother  handles  the  plate  of 
rolls  when  she  passes  it  round  as  if  it  were 
immensely  breakable.  They  fork  the 
food  slowly  into  their  mouths.  None  of 
them  knows  what  he  is  eating.  All  their 
motions  are  very  careful  and  precise  as  if 
they  feared  the  slightest  false  move  would 
break  the  fragile  bonds  that  are  holding 
the  day  together  for  them.  The  slightest 
fumble,  and  these  last  few  hours  will  be 
spilt  and  lost. 

It's  very  different  at  the  table  between 
mine  and  the  window.  There  a  slender 
young  Air  Force  major,  with  dark  curly 
hair  already  thinning  on  either  side  of  a 
high  forehead,  is  taking  out  a  strikingly 
pretty  dark-haired  girl.  She  might  be 
his  sister.  There's  something  slightly 
similar  about  the  way  the  two  of  them 
are  built,  about  the  way  the  nostrils 
are  set  in  their  noses.  Or  she  might 
be  his  girl  or  his  wife  or  just  the  right 
chance  acquaintance.  They  have  had 
cocktails  and  oysters.  The  waiter  is 
bringing  them  a  bottle  in  a  bucket  of  ice. 
They  have  ordered  abalone  steaks.  They 
aren't  saying  much  but  their  eyes  are 
shining  and  they  keep  looking  at  each 
other  and  at  the  wine  glasses  and  at  the 
food  on  their  plates  and  at  the  fog  bank 
creeping  toward  them  across  the  black 
ocean  as  if  they'd  never  seen  anything  in 
the  least  like  these  things  before.  They 
think  they  are  alone  in  the  restaurant. 
It's  not  so  much  that  they  are  smiling  at 
each  other  as  that  smiles  are  bubbling 
up  all  around  them.  Time,  you  can  see, 
stands  still  for  them. 


SAN    FRANCISCO    LOOKS    WES'I 


333 


BETTER  grt  Roing.  I  had  begun  to  feci 
lonely.  The  rest  of  my  lunch  didn't 
have  much  flavor  to  it.  Coming  out  of 
the  restaurant,  the  fog  pressed  clammy 
against  my  face.  I  turned  up  my  coat 
collar  and  went  shuflling  up  the  hill  to- 
ward the  streetcar  line.  My  coat  felt 
suddenly  out  at  the  elbows.  Everything 
about  me  felt  shabby  and  frayed.  Maybe 
it  is  that  there  arc  many  things  a  civilian 
in  wartime  feels  out  of. 

III.   Spout  Toward  the  Orient 

u^^oME  out  here  before  it's  too  dark  to 
\^^  observe  the  military  secrets,"  said 
the  man  I  had  come  to  see,  ushering  me 
right  through  to  the  back  of  his  apartment 
after  he  had  opened  his  front  door  for  me. 
We  looked  down  at  the  dark-blue  harbor 
sheened  with  lights  and  the  grim  shape  of 
Alcatraz  and  the  gossamer  elegance  of  the 
bridge,  and  at  the  high  hills  beyond,  a 
smoldering  burnt-ochre  in  the  last  flare 
of  the  afterglow.     "Gosh,"  I  said. 

"Well,"  he  went  on,  "that's  the  Golden 
Gate.  That's  the  spout  our  supplies  are 
pumped  through  into  the  Pacific.  Even  if 
we  wanted  to  keep  it  secret  we  couldn't. 
As  you  have  probably  noticed,  this  town 
is  built  to  give  everybody  a  grandstand 
view.  That's  why  the  little  Japs  had  to  be 
moved.  .  .  .  The  troopships,  the  trans- 
ports, the  strings  of  freighters  we've  seen  go 
steaming  out  through  that  narrow  tongue 
of  water.  ...  So  narrow  Drake  missed  it 
and  sailed  clear  past.  .  .  ."    - 

"We  used  to  think  of  it  as  the  back  door 
of  the  continent." 

"Maybe  it'll  turn  out  to  be  the  front 
door  .  .  .  the  military  phase  has  hardly 
begun  yet.  .  .  .  Then  after  we  have 
cleaned  up  the  Japanese  what  will  be  next 
on  the  program?" 

The  color  had  faded  out  of  the  sky. 
Everything  was  drowned  in  transparent 
indigo.  Pinpricks  of  light  throbbed  yel- 
low in  the  moist  air.  Right  under  our 
feet  at  the  wharves  where  freighters  were 
being  loaded  and  unloaded  clear  round 
the  clock,  shapes  of  smokestacks,  hoists, 
and  cranes  stood  out  inky  against  the 
white  glare  of  floodlights.  Across  the  Bay 
a  shipyard  glowed  like  a  forest  fire. 

We  turned  away  from  the  window  and 


sat  down  in  the  warm  orange  light  of  the 
room.  My  host's  wife,  who  had  been 
bundling  two  small  squirming  sharp-eyed 
children  off  to  their  suppers,  came  back 
bringing  in  some  drinks. 

"The  Army  and  Navy  have  done  an 
immense  job  in  the  whole  Bay  region. 
The  war's  been  the  salvation  of  this  city. 
That's  the  truth.  A  few  years  ago  we 
were  dragging  along  the  bottom.  No- 
body could  talk  about  anything  but  class 
war.  Now  the  Bay  region  has  been  turned 
into  a  pretty  darned  effective  machine  for 
repairing  ships  and  spouting  supplies  out 
to  the  Antipodes.  The  state  of  mind 
round  here  has  changed  so  much  we 
hardly  know  ourselves.  Five  years  ago 
the  San  Francisco  waterfront  was  a 
strictly  capital-versus-labor  proposition. 
Of  course  it's  always  been  a  labor  town. 
Black  was  black  and  white  was  white. 
The  working-class  leaders  told  their 
boys  the  business  men  were  trying  to 
introduce  fascism.  The  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce boys  thought  Harry  Bridges  was 
hellbent  for  communism.  And  in  a  way 
they  were  both  right." 

"What  changed  things?  Hitler's  jump- 
ing Stalin?" 

"That  wasn't  the  whole  story.  Of 
course  that  changed  the  line  of  talk  of  the 
comrades  .  .  .  but  the  hiring-hall  system 
really  works  now." 

"Maybe  one  of  the  reasons  people  are 
turning  on  the  New  Deal  all  over  the 
country  is  that  so  many  New  Deal  meas- 
ures have  worked." 

"How's  that?" 

"People  forget  how  badly  things  were 
working  before  the  New  Deal  moved  in." 

"Might  be.  .  .  .  The  best  example  of 
the  change  around  here  is  in  the  election 
for  mayor  we  had  last  week.  People  had 
come  to  feel  that  the  present  incumbent, 
an  elderly  florist,  was  hopeless.  I  don't 
suppose  he's  any  worse  now  than  he  has 
been  right  along.  But  everybody  sud- 
denly woke  up  to  the  fact  that  he  was  ab- 
ject, so  we  had  three  other  candidates. 
One  was  an  oldtime  politician  who 
seemed  to  us  to  represent  simply  liquor, 
prostitution,  and  gambling — strictly  gravy 
train.  Another  was  a  young  progressive 
with  what  they  call  a  good  labor  record; 
he  was  endorsed  by  labor.     The  third  was 


334 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


I 


the  man  who  had  been  president  of  the 
American  Hawaiian  Steamship  Com- 
pany, who  was  way  out  front  in  the  em- 
ployers' groups  and  had  bought  tear  gas 
and  brought  in  scabs  to  fight  the  long- 
shoreman's strike.  .  .  .  Halfway  through 
the  campaign  the  CIO  decided  their 
man,  the  young  Galahad  with  a  good 
labor  record,  was  running  behind.  They 
promptly  knifed  him  and  switched  to  the 
old  ward  heeler  with  the  gravy  train  to 
try  to  beat  the  steamship  king.  The  re- 
sult was  that  everybody  got  sore  and  con- 
fused and  the  steamship  magnate  got 
elected,  though  he  spent  less  money  than 
the  other  candidates.  .  .  .  What  I'm  try- 
ing to  bring  out  is  that  he  couldn't  have 
been  elected  without  getting  a  good  slice 
of  the  labor  vote.  ...  Of  course  he's 
changed  too.  He's  been  to  Washington 
on  one  of  the  labor  boards  and  he's  proba- 
bly learned  a  good  deal.  He's  a  man  of 
ability.  I  think  he's  going  to  make  a  very 
excellent  mayor." 

"And  the  ships  are  getting  loaded." 

"We're  not  loading  as  fast  as  the  East 
Coast  but  efficiency  is  improving  all  the 
time.  Labor  did  a  little  too  good  a  job 
convincing  our  longshoremen  that  they 
oughtn't  to  kill  themselves  for  the  boss. 
Now  that  the  comrades  have  gone  into 
reverse  and  are  whooping  it  up  for  the 
war  effort  they  aren't  quite  so  persuasive. 
.  .  .  But  we've  really  made  great  strides. 
The  union  hiring  halls  work  well  under 
government  supervision.  The  railroads 
have  simplified  the  handling  of  freight 
trains  so  that  the  San  Francisco  yards  now 
run  clear  across  into  the  mountain  States. 
The  central  control  boards  take  a  lot  of 
the  load  off  the  dispatchers.  Trains 
aren't  run  out  to  the  wharves  until  the 
boats  are  ready  for  them.  At  the  control 
the  position  of  every  train  is  marked 
with  lights  on  the  board.  Switching  is 
done  automatically,  just  like  toy  trains." 

"Doesn't  that  mean  that  the  men  of 
the  rank  and  file  are  pretty  keen  for  the 
war  effort?" 

"You  better  go  ask  'em." 

His  wife  came  in  to  tell  us  that  dinner 
was  ready.  Before  going  to  the  table  we 
looked  down  again  into  the  inky  gulf  of 
the  Bay,  as  full  of  busy  twinkling  lights 
as  the  sky  overhead. 


IV.   The  Longshoremen  Settle  Down       \    I 

OUTSIDE  it  was  raining.     We  were  sit!     ' 
ting  in  my  small  hotel  room.     Somej     j 
thing  old-fashioned  about  the  lamp  anc 
the  armchairs  and  the  window  curtains' 
something  about  the  scrubbed  white  paint 
on  the  often  repainted  woodwork,  made 
me  think  of  a  room  I'd  had  years  ago  over- 
looking the  Old  Port  in  Marseilles.     The 
young  man  had   walked  in  bareheaded 
with  a  longlegged  stride,  shaking  the  rain 
out  of  his  hair  and  sliding  out  of  his  wet' 
raincoat  as  he  came.     He  didn't  smoke.' 
No   thanks,    he   wouldn't   take   a   drink. 
Just  getting  over  a  stomach  ulcer.     Work- 
ing  too   hard?     Maybe.     After   we   had 
talked  of  one  thing  and  another  I  asked 
him  if  getting  the  waterfront  straightened 
out  was  such  a  tough  job  as  all  that, 
Plenty  tough,  he  said.  A 

Then  after  a  pause  he  leaned  forward  in 
his  chair  and  burst  out,  "God  damn  it, 
people  in  this  country  are  wonderful,  they 
are  so  wonderful  it  makes  me  feel  like 
crying  when  I  think  of  it." 

He  paused  again  and  then  started  talk- 
ing eagerly.  "You  have  to  get  around 
out  in  the  Pacific  a  little  to  see  how  much 
some  guys  are  doing  with  how  little.  I 
was  out  there  four  months.  I  work  with 
the  Army  though  I'm  not  in  the  Army. 
That  gives  me  a  better  chance.  I  don't 
get  tied  up  with  the  ritual.  They  even 
had  me  talk  to  one  of  the  grand  moguls 
in  Washington  over  the  phone.  He'd 
sent  orders  a  certain  boat  had  to  be  turned 
around  within  twenty-four  hours  and 
somebody  had  to  tell  him  why  it  was 
impossible.  Loading  ships  is  a  business 
full  of  definite  limitations.  It's  like  pack- 
ing a  trunk.  There's  a  limit  to  the  num- 
ber of  men  you  can  put  to  work  in  the 
space.  .  .  .  My,  he  was  mad  when  I 
explained  the  setup  to  him.  He  asked 
me  who  the  hell  I  was.  I  was  just  a  mere 
civilian  so  there  wasn't  anything  he  could 
do.     It  just  was  not  possible.  .  .  ." 

He  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  mois- 
tened his  lips  with  his  tongue.  Then  he 
brought  the  fingers  of  one  hand  across 
his  forehead  with  a  gesture  of  brushing 
away  fatigue,  and  straightened  up.  "Now 
at  least  all  the  stuflf  that  comes  into  this 
town  gets  loaded  and  pushed  out  into  the 


SAN    FRANCISCO    LOOKS    WEST 


335 


Pacific  as  fast  as  they  can  handle  it  on  the 
receiving  end. 

*' Well,  those  guys  on  some  of  those  islands 
out  there,  they  just  about  do  the  im- 
possible. Honesdy  diey  do.  Unloading 
alongside  a  dock  with  wharfing  facilities 
and  unloading  heavy  equipment  on  a 
coral  reef  or  with  lighters  on  a  beach  full 
of  mangroves,  with  nothing  to  work  with 
but  a  few  hoists  and  the  principle  of  the 
lever,  is  something  else  again.  Enemy 
action  is  the  least  of  your  troubles.  Usu- 
ally there's  one  guy — a  corporal  or  a  ser- 
geant or  at  most  a  second  loot  who's  had 
longshore  experience — and  he's  expected 
to  unload  the  stuff  and  carry  it  up  to  the 
depots  in  the  jungle.  And  that's  that. 
He  has  to  imagine  up  the  tools  and  the 
men  to  do  it  with.  What  each  one  tells 
you  is  for  God's  sake  send  me  a  couple 
guys  who  know  how.  .  ,  .  Only  a  couple 
guys." 

He  paused  again.  "I  hope  this  is  the 
sort  of  thing  you  want  to  hear.  I'm  so 
full  of  it  I  can't  talk  about  anything  else. 
Alongshore  here  we're  not  doing  so  badly 
now.  The  main  trouble  is  trying  to  get 
the  boys  to  put  in  the  kind  of  work  they 
used  to  put  in  in  the  old  days  before  the 
strikes.  The  old  speed-up  system  was 
slavery  and  it  was  stopped  and  it  ought 
to  have  been  stopped.  .  .  .  The  long- 
shoremen were  down  then  and  now  they 
are  up.  Harry  Bridges  did  a  wonderful 
job  as  an  organizer.  My  people  weren't 
exactly  on  his  side  of  the  fence  in  that  little 
argument,  so  we  ought  to  know.  .  .  .  He 
got  the  longshoremen  their  pork  chops. 
He  did  it  for  sincere  and  idealistic  reasons. 
.  .  .  But  at  running  the  union  once  it's 
set  up  he's  no  good  at  all.  He  can't  carry 
his  people  with  him. 

"I  don't  know  whether  he's  a  member  of 
the  Communist  Party  or  not  and  I  don't 
care,  but  he  certainly  believes  in  their 
philosophy  and  he  put  up  a  wonderful 
fight  for  it.  He  convinced  a  lot  of  people 
around  this  town,  but  he  didn't  convince 
the  longshoremen.  They  are  no  more 
communists  than  rabbits.  The  longshore- 
man around  here  is  a  special  kind  of 
a  critter.  He's  a  Scandinavian  mostly. 
He's  independent  as  hell.  He  tends  to  be 
a  middle-aged  man  with  not  too  much 
brains  or  ambition  or  he  wouldn't  have 


stayed  a  longshoreman.  Or  else  he's  just 
too  ornery  to  do  other  kinds  of  work.  Or 
else  he  likes  the  life.  He'd  been  getting 
a  raw  deal  all  around  the  lot  and  he  was 
sore  and  Bridges  came  along  and  showed 
him  how  to  get  his  pork  chops.  Now  he's 
got  a  pretty  good  system  worked  out  to 
spread  the  work,  he's  got  all  the  work  he 
wants  to  do,  he's  getting  good  pay,  and 
you  can  talk  to  him  from  hell  to  Christ- 
mas about  the  second  front  and  how  this 
is  a  people's  war  and  all  that  and  he  won't 
bat  an  eyelash.  He's  sitting  pretty.  He's 
got  plenty  to  eat  and  plenty  to  spend  for 
whiskey  and  plenty  of  work  to  do  tomor- 
row and  he's  sitting  pretty. 

"Hell,  I  can't  exactly  blame  him.  I 
can  understand  that  point  of  view.  But 
it  breaks  your  heart  to  see  one  of  these 
same  kind  of  guys — he  gets  something  in 
him  that's  more  than  pork  chops — split- 
ting himself  in  two  to  do  a  job  unloading 
material  on  some  godforsaken  atoll.  .  .  ." 

He  got  to  his  feet.  "Well,  I've  got  to 
run  along.  Did  you  ever  notice,"  he 
added,  grinning,  "that  it's  a  hell  of  a  lot 
easier  to  talk  about  things  than  to  get 
them  done?  Don't  get  the  idea  that  we 
aren't  going  to  speed  up  the  loading  of 
ships  around  here.  It  can  be  done  and 
it's  going  to  be  done." 

THE  next  morning  I  was  in  the  office 
of  the  committee  the  government  put 
in  to  get  the  various  elements  along  the 
waterfront  working  together.  A  serious- 
faced  grizzled  man  was  drawing  a  curve 
for  me  on  the  back  of  an  envelope.  "It's 
been  a  long  pull,"  he  said,  "but  in  the  last 
few  months  there's  been  a  steady  improve- 
ment." He  tapped  the  place  with  his 
pencil  where  the  ascending  curve  left  the 
paper.  "As  far  as  the  longshoremen  are 
concerned  our  business  has  been  to  get  the 
slowdown  out  of  their  heads.  It  took  the 
union  a  long  time  to  drive  it  in.  You  re- 
member 'The  Yanks  aren't  coming.'  .  .  . 
When  it  came  to  driving  it  out  again  the 
comrades  were  helpless.  It  was  at  their 
request  we  took  over  supervision  of  the 
hiring  halls." 

He  had  introduced  me  to  a  stocky 
Irishman  with  crisp  dark  hair  and  dark- 
blue  eyes  who  acted  as  trouble  shooter 
for  the  government  along  the  waterfront. 


336 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


His  broad  shoulders  and  big  thick-fin- 
gered hands  had  the  look  of  having  done 
some  mighty  heavy  work  in  their  day. 
His  hands  were  white  and  smooth  now. 
He  had  been  an  organizer  in  the  union  in 
the  knock-down-anrf-drag-out  days  of  the 
fight  for  organizat'on.  Now  he  was  or- 
ganizing for  Washington.  He  was  headed 
down  to  the  wharves.  I  asked  if  I  could 
go  with  him. 

We  walked  down  Market  Street  to- 
gether. "One  thing,"  he  was  saying,  "is 
it's  hard  to  get  the  boys  to  believe  the 
work's  goin'  to  last.  They  been  on  the 
bricks  so  much  in  the  old  days  they  can't 
help  tryin'  to  spread  the  work  out  so  it'll 
last.  They  can't  get  it  into  their  heads 
that  now  there's  plenty  work  for  many 
years  to  come." 

"Do  you  think  there  is?" 

"Sure.  This  Pacific  business  ain't  be- 
gun yet." 

The  hiring  hall  was  a  little  like  a  small- 
town railroad  station.  It  was  noon  and 
most  of  the  gangs  were  out.  Only  a  few 
big  shaggy  men  in  work  clothes  belted 
tight  at  the  waist  were  looking  up  at  the 
bulletin  board  where  jobs  were  an- 
nounced. Beside  it  there  was  the  ticket 
window  where  they  handed  out  the  work 
slips.  On  the  other  side  was  a  larger 
board  full  of  numbered  holes  with  small 
plugs  in  them.  Every  man  had  a  number, 
and  by  the  position  of  his  plug  the  men  in 
charge  of  the  hiring  hall  could  tell  where 
he  was  working  and  what  gang  he  was  on. 
"If  a  man  don't  turn  up  we  ring  him  on 
the  phone  to  see  what's  the  matter.  If 
we  can't  get  him  that  way  we  send  some- 
body after  him  to  see  what's  what.  If  he's 
off  fishin'  or  on  a  drunk  or  somepin'  we 
want  to  know  the  reason  why." 

"It  looks  simple  enough." 

"Wasn't  so  simple  till  we  got  it  worked 
out." 

He  led  me  up  a  stairway  at  the  back. 
"I'll  show  you  where  they  make  out  the 
pay  checks."  At  a  door  at  the  head  of 
the  stairs  a  sharp-faced  man  with  his  big 
work  gloves  tucked  in  the  back  pocket  of 
his  overalls  was  knocking  and  knocking. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  my  guide  asked 
him. 

"Been  off  sick.  I  want  to  know  about 
my  compensation." 


"This    ain't 
across  town." 


the  place.  That's  wa)| 
He  told  him  an  addressj 
waited  until  the  man  had  shambled  ofli 
down  the  stairs,  and  then  gave  the  door  a 
couple  of  sharp  rattatats  with  his  knuckles. 

When  the  door  opened  he  showed  his 
big  white  teeth  in  a  grin.  "You  have  to 
know  the  combination  to  git  in  here,"  he 
whispered  to  me,  "or  else  the  boys  would 
have  them  driven  crazy.  ...  I  thought 
I'd  spare  yez  the  trouble.  I  sent  him  off 
to  chase  himself,"  he  announced  in  a  loud 
roar  as  we  stepped  into  the  room. 

I  was  introduced  to  several  elderly  men 
who  sat  stooped  over  ledgers  in  the  gray 
light  that  came  in  through  tall  oldfash-] 
ioned  windows.  My  guide  explained: 
"The  men  are  paid  through  the  union. 
If  there's  any  dispute  about  time  or  over- 
time we  have  the  figures  right  here.  Since 
we  had  this  system  goin'  we've  had  very 
little  trouble.  I  think  everybody's  pretty 
well  satisfied  all  around." 

"Well,"  he  said,  as  he  ushered  me  out 
again,  "you  wanted  to  see  some  long- 
shoremen. Suppose  we  step  around  to  a 
couple  bars.  Some  of  'em'll  be  tricklin' 
in  for  a  bit  of  a  drink.  This  is  the  hour 
they  knock  off  for  dinner." 

THERE  was  an  air  of  well-being  at  the 
long  bar  that  stretched  from  the  win- 
dow into  the  dim  interior  of  the  building. 
Along  it  stood  a  row  of  big  men  bulging 
out  of  their  work  clothes.  Big  profiles 
stood  out  in  the  slanting  light,  chins  thrust 
out,  Adam's  apples,  hooked  noses,  jutting 
cheekbones,  brawling  mouths,  snaggle- 
teeth  under  mustaches  tobacco-stained  to 
the  color  of  shredded  wheat.  Along  the  line 
tiny  whiskey  glasses  winked  and  bobbed, 
each  lightly  held  between  a  grimy  thumb 
and  forefinger.  Gusswords  shot  out  of  the 
corners  of  mouths,  filthy  phrases  were 
wiped  off  casually  on  knotted  backs  of 
hands.  Here  and  there  a  fighting  epithet 
was  slung  down  the  line,  to  be  picked  up 
and  tossed  languidly  back  with  a  smile, 
the  way  a  ballplayer  warming  up  might 
catch  a  lightly  curved  ball  and  pass  it 
back  not  too  hard.  Newcomers  whammed 
friends  on  the  back;  men  turned  round 
and  leaned  way  back  on  their  heels  to 
shout  welcoming  abuse  at  an  old  acquaint- 
ance.    Ponderous  banter  was  heaved  back 


^  ' 


SAN    FRANCISCO    LOOKS    WEST 


337 


and  forth,  and  then  suddenly  stopped 
when  somebody  got  interested  in  an  anec- 
dote or  a  serious  conversation.  There  was 
no  tension.  These  were  tough  heavy- 
fisted  men  who  had  been  around  and 
they  weren't  worrying. 

Among  the  faces  along  the  bar  there 
were  some  with  bleared  eyes  and  boozy 
mouths  and  square  heads,  heavy  and  bat- 
tered as  the  packing  cases  they  handled 
all  day;  but  here  and  there  a  countenance 
stood  out:  a  ruddy  fisherman's  face  full  of 
fine  creases  radiating  from  the  mouth  and 
eyes;  or  the  lean-lipped  face  of  a  hunter; 
or  a  canny  hired  farmhand's  face;  or  one 
of  those  faces,  clearcut  in  repose,  that 
stamp  on  your  mind  the  plain  human 
majesty  of  a  man  at  ease  in  the  strength  of 
his  body  and  the  certainty  that  what  he 
knows  how  to  do  he  knows  how  to  do  well. 

The  proprietor  kept  his  own  bar,  a  bit 
of  the  green  isle  of  saints  if  I  ever  saw  one, 
laying  about  him  at  his  customers  in  a 
brogue  so  rich  you  could  grow  shamrocks 
on  it,  storming  up  and  down  back  of  the 
bar  on  his  toes  like  a  boxer  at  work  with  a 
punching  bag,  drawing  the  beer  and  pour- 
ing the  whiskey  and  wiping  the  time- 
darkened  mahogany  off  with  a  rag,  and 
bringing  a  big  pale-knuckled  hand  down 
fast  on  a  stack  of  coins — and  all  the  while 
ducking  mock  reproaches  and  slinging 
wads  of  abuse  out  of  his  big  mouth. 

When  the  barkeep  laid  eyes  on  my 
guide  he  leaned  over  toward  him.  "It's  a 
cold  day,  Freddy,"  he  said  in  a  throaty 
fatherly  whisper.  "You'll  have  a  spot  of 
firstrate  Irish  on  the  house,  you  and  your 
friend,  won't  you  now?" 

We  couldn't  very  well  refuse  so  we  put 
it  down  with  some  pleasure.  We  ordered 
up  a  couple  more.  "Pat,  my  friend  here's 
askin'  me  what  you  think  of  the  New  Deal?" 
my  guide  asked  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

"Washed  up,"  said  the  barkeep,  cut- 
ting the  suds  off  three  glasses  of  beer. 
"Coin'  from  bad  to  worse,"  his  voice  rose. 
"The  dirty  deal  I  call  it.  And  the  worst 
of  it  is  these  subsidies.  Of  all  the  dirty 
deceitful  measures  for  tyin'  the  farmer 
and  the  producer  and  the  consumer  up  in 
another  tangle  of  government  red-tape 
regulations!  We're  regulated  off  the 
earth  already.  And  it's  liberty  we're 
supposed  to  be  fightin'  for." 


"You  talk  like  a  Republican.  Aren't 
your  customers  mostly  Democrats?"  I 
asked. 

"The  boys  was  Dimocrats  sure  when 
they  was  hungry  and  sore,  but  they  are 
sittin'  pretty  now,  and  the  way  things  are 
goin'  in  Washington  with  the  waste  and 
the  chicanery  and  the  taxation  and  the 
rationin'  it  wouldn't  surprise  me  if  every 
man  jack  of  'em  voted  the  Republican 
ticket." 

He  stood  with  his  shoulders  spread  look- 
ing up  and  down  the  bar.  My  guide 
blinked  and  made  a  kind  of  a  face.  Men 
stood  listening  with  their  glasses  poised. 
Nobody  answered  back  one  way  or  an- 
other. Then  the  horsing  and  the  kidding 
started  up  again.  Time  for  one  more 
drink  before  going  back  to  work. 

V.   Town  of  Hello  and  Farewell 

IN  THE  seat  next  me  in  the  limousine  go- 
ing out  to  the  airport  was  a  little  red- 
headed girl  from  Memphis.  Her  hus- 
band was  a  Naval  officer.  He  had  just 
been  ordered  to  Rochester,  New  York. 
She'd  never  been  to  Rochester,  New  York. 
What  was  it  like  in  Rochester,  New  York? 
Did  I  know  whether  it  was  on  the  lake  or 
not?  Wouldn't  it  be  nice  to  live  on  a 
lake?  Golly,  she  hoped  she'd  get  on  the 
plane.  Her  place  was  conditional.  She 
sure  had  her  fingers  crossed.  If  she  could 
get  off  on  that  plane  she  could  make 
Rochester  as  soon  as  he  did.  Wouldn't 
that  be  fun? 

In  the  front  seat  on  one  side  was  a  quiet 
pale-faced  Army  captain,  and  on  the  other 
the  neatly  dressed  pretty  little  stewardess 
who  was  going  out  on  the  outgoing  plane. 
Between  them  sat  a  sailor.  He  was  high. 
He'd  got  in  that  morning  from  the  islands 
beyond  the  blue  bulge  of  the  Pacific.  He 
had  eighteen  days'  leave.  He'd  been  out 
in  the  Theaters  for  a  year.  He'd  just  got 
over  malaria.  He  was  going  to  get  home 
that  next  morning  before  day.  "The 
wife's  waiting  for  me  and  I  never  seen  the 
baby  .  .  .  it's  a  little  baby  boy,"  he  kept 
saying.  He  had  a  pint  of  whiskey  in  his 
blouse  that  he  kept  hauling  out  and  offer- 
ing around.  The  stewardess  said  if  he 
drank  too  much  of  that  she  might  not  be 
able  to  let  him  on  the  plane.     "Sure  you 


338 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


will,  sister,"  said  the  sailor.  "I  only  got 
eighteen  days." 

The  Army  captain,  who  was  a  stiff  sort 
of  fellow,  finally  was  pf  evailed  upon  to  ac- 
cept a  drink.  "Where  we  was,"  said  the 
sailor,  "it  was  fifty  dollars  a  quart.  ...  I 
only  paid  fifteen  for  this  from  the  bellhop 
at  the  hotel." 

"You  oughtn't  to  have  done  that,"  said 
the  stewardess.     "That's  too  high." 

"Better  than  fifty  dollars  a  quart.  It 
was  after  hours  and  besides  there  was  more 
of  it,"  said  the  sailor.  "Considerable 
more.  .  .  .  Where  we  was  the  Japs  came 
down  every  evening  to  bomb  right  along 
the  same  groove  between  the  hills  like 
they'd  built  a  railroad  track  up  there. 
They  sure  gave  us  plenty  hell.  Brother," 
he  said  to  the  Army  captain,  "those  Japs 
are  good." 

"Oh,  we'll  clean  'em  up  in  short  order," 
said  the  Army  captain  grufily. 

"I  didn't  say  we  wouldn't  clean  'em  up. 
I  said  those  Japs  were  good." 

"Sailor,"  said  the  stewardess,  "you'd 
better  put  that  flask  away  before  you  get 
to  the  airport.  I  wouldn't  like  not  to  be 
able  to  let  you  get  on  the  plane." 

"Sure  you'll  let  me  get  on  the  plane. 


Sure  you  will.  ...  I  got  eighteen  days 
to  see  the  wife  and  the  little  baby  boy." 

When  we  reached  the  airport  the  young 
lady  at  the  ticket  counter  was  very  sorry. 
She  had  long  telephone  conversations  with 
somebody  but  she  was  very  sorry.  No 
room  on  that  flight.  At  least  not  for  us. 
But  nobody  cared  much  when  they  saw 
the  sailor,  his  bushy  brows  drawn  to- 
gether into  an  expression  of  portentous 
dignity,  walking  out  of  the  gate  toward 
the  plane  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the 
poker-faced  Army  captain.  He  didn't 
drop  the  bottle.  He  didn't  fall  down. 
He  made  it.  On  a  bench  in  a  corner  the 
little  red-headed  girl  from  Memphis  sat 
hunched  over  her  suitcase  crying  because 
she  couldn't  get  on  this  flight. 

The  incoming  passengers  were  still  mill- 
ing around  waiting  for  their  baggage.  In 
the  center  of  a  group  of  old  people,  young 
people,  small  children,  a  very  young  round- 
faced  fellow  in  an  ensign's  uniform  was 
hugging  first  one  then  the  other  and  saying 
to  each  one,  "Well,  that  completes  my 
first  trip  around  the  world.  I  started  out 
toward  the  west  and  I'm  coming  back 
from  the  east.  That  completes  my  first 
trip  round  the  world." 


I 


HOW    BASIC    IS    BASIC    ENGLISH? 


RUDOLF    FLESCH 


IF  I  were  Mr.  Churchill,  I  would  not  like 
being  reduced  to  calling  Hitler  a  very 
had  man,  or  a  bomber  an  air  plane  send- 
ing down  hollow  balls  full  of  a  substance  with  a 
tendency  to  go  off  with  a  loud  noise.  But 
maybe  Mr.  Churchill  did  not  quite  realize 
these  implications  when  he  endorsed  Basic 
English  in  his  Harvard  speech  last  Sep- 
tember. 

"Here  you  have,"  he  said,  "a  deftly 
wrought  plan  for  an  international  lan- 
guage capable  of  very  wide  transactions 
of  practical  business  and  of  interchange  of 
ideas.  ...  It  would  certainly  be  a  grand 
convenience  for  us  all  to  be  able  to  move 
freely  about  the  world — and  to  find  every- 
where a  medium,  albeit  primitive,  of  in- 
tercourse and  understanding." 

The  next  day  newspapers  ransacked 
their  morgues  for  material  on  Basic  Eng- 
lish, feature  articles  appeared  and  called 
forth  letters  to  the  editor,  and  a  fourteen- 
year-old  controversy  came  to  life  again. 
Once  more  the  public  read  about  that 
amazing  850-word  vocabulary  serving  all 
practical  purposes,  about  Basic's  eighteen 
verbs  to  end  all  verbs,  about  Basic  texts 
and  translations  for  foreigners  studying 
English  and  for  Englishmen  and  Ameri- 
cans studying  simplification.  Enthusiasts 
were  answered  in  due  course  by  critics 
who  talked  about  "linguistic  imperial- 
ism"; and  finally  those  who  should  have 
been  asked  first,  the  scientific  linguists, 
had    their    say.    Their    reply    was    cold. 


"Basic  English,"  one  of  them  wrote  in  the 
Saturday  Review  of  Literature,  "does  not 
stand  today  in  high  favor  with  scientific 
linguists.  .  .  .  It  is  a  kind  of  quack  based 
on  a  faulty  analysis  of  the  language 
process." 

To  those  familiar  with  Basic  English 
and  the  record  of  its  inventor,  C.  K.  Og- 
den,  such  an  attitude  is  not  surprising. 
Ogden  is  no  run-of-the-mill  philologist. 
He  is  a  Cambridge  University  philosopher 
of  world  fame,  co-author  (with  I.  A.  Rich- 
ards) of  that  bible  of  semantics  The  Meaning 
of  Meaning,  editor  of  the  International  Li- 
brary of  Psychology,  Philosophy,  and  Scientific 
Method — in  short,  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
intellectual  leaders  of  our  time.  Such  a 
mind  treats  the  drab,  painstaking  methods 
of  modern  linguistics  with  impatience  and 
scorn.  "Word-counters  and  text-grad- 
ers" Ogden  calls,  in  his  System  of  Basic 
English,  the  compilers  of  vocabulary  sta- 
tistics, laughing  at  their  "parrot-mental- 
ity." For  him,  the  philosophical  approach 
to  language  is  as  natural  as  the  exact  obser- 
vation of  linguistic  facts  is  for  the  research 
scientist. 

To  the  outsider  all  this  looks  like  one 
more  example  of  the  familiar  conflict 
between  the  professional  expert  and  the 
amateur  genius.  The  outsider  usually 
puts  his  money  on  the  amateur  genius,  and 
usually  he  is  right.  But  before  we  jump 
to  conclusions  in  this  case,  let  us  look  a 
little  closer  at  the  facts. 


340 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


II 


THE  Basic  English  controvert  is,  actu- 
ally, not  one  controversy  but  a  tangled 
web  of  five  different  problems.  Let  us 
consider  ihem  one  by  one. 

First,  there  is  the  question  whether  an 
international  language  is  desirable  at  all. 
This  is  very  much  like  asking  whether 
peace  is  desirable,  or  good  will,  or  friend- 
hness.  It  is  a  question  only  in  the  sense 
that  every  human  effort  has  to  conquer  a 
corresponding  amount  of  human  inertia. 

Second,  if  an  internaiional  language  is 
to  be  chosen,  shall  it  be  English?  This 
claim  is  usually  countered  by  the  cry  of 
imperialism;  but  as  long  as  hundreds  of 
millions  eagerly  try  to  acquire  English  as 
their  second  language,  the  counter-argu- 
ment seems  absurd.  It  certainly  did  not 
deter  such  masters  of  the  English  language 
as  Mme.  Chiang  Kai-shek,  Jawaharlal 
Nehru,  or  Jan  Masaryk.  As  matters 
stand  now,  English  has  a  long  head  start 
as  the  coming  international  language,  and 
ii  looks  as  if  it  would  win  the  race. 

Third,  is  Basic  English  the  shortest  route 
to  English?  This,  of  course,  is  purely  a 
question  of  language  pedagogy*.  Basic 
enthusiasts  swear  by  their  method;  other 
teachers  prefer  their  own.  Right  now  our 
.Army  teaches  successfully  dozens  of  exotic 
languages,  using  methods  not  at  all  similar 
to  that  of  Basic  English.  We  may  leave 
the  final  choice  to  the  teachers. 

Fourth,  hov/  about  Basic  itself  as  an  in- 
ternational language?  But  how  could  it 
possibly  compete  with  English?  How 
could  anyone  expect  an  intelligent  Rus- 
sian, Dane,  or  Thailander  to  stop  at  the 
8 50- word  limit,  instead  of  going  on  to  the 
languaa:e  of  Hollywood  and  the  short- 
waves?  \Vi:h  all  respect  for  Mr.  Church- 
ill, the  idea  or  Basic  as  a  world  language  is 
absurd.  If  adopted,  it  would  always  re- 
main a  mere  bridge  to  English. 

Fifth,  is  Basic  a  successful  simplification 
of  English?  Here,  underneath  the  four 
other  layers,  is  the  heart  of  the  problem. 
If  it  is  a  rehable  tool  for  making  things 
plain,  then  indeed  Basic  English  fills  a 
great  need.  If  ever-vxhing  can  be  made 
simple  by  using  this  limited  idiom,  why, 
then,  don't  we  put  ever\-thing  into  Basic 
that  has  to  be  read  and  understood  by 


foreigners,  by  children,  by  the  unedu- 
cated? Why  don't  we  forthwith  translate 
into  Basic  our  laws,  our  textbooks,  our 
technical  manuals,  our  philosophy,  and 
our  science?  Why  don't  we  give  Basic 
English  the  central  function  it  should  have 
in  our  civilization?  Why  don't  we  adopt 
it  officially  as  simplified  English? 

The  adherents  of  Basic  say,  of  course, 
that  this  is  just  a  matter  of  time  and  spread- 
ing the  gospel.  Possibly — but  only  if  the 
premise  is  true  that  Basic  is  simpler  than 
English. 

But,  then,  what  do  we  mean  by  sim- 
plicity in  language? 


Ill 

yx  A  recent  radio  discussion,  a  Chinese 
jL  scholar,  Dr.  Lin  Mou-sheng,  said  ra- 
ther casually  that  Chinese  would  be  a  good 
choice  for  a  simple  world  language.  This 
was  amusing  news  to  Time  magazine,  but 
it  could  not  possibly  be  news  to  any  scien- 
tific linguist.  Chinese  is  by  far  the  sim- 
plest of  all  the  great  languages.  It  has 
almost  no  grammar,  no  complex  sen- 
tences, no  tenses,  moods,  or  inflections,  no 
separation  between  verbs,  nouns,  and  ad- 
jectives. A  system  of  one-syllable  words, 
the  forms  of  which  are  never  changed,  it 
expresses  meaning  solely  by  word  order. 
Skillfully  manipulating  a  thousand  or  two 
of  his  little  syllables,  a  Chinese  can  talk 
about  everv'thing  under  the  sun.  No 
wonder  he  considers  his  language  superior 
to  all  others.     It  is. 

Let  us  look  at  an  example.  A  well- 
known  Chinese  fairy  tale  begins  with  these 
words: 

There  was  a  young  man  who  was  a  simpleton. 
His  father  and  mother  were  sorr\-  that  he  was 
stupid,  gave  him  money,  and  told  him  to  leave 
home  in  order  to  learn  manners. 

The  original  Chinese  version  reads  some- 
what like  this: 

Have  one  year-few  man  be  stupid.  He  father 
mother  sorrow  he  stupid,  give  he  silver,  teU  he 
out-go  learn  manner. 

Such  amazing  simpliciry-  of  structure  is 
matched  by  a  wealth  of  picturesque  ex- 
pressions and  idioms.  Lin  Yu-tang  quotes 
the  Chinese  translation  of:  "How  could  I 
know  what  is  going  on  in  his  mind?"  It 
is:  ''Am  I  a  tapeworm  in  his  belly?" 


HOW    BASIC    IS    BASIC    ENGLISH? 


341 


Why,  then,  is  Chinese  not  used  as  a 
model  for  other  languages?  Why  don't 
wc  adapt,  for  instance,  the  principles  of 
Chinese  grammar  and  expression  for  Eng- 
lish? The  answer  is,  of  course,  that  this 
is  being  done  every  day  by  those  millions 
in  the  South  Seas  and  Eastern  Asia  who 
use  Pidgin  English.  Recently,  with  the 
campaign  in  the  Pacific,  Pidgin  English 
has  broken  into  the  news.  One  writer 
found  that  its  "most  important  rule  is  to 
keep  all  sentences  short  and  simple,  and 
never  to  try  to  make  a  sentence  express 
more  than  one  thought."  And  he  dug  up 
the  following  charming  version  of  the 
Commandments  in  Pidgin: 

Keep  Sunday.  Hear  for  papa  and  mamma. 
No  kill.  No  make  bad.  No  thief.  No  lie. 
No  want  other  man  his  mary. 

But  we  don't  have  to  go  to  the  South 
Seas  to  find  simple  sentences  filled  with 
short  concrete  words.  Every  skilled  writer 
of  simple  English  prose  naturally  tends 
toward  this  "Chinese"  mode  of  expression. 
Here  is,  for  instance,  a  recent  headline: 

NAZIS  STIFFEN  IN  ITALY  BUT  ALLIES  GAIN 

BERLIN  CLAIMS  CAPTURE  OF  ISLE  OF  KOS 

FRANKFORT  BOMBED  2D  TIME  IN  A  DAY 

Or  the  next  day's: 

U.  S.  NAVY  AND  PLANES  POUND  WAKE 

5TH  ARMY  CROSSES  THE  VOLTURNO 

GERMANS  REPORTED  SACKING  ROME 

Or  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  simple 
style  of  True  Story  magazine: 

The  first  time  our  eyes  met  I  felt  lost.  I  had 
never  met  a  man  like  him  before.  He  was  bluff 
and  hearty,  brimming  over  with  good  humor. 
He  was  good  looking,  with  black  hair  and  dark 
eyes.  When  he  smiled  you  felt  the  force  of  his 
personality.  .  .  . 

Or,  finally,  let  us  see  how  a  great  writer 
tells  a  story  for  children.  This  is  the  be- 
ginning of  Hans  Christian  Andersen's 
"The  Ugly  Duckling": 

It  was  glorious  out  in  the  country.  It  was 
summer,  and  the  cornfields  were  yellow,  and  the 
oats  were  green;  the  hay  had  been  put  up  in 
stacks  in  the  green  meadows,  and  the  stork  went 
about  on  his  long  red  legs  and  chattered  Egyp- 
tian, for  this  was  the  language  he  had  learned 
from  his  good  mother. 

What  all  these  simple  passages  have  in 
common  is,  mainly,  the  short  simple  sen- 
tences, the  large  number  of  verbs,  the  re- 
liance on  word  order  rather  than  word 


forms,  the  concreteness,  the  vivid  imagery, 
and  the  human  touch.  It  is  perfectly 
feasible  to  define  statistically  these  and 
other  characteristics  of  simple  language. 
Much  of  this  has  been  done  already  by 
those  word-counters  and  text-graders  who 
drew  the  contempt  of  Basic  English's  in- 
ventor. Simplicity,  it  appears,  is  mainly 
a  question  of  sentence  structure  and  con- 
creteness of  expression.  It  can  be  achieved 
by  following  these  five  rules  of  thumb: 

Use  sentences  rather  than  clauses. 

Use  word  order  rather  than  word  forms. 

Use  verbs  rather  than  nouns. 

Use  nouns  rather  than  adjectives. 

Use  words  about  people  rather  than  things. 

Let  us  keep  these  rules  in  mind  for  our 
appraisal  of  Basic  English. 

IV 

A  CTUALLY,  Basic  English  has  very  little 
£\^  to  do  with  the  known  facts  about 
simple  language.  Ogden  deliberately 
avoided  the  scientific  approach,  and  he 
was  not  lucky  enough  to  find  the  key  to 
simplicity  by  accident.  In  fact,  his  two 
main  principles  make  it  literally  impossible 
to  be  simple  in  Basic. 

The  pride  and  centerpiece  of  Basic  is 
the  elimination  of  verbs,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  eighteen  ''operators."  To  be  sure, 
most  grammatical  complications  are  re- 
lated to  the  use  of  verbs.  But  to  do  away 
with  them  in  order  to  save  all  that  trouble 
is  like  throwing  the  motor  out  of  a  car  be- 
cause that's  where  all  the  nuisance  comes 
from.  Verbs,  as  we  have  seen,  make  for 
simplicity;  if  they  are  eliminated,  substi- 
tutes have  to  be  found,  and  the  linguistic 
structure  becomes  more  difficult  instead  of 
easier.  That  is  one  of  the  things  that 
happen  continually  in  Basic  English.  In 
endless  repetition,  one  has  to  be,  get,  give, 
take,  have,  and  put.  The  Basic  speaker 
cannot  sleep,  awake,  kick,  jump,  laugh, 
or  act, — he  has  to  be  sleeping,  get  awake, 
give  a  kick,  take  a  jump,  have  a  laugh,  and  put 
on  an  act. 

The  second  main  element  of  Basic  is 
even  more  absurd:  I  mean  its  limited  vo- 
cabulary of  850  words,  the  famous  list 
that  goes  on  a  single  printed  page.  Such  a 
listing  may  be  possible  for  the  machinery 
of  language,  the  tissue  which  makes  an 


342 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


understandable  whole  out  of  a  heap  of 
words — like  the,  which,  an,  -able,  out,  oj  in 
this  sentence.  But  to  select  200  ''pictur- 
able  words"  for  the  countless  picturable 
things  mankind  has  oared  to  name  seems 
an  incredible  folly.  Here  are  a  few  con- 
crete examples: 

In  the  Basic  Xoah's  Ark.  there  are  cows, 
goats,  sheep,  pigs,  horses,  cats,  and  dogs;  but 
there  are  no  lions,  foxes,  and  wolves,  not 
to  speak  of  giraffes,  kangaroos,  or  baby 
pandas. 

The  Basic  diet  consists  of  milk,  eggs, 
bread,  and  butter  (for  breakfast),  soup,  meat 
or  fish,  potatoes,  rice,  and  cake  (for  dinner), 
supplemented  by  such  extra  snacks  as  an 
occasional  apple  or  orange,  cheese,  jelly, 
berries,  and  nuts.  All  this  is  wholesome 
food,  to  be  sure,  but  no  dietitian  would  fail 
to  point  out  the  lack  of  essential  vitamin 
sources  like  tomatoes,  cabbage,  spinach, 
carrots,  broccoli,  or  liver. 

The  Basic  home  is  furnished  with  a  bed, 
a  table,  a  chest  of  drawers,  and  a  dresser. 
But  it  lacks  such  homely  items  as  a  chair, 
a  lamp,  a  rug,  or  a  bookcase,  and  it  is 
not  equipped  with  closets,  a  bathtub,  or  a 
kitchen  sink. 

And  Basic  England,  oddly  enough, 
would  have  an  army  but  no  navy. 

Possibly,  such  a  tool  may  be  used  to 
simplify  very  difficult  English  prose  to 
some  extent;  but  if  applied  to  everyday 
colloquial  English  it  will  produce  a  maze 
of  bizarre  circumlocutions. 

Meet  my  cousin  Mary 

becomes 

Come  across  Mary,  my  father  s  sister's  daughter 

and  a  sentence  like 

We  ate  an  old-fashioned  holiday  dinner  with 
rurkcy  and  pumpkin  pie 

changes  into 

We  took  as  food  a  chief  meal  of  a  day  of  rest  from 
work,  not  in  the  taste  of  the  present  day,  with  a  great 
bird  and  a  great  round  yellow  fruit  with  hard  skin  and 
a  great  number  of  seeds,  covered  with  paste  and  cooked 
in  the  oven. 

The  simple  statement 

I  have  a  steady  job  as  file  clerk  with  a  stock- 
broker 

appears  in  Basic  as 

/  have  well  fixed  regular  work  as  an  offce  worker  on 


boxes  for  keeping  papers  in  order,  with  a  man  whose 
business  is  trading  in  equal  parts  of  the  money  with 
which  a  company's  business  was  started  and  which  give 
the  owner  a  right  to  a  part  in  the  company's  profits. 

One  would  think  that  such  obvious 
shortcomings  of  Basic  would  have  been 
noted  long  ago  by  its  brilliant  inventor. 
But  C.  K.  Ogden  seems  to  suffer  under  the 
typical  blindness  of  doting  parents  for  the 
deficiencies  of  their  children.  Even  in  his 
own  sample  selections  he  includes  such 
monstrosities  as  the  Basic  Englishman  who, 
bravely  avoiding  the  forbidden  word  spin- 
ach, translates  Creme  aux  epinards  as  "a  milk 
soup  made  from  that  plant  with  dark  green 
leaves  which  go  almost  to  nothing  on  boiling.^^ 
(With  a  distinct  sigh  of  relief,  he  then 
continues:  ^'Potage  parmentier  is  a  potato 
soup.'*') 

Recently  the  undaunted  Basic  partisans 
have  invaded  some  of  the  long-settled 
territories  of  languages.  I  need  not  dis- 
cuss here  I.  A.  Richards's  translation  of 
Plato's  Republic,  since  he  found  it  necessary 
to  abandon  strict  Basic  and  to  choose  an 
'•'ampler  medium''  for  his  purpose.  But 
let  us  look  at  the  Bible  in  Basic  English, 
the  most  ambitious  translation  project  ever 
undertaken  in  that  language.  We  may 
note  in  passing  that  in  this  Bible  God  says 
to  Adam: 

]\'ith  heat-drops  on  your  face  will  you  get  your  bread 

and  Ruth  invokes  the  Lord: 


if  anything  but  death  makes  a  division  between 


us. 


And  to  taste  the  curiously  tame,  pallid, 
evasive  flavor  of  the  Basic  Xew  Testa- 
ment, let  us  now  compare  the  King  James 
and  the  Basic  version  of  a  passage  from 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount: 

King  James  version: 

Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  by  them  of  old 
time,  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery: 

But  I  say  unto  you,  That  whosoever  looketh  on 
a  woman  to  lust  after  her  hath  committed  adul- 
tery with  her  already  in  his  heart. 

And  if  thy  right  eye  offend  thee,  pluck  it  out, 
and  cast  it  from  thee:  for  it  is  profitable  for  thee 
that  one  of  thy  members  should  perish,  and  not 
that  thy  whole  body  should  be  cast  into  hell. 

Basic  version: 

Tou  have  krwwledge  that  it  was  said,  "Tou  may  not 
haze  connection  with  another  man's  wife'':  but  I  say  to 
you  that  everyone  whose  eyes  are  turned  on  a  woman  with 


HOW    BASIC    IS    BASIC    ENGLISH? 


343 


desire  has  had  connection  with  her  in  his  heart.  And  if 
your  right  eye  is  a  cause  of  trouble  to  you,  take  it  out  and 
put  it  away  from  you;  because  it  is  better  to  undergo  the 
loss  of  one  part,  than  for  all  your  body  to  go  into  hell. 

Finally,  let  us  sec  how  a  simple  Shake- 
spearean passage  would  look  in  Basic.  Let 
us  try  to  translate,  for  instance,  Portia's 
famous  lines: 

The  quality  of  mercy  is  not  strain'd; 
It  droppeth  as  the  gentle  rain  from  heaven, 
Upon  the  place  beneath:  it  is  twice  bless'd; 
It  blcsscth  him  that  gives,  and  him  that  takes: 
'Tis  mightiest  in  the  mightiest.  .  .  . 

Using  Ogden's  General  Basic  English  Dic- 
tionary, we  find: 

quality:  one  of  the  850  Basic  words 

mercy:  keeping  from  giving  pain  which  one  has  right, 

power,  to  give 
to  strain:  get  tightly  stretched;   be  pulling  at;  get 

twisted  from  true  sense  of  purpose 
to  drop:  come  down  in  drops;  have  a  fall 
gentle:  quiet,  kind,  soft 
rain:  a  Basic  word 

heaven:  the  sky;  living-place  of  the  Highest  Being 
place:  a  Basic  word 
beneath:  under,  lower  than 
twice:  2  times 

blessed:  completely  good,  very  happy;  greatly  valued 
to  bless:  give  approval  or  help  to,  make  happy 
to  give,  to  take:  Basic  words 
mighty:  of  great  size 


We    may   now   write   our    Basic    version. 
Or,  on  second  thought,  wc  may  not. 


To  SUM  up,  Basic  English  is  neither  Basic 
nor  English.  But,  in  our  amusement 
at  its  freakish  aspects,  let  us  not  forget  that 
Basic  is  still  a  thousand  times  better  than 
the  academic  or  bureaucratic  jargon  we 
have  to  wade  through  every  day;  that  it  is 
the  first  attempt  in  the  history  of  mankind 
to  create  a  simplified  language  within  a 
language;  that  its  analysis  of  word  mean- 
ings is  an  indispensable  technique  that 
will  have  to  be  taken  over  by  whatever 
system  of  simplified  English  we  are  going 
to  adopt. 

For  simplified  English  is  bound  to  come. 
In  another  generation  or  two,  it  will  be 
quietly  added  to  the  list  of  our  common- 
place miracle-gadgets,  and  used  wherever 
it  can  help  foreigners,  school  children,  and 
adult  students. 

Basic  English,  like  other  outdated  pio- 
neer ventures,  will  by  then  be  buried  and 
forgotten. 

I  mean,  of  course,  put  in  its  last  resting- 
place,  and  not  kept  in  memory. 


{f^j 


TH 


E  Easy  Chair  "Bermrd  T)6Vd\D 


WFif 


you  think  of  our  civilian 
depends  on  how  you  look  at 
you  concentrate  on  what 
counts  most  at  the  moment,  the  function- 
ing of  the  productive  plant,  you  come  close 
to  an  absolute.  In  all  history  there  has 
never  been  anything  comparable  to  it,  and 
the  overall  conclusion  appears  to  be  that  a 
people  who  can  work  such  a  miracle  must 
be  sound.  Other  observations  point  the 
same  way.  Thus  rationing  has  succeeded 
better  than  there  was  any  reason  to  believe 
it  could.  In  spite  of  evasions,  violations, 
black  markets,  bellyaching,  and  small 
rebellions,  the  public  has  accepted  regi- 
mentation, has  endured  inequities  and 
dislocations  good-humoredly,  and  has 
made  the  system  work  with  an  effective- 
ness that  indicates  a  high  degree  of 
self-discipline. 

Or  again,  one  noisome  kind  of  war 
hysteria  that  the  elders  among  us  can 
remember  from  1917  has  been  almost 
entirely  absent.  The  headlines  in  the  ru- 
ral press  have  reported  no  contamination 
of  the  local  waterworks  by  enemy  agents. 
Small  shopkeepers  named  Schmidt  have 
not  had  their  windows  broken.  German 
is  still  taught  in  the  schools,  pacifists  are 
not  mobbed  when  they  voice  their  beliefs 
in  public,  the  prohibitionists  have  got 
nowhere,  holy  jehads  of  the  fanatical  peter 
out  in  public  laughter.  And  so  on: 
anyone  can  gather  quantities  of  evidence 
which  shows  that  the  American  people  are 
in  excellent  health. 

And  also  anyone  can  gather  quantities 
of  evidence  on  the  other  side.  Much 
the  most  alarming  of  it  is  the  spread  and 
intensification  of  racial  tension,  specifically 
Jim-Crowism    and     anti-Semitism.     The 


press,  which  is  in  a  daily  rage  about  the 
much  less  serious  question  of  labor  dis- 
turbances, handles  this  issue  with  a 
tenderness  that  comes  close  to  suppression 
— and  the  press  can  remark  that  political 
and  social  leadership  is  dodging  it  just  as 
earnestly.  No  one  need  look  beyond  his 
own  Main  Street  for  further  evidence  of 
deterioration.  The  increase  in  juvenile 
delinquency  is  notorious;  that  means  not 
only  crime  but  the  breakdown  of  sexual 
ethics  as  well.  But  sexual  promiscuity  has 
increased  not  only  among  boys  and  girls  of 
sixteen;  it  has  enormously  increased 
among  older  people  and  has  put  greater 
strains  on  the  institutions  of  marriage  and 
the  family  than,  in  America  at  least,  have 
ever  been  put  on  them  before.  The 
churches  say  that  a  revival  of  religion  is 
going  on.  But  there  has  also  been  a 
revival  of  spiritualism,  astrology,  and 
other  kinds  of  mystical  disease,  a  revival  so 
widespread  as  to  suggest  that  a  sizable  part 
of  the  public  has  broken  under  the  war 
strains.  There  are  many  lesser  symptoms: 
gambling,  brief  compulsive  fads  in  dress  or 
slang  or  dancing,  similar  fads  in  crack- 
brained  dogma,  Utopian  vision,  night- 
marish prophecy. 

None  of  this  is  new.  The  realities  of 
war  are  mostly  hideous  and  this  is  one  of 
them.  In  war  men,  women,  and  children 
are  killed — killed  in  ways  so  horrible  that 
they  blaspheme  against  the  spirit  and  the 
decency  of  the  body.  In  war  men, 
women,  and  children  die  of  starvation  and 
disease;  other  men,  women,  and  children 
have  their  souls  and  bodies  maimed  by 
terror  and  malnutrition.  In  war  many 
private  and  social  constraints  break  down. 
In  all  wars  sexual  ethics  have  deteriorated, 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


345 


gambling  and  speculation  have  raged 
hysterically,  dreads  have  risen  from  the 
unconscious  mind  to  stalk  the  earth,  grief 
and  fear  have  sought  relief  in  super- 
naturalism.  The  expectation  is  that  this 
time,  as  before,  peace  will  begin  a 
process  of  restoration — that  sanity,  de- 
cency, public  and  private  control  are 
normal  and  will  reassert  their  health  when 
the  war  ends. 

BUT  this  war  has  begotten  one  fear 
I  which  seems  altogether  new.  It  is  not 
often  acknowledged.  It  has  had  little 
public  expression,  little  direct  expression 
even  in  private.  It  has  to  be  sought  in 
overtones,  between  the  lines,  as  an  implica- 
tion and  inference,  as  a  subtle  coloration  or 
an  impalpable  envelope — but  it  exists  and 
it  may  well  be  the  most  truly  terrifying 
phenomenon  of  the  war.  It  is  a  fear  of 
the  coming  of  peace. 

It  is  too  complex  for  analysis  here.  I 
disregard  the  elements  which  signify  fear 
of  our  future  intercourse  with  other 
nations  and  consider  only  a  few  of  the 
purely  domestic  constituents.  The  fear  is 
that,  terrible  as  the  war  is,  the  coming 
peace  will  make  these  war  years  seem  to 
have  been  a  time  of  quiet,  order,  and 
optimism.  That,  ghastly  as  the  problems 
of  war  are,  the  problems  of  peace  will 
prove  worse.  That,  whatever  the  war 
may  have  done  to  us,  it  has  kept  us  com- 
paratively united,  comparatively  of  one 
purpose,  comparatively  effective  as  a 
society.  That,  once  the  external  disci- 
pline of  war  is  relaxed,  there  will  be  grave 
danger  of  our  collapsing  into  disorder, 
disunity,  civil  and  social  strife.  That 
whereas  war  has  brought  us  hope,  or  at 
least  courage,  the  coming  peace  may  bring 
despair. 

In  part  it  is  a  fear  of  the  unknown  in 
economics.  A  significant  fraction  of  the 
public  disbelieves  altogether  in  the  Utopia 
of  the  advertisers — that  aseptic  world  of 
tinted  plastics  which  at  no  cost  and  with 
no  friction  is  going  to  confer  on  every 
American  family  an  electronically  heated 
house,  a  teardrop  helicopter  with  folding 
wings,  a  television  set  which  presents  a 
movie  actress  (in  scanties  wondrously 
compounded  of  sea  water  and  coal  gas) 
gargling  with  Listerine  before  our  very 


eyes,  regular  week  ends  by  stratosphere 
plane  in  the  South  Seas,  and  a  sexually 
athletic  old  age.  The  conversion  of  the 
industrial  plant  to  peace  gives  many 
people  no  such  vision.  Instead  it  makes 
them  wonder  whether  the  new  energies 
loosed  in  America  by  that  plant  can  be 
controlled,  whether  their  arrest  and  re- 
direction can  be  managed  without  a 
catastrophe,  whether  an  economy  of  peace 
can  be  effected  in  time  to  keep  them  from 
bringing  the  house  down  round  our  ears. 
What  (in  one  kind  of  question)  is  going  to 
happen  to  millions  of  women  workers,  to 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  mechanical 
specialists  trained  for  civilian  war  work 
and  other  hundreds  of  thousands  trained 
by  the  Army  and  Navy?  What  (in 
another  kind  of  question)  is  going  to 
happen  as  the  result  of  the  erection  of  steel 
mills  in  the  Far  West,  the  relocation  of 
heavy  industries  in  parts  of  the  country 
that  never  had  them  before,  the  surplus  of 
machine  tools,  the  obsolescence  of  raw 
materials,  processes,  and  products  that 
have  heretofore  been  basic  in  our  econ- 
omy? Such  questions  transcend  the  com- 
mon one,  "Are  we  going  to  be  able  to 
maintain  full  employment?"  They  make 
it  seem  simple,  sweet,  and  almost  meaning- 
less. 

In  part  the  fear  of  peace  is  a  social  fear. 
War  is  a  closed  retort  in  which  many 
things  are  brought  to  a  boil  but  kept 
safely  contained  by  exterior  pressure. 
What  will  happen  when  that  pressure  is 
removed?  Labor,  for  instance.  Some 
people  are  afraid  that  the  transformations, 
shifts,  unemployment,  and  unpredicta- 
bility of  early  peace  will  convince  powerful 
interests  that  the  time  has  come  to  turn  the 
clock  back  at  last  and  break  the  labor 
movement  once  and  for  all.  Others  are 
afraid  that  labor  will  see  things  in  the 
same  light  and  decide  that  if  we  mean  to 
have  a  war  it  might  as  well  begin  here  and 
now.  Chaos  is  latent  in  such  possibilities, 
and  they  are  not  unique.  I  have  al- 
luded to  Jim-Crowism  and  anti-Semitism. 
Some  people  remember  how  the  Ku  Klux 
Klan  fed  on  postwar  emotions  twenty-odd 
years  ago.  Such  explosives  have  grown 
far  more  powerful  now.  Can  interested 
parties  in  the  United  States  forge  racial  and 
religious  hatred  into  such  deadly  instru- 


346 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ments  as  we  have  undertaken  to  destroy 
abroad?  Is  something  Hke  the  Civil  War 
going  to  be  fought  out  in  modern  terms, 
over  the  Negro  again,  or  in  suppression  of 
Jews  or  CathoHcs?  '' Some  people  think 
that  there  is  reason  to  fear  it  may  be,  in  a 
South  that  is  obviously  on  the  prod  and 
in  the  industrial  metropolises  of  the  North. 
Other  sectional  tensions  have  grown 
severe  also,  quite  apart  from  race  and 
religion.  The  South  is  proclaiming  that 
it  will  no  longer  submit  to  exploitation, 
the  Far  West  that  it  is  done  with  bank- 
ruptcy; here  is  another  hell's  brew  coming 
to  a  boil. 

A  NOTHER  element  of  this  general  fear  has 
y^  been  almost  completely  inhibited, 
but  such  suppression  only  makes  it  more 
ominous.  It  is  fear  of  the  returning 
veterans.  Probably  the  reports  of  cor- 
respondents interpret  the  correspondents 
more  than  the  military,  but  for  what  they 
are  two  reports  are  common.  One  says 
that  the  men  in  foreign  service  want  to 
come  back  to  the  country  they  left,  which 
is  quite  impossible  since  that  country  has 
changed  forever.  The  other  says  that, 
not  liking  what  they  hear  about  home, 
they  intend  to  come  back  and  remake  it  in 
accordance  with  their  preferences.  Few 
doubt  that  the  men  who  have  saved  the 
country  will  be  entitled  to  run  it.  Fewer 
doubt  that  they  are  going  to.  But  just 
how,  in  what  ways,  and  to  what  ends? 
Every  war  sets  soldiers  and  civilians 
against  one  another,  creating  a  cleavage 
between  them.  In  the  United  States  up 
to  now  that  cleavage  has  never  been  final. 
But  it  could  be  final  now. 

Never  before  has  so  large  a  percentage 
of  our  citizens  been  in  the  military  services. 
Never  before  have  our  soldiers  and  sailors 
had  to  serve  so  long.  If  you  train  ten 
million  men  in  violence,  destruction,  and 
the  negation  of  all  law,  how  many  are  you 
conditioning  permanently?  If  they  de- 
vote from  two  to  five  years  of  their  lives  to 
war,  how  many  of  them  will  be  incapable 
of  adjusting  to  peace?  How  many  person- 
alities will  be  permanently  changed,  how 
many  degraded,  how  many  frustrated 
forever?  How  many  veterans  must  be  a 
charge  on  the  nation  till  they  die?  How 
many  others  will  believe  themselves  en- 


titled to  be  such  a  charge?  These  are 
uncomfortable  questions  but  there  is  a 
more  disturbing  one.  Even  a  loosely 
united  group  of  ten  million  can  certainly 
run  the  country — how  far  are  they  going  to 
think  of  themselves  as  the  country?  Will 
they  make  permanent  and  impassable  the 
cleavage  between  themselves  and  the 
civilians? 

There  are  large  interests  at  home  which 
can  profit  by  encouraging  themx  to  do  so. 
One  nationally  read  columnist  is  working 
out  a  platform  before  our  eyes.  Address- 
ing himself  to  an  Army  and  Navy  already 
disturbed  by  the  stories  they  hear  of  strikes, 
black  markets,  profiteering,  and  civilian 
lethargy,  he  is  sketching  a  course  of  action 
step  by  step.  His  serial  message  to  our 
fighters  runs  like  this:  the  Administration 
is  corrupt,  incompetent,  and  conspiring  to 
establish  communism;  Congress  is  power- 
less, venal,  cowardly,  and  ignorant;  labor 
has  sold  you  out,  caring  nothing  about 
your  slaughter  so  long  as  it  can  raise 
wages;  even  business,  in  which  alone 
patriotism  and  intelligence  might  have 
been  expected,  has  turned  swinish  and 
betrayed  you.  The  home  front  has 
collapsed,  he  informs  the  services,  the 
country  is  in  a  fearful  mess  and  that  mess 
is  getting  worse.  It  is  up  to  you,  the 
veterans,  to  come  home  and  clean  it  up. 
If  he  were  to  remember  certain  organiza- 
tions once  called  Soldiers'  and  Work- 
ers' Councils,  he  would  repudiate  them 
in  high-church  Liberty-League  horror. 
Nevertheless  he  is  drawing  up  blueprints 
for  Soldiers'  and  Sailors'  Councils. 

Some  people  are  afraid  that  we  will  get 
them,  though  of  course  not  in  that  form. 
The  political  mechanisms  of  the  United 
States  work  otherwise.  But  it  is  always 
possible  for  power  to  grow  by  alliance,  for 
a  political  party  to  incorporate  any  bloc 
by  purchase  or  subsidy,  for  some  new 
Huey  Long  in  uniform,  or  a  dozen  Huey 
Longs,  to  point  the  way.  A  veterans'  bloc 
resolved  to  clean  up  the  mess,  or  merely 
resolved  to  get  what  it  considered  its  due, 
might  be  seduced,  exhorted,  or  merely 
bribed  to  support  a  war  on  labor,  to  in- 
flame Jim-Crowism  or  anti-Semitism,  to 
effect  any  combination  of  the  possibilities 
that  seem  so  evil.  Quite  certainly  efforts 
to  seduce,  exhort,  or  buy  it  will  be  made, 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


347 


repeatedly  and  in  many  forms.  The  two 
political  parties  may  bid  against  each  other 
for  the  largest  bloc  of  votes  in  our  history. 
Either  may  absorb  that  bloc  as  a  whole  or 
in  great  part.  Either  may  be  absorbed  in 
it. 

Is  THERE  a  common  denominator  to  all 
these  fears?  If  there  is,  it  would  seem 
:  to  be  a  teaching  of  experience,  that  there  is 
a  tendency  for  a  nation  at  war  to  turn  into 
the  thing  which  it  is  fighting.  Primarily 
we  are  fighting  totalitarianism  and  im- 
perialism. There  is  no  blinking  the  fact 
that  either,  or  a  blend  of  both,  would 
provide  a  persuasively  easy  answer  to  the 
problems  of  peace.  Totalitarianism  is  a 
way  of  maintaining  a  kind  of  social 
discipline,  imperialism  is  a  way  of  running 
the  productive  plant  under  full  steam. 
As  peace  comes  on,  both  ways  are  certain 
to  be  tricked  out  with  attractive  decora- 
tions. The  fear  of  peace  seems  to  be  a 
fear  that  the  decorations  may  prove  too 
attractive  to  be  resisted. 

There  would  be  no  point  in  summing  up 
the  other  side  in  a  final  optimistic  para- 
graph. It  is  true  that,  historically,  the 
fear  is  not  justified.  Through  more  than 
a  century  and  a  half  the  social,  economic, 
and  political  institutions  of  the  United 
States  have  withstood  the  strains  put  upon 
them — have  adapted  themselves  to  funda- 
mental changes  while  maintaining  the  es- 


sential liberties  and  immunities  that  have 
quite  literally  made  this  society  the  hope  of 
the  world.  On  all  sides  there  is  abundant 
evidence  to  suggest  that  vigor  and  flexi- 
bility remain  to  us,  that  this  time  also  we 
shall  l)e  able  to  hold  our  society  together 
and  keep  on  the  road  which  still  seems  to 
be  the  best  road.  Looking  round,  one 
cannot  see  that  any  other  nation  has  so 
good  a  chance  as  ours. 

Nevertheless,  the  fear  is  something  new 
under  the  American  sun.  Fear  of  the 
future  and  fear  of  peace  are  new  elements 
in  the  consciousness  of  a  nation  which  has 
usually  thought  of  the  future  as  its  own 
domain  and  of  peace  as  its  particular 
mission.  The  first  necessity  would  be  to 
acknowledge  the  fears  and  whatever  facts 
may  have  begotten  them,  drag  them  into 
the  open,  and  face  them.  Our  leadership 
has  been  too  much  engaged  in  rallying  us 
to  a  courage  which  we  already  had  abun- 
dantly, the  courage  for  war.  It  has  been 
intent  on  telling  us  that  we  might  lose  the 
war  at  home,  whereas  we  may  easily  lose 
the  peace  at  home  and  not  merely  from  a 
rebirth  of  isolationism  but  from  simple 
failure  to  trust  our  own  strength.  It  is  the 
duty  of  journalism  to  turn  the  light  on 
those  sources  of  potential  failure,  to  rouse 
us  to  a  knowledge  alike  of  good  and  evil 
in  ourselves,  to  summon  us  to  wisdom;  to 
break  the  phantasy  of  suicide  at  a  moment 
when  we  are  conquering  the  world. 


UT} 


THE   CAMPAIGN  FOR  THE   SOLOMONS 
NO.   1.  BLOODY   ISLAND 

FLETCHER    PRATT 


THE  initiative  in  war  is  a  useful  but 
evanescent  asset,  residing  chiefly  in 
the  mind  of  the  commander,  and  per- 
mitting him  to  decide  no  more  than  on 
what  terms  the  next  engagement  shall  be 
fought.  At  Pearl  Harbor  the  Japs  had 
gained  a  wide  strategic  initiative  in  the 
Pacific.  That  they  used  it  to  increase 
their  material  resources  by  the  seizure  of 
an  island-and-water  empire  in  the  Indies 
is  incidental  in  its  strategic  significance. 
These  resources  could  be  translated  into 
military  power  only  at  the  close  of  a  long 
period  of  development.  The  whole  ques- 
tion of  the  war  was  who  should  do  the 
developing. 

The  important  immediate  strategic 
facts  were  that  the  Japanese  had  in  a 
practical  sense  destroyed  the  Allied  forces 
opposing  the  southern  and  weakest  face 
of  their  triangular  empire;  and  that  from 
observation  posts  in  the  region  of  Singa- 
pore and  the  Solomon  Islands  they  could 
detect  any  effort  to  form  new  Allied  con- 
centrations in  the  south. 

The  enemy  possessed  an  initiative  rest- 
ing on  a  consciousness  that  their  forces 
were  not  tied  down  by  a  strategic  neces- 
sity for  defense  and  that  their  methods 
were  sound.  This  initiative  was  by  no 
means  destroyed  at  Coral  Sea,  which  was 
a  tactical,  not  a  strategic  defeat — inflicted, 
so  to  speak,  in  defiance  of  the  laws  of 


gravity.  With  the  mobile  forces  then 
available,  they  could  have  repeated  the 
attempt  of  May,  1942,  to  gain  a  lodg- 
ment at  New  Caledonia  or  in  eastern 
Australia  a  month  later  with  chances  of 
success  even  improved,  because  they  were 
now  informed  of  the  strength  and  charac- 
ter of  our  counter-measures. 

At  this  point  one  runs  into  the  over- 
advertised  mystery  of  Oriental  thought 
process.  Modern  Japan  is  an  exempli- 
fication of  Mahan's  general  theory  of  sea 
power;  it  is  also  the  only  maritime  nation 
by  which  his  special  theory  of  the  means  of 
attaining  sea  power  is  completely  rejected. 
No  Japanese  plan  of  campaign  ever  called 
for  a  great  slugging  sea  battle.  Their 
method  is  a  kind  of  naval  encirclement, 
aimed  at  the  enemy's  less  obvious  re- 
sources, particularly  in  bases,  till  he  ap- 
proaches any  contest  enfeebled,  with  less 
than  his  paper  strength.  After  Coral  Sea 
it  was  evident  that  the  Japanese  could 
make  further  progress  in  the  southwest 
Pacific  only  at  the  price  of  a  head-on  clash 
with  our  fleet.  They  used  the  initiative 
they  still  had  for  the  move  on  Midway  to 
cut  that  fleet  from  its  main  harbor,  and 
when  the  night  of  June  6th  closed  in,  the 
initiative  was  gone. 

The  loss  was  evidently  a  temporary 
one,  resting  partly  on  the  fact  that  the 
Japanese    High    Command    would    need 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


349 


time  to  analyze  the  causes  of  these  two 
uirprising  successive  defeats,  partly  on  the 
material  loss  in  aircraft  carriers — a  class 
jf  vessel  round  which  their  sea  operations 
had  hitherto  revolved.  They  were  com- 
pleting more  carriers;  the  appearance  of 
these  new  ships  or  a  reorientation  of  their 
strategy  to  be  less  dependent  on  carriers 

-cither  would  enable  our  enemies  to 
determine  the  nature  and  locale  of  the 
next  campaign.  In  the  meantime  we 
ourselves  could  make  that  determination; 
but  only  if  we  attacked  at  once,  with 
whatever  forces  could  be  rapidly  as- 
sembled, no  elaborate  planning;  and  only 
if  we  converted  this  temporary  initiative 
into  a  permanent  one  by  attacking  some- 
thing so  interesting  to  the  Japs  that  they 
would  be  forced  to  abandon  other  plans 
in  order  to  defend  or  to  retake  it. 

These  would  appear  to  be  the  main  con- 
cepts behind  Admiral  King's  decision  to 
go  into  the  Solomons.  A  series  of  con- 
siderations limited  the  incidence  of  the 
offensive.  Along  the  Indonesian  barrier 
from  the  Solomons  to  Sumatra  we  had  no 
initiative  because  we  could  achieve  no 
surprise.  A  move  against  the  Marshalls 
would  not  have  fulfilled  the  strategic  ob- 
jective because  the  Japs  could  simply 
ignore  it  and  go  on  with  any  plan  of  at- 
tack they  themselves  had;  one  toward 
Wake  and  Marcus  would  have  stirred  up 
the  hornets  indeed,  but  too  many  of  them. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  in  July,  1942, 
we  could  bring  to  any  struggle  in  the 
Pacific  only  forces  approximately  equal 
to  those  of  the  Japs  (provided  the  lines  of 
communication  were  about  the  same 
length). 

The  most  astonishing  feature  of  the 
Solomons  campaign,  in  fact,  was  that  the 
Japs  did  not  anticipate  it.  They  knew 
full  well  that  we  had  established  base 
facilities  at  Noumea,  New  Caledonia,  and 
at  Espiritu  Santo  in  the  New  Hebrides; 
their  submarines  had  been  off  these  places. 
Our  airplanes  had  been  over  Guadal- 
canal; they  must  have  been  aware  that  we 
had  seen  the  landing  strip  they  were 
building  there,  and  they  would  have  been 
idiots  if  they  did  not  think  that  we  could 
calculate  how  both  Noumea  and  Espiritu 
Santo  would  be  under  the  cloud  of  their 
bombers    when    the    strip    was    finished. 


The  only  tenable  theory  is  that  they  did 
not  think  that  we  had  stuff  to  come  in  on 
them  at  the  only  point  geographically 
possible. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  didn't.  The 
Japs  could  put  in  as  much  as  they  chose 
of  their  navy  and  the  air  forces  supporting 
it  and  their  army,  running  them  by  easy 
stages  from  Truk  to  Rabaul  and  down  the 
Solomons  chain.  They  could  use  as  many 
troops  as  necessary,  and  our  submarines 
had  not  yet  cut  their  transport  fleet  to  the 
point  where  it  had  to  be  hoarded. 

In  the  Atlantic  the  German  submarine 
campaign  was  at  its  height.  We  were  on 
the  threshold  of  the  battles  for  North 
Africa;  all  the  well-trained  troops  and  the 
fast  Army  planes  were  needed  for  that 
enterprise.  Admiral  Nimitz  at  Pearl  Har- 
bor had  been  notified  that  his  allotment  of 
cargo  ships  and  anti-submarine  craft,  al- 
ready down  near  the  safety  margin  for 
mere  defense,  would  have  to  be  cut  in- 
stead of  increased.  For  the  land  opera- 
tions only  the  First  Division  of  Marines 
could  be  spared,  much  crowded  in  inade- 
quate transports.  At  sea  there  was  one 
of  the  new,  fast  battleships;  three  carriers 
with  all  their  planes — Wasp,  Hornet,  Sarato- 
ga *  — about  three  divisions  of  heavy  cruis- 
ers, one  of  them  borrowed  from  the  Mac- 
Arthur  command  in  Australia;  a  few  light 
cruisers;  and  not  enough  destroyers. 

Among  commanders  we  had  Major 
General  A.  A.  Vandegrift  of  the  Marines 
on  land  and  on  the  water  Vice-Admiral 
Robert  L.  Ghormley,  Vice-Admiral  Frank 
Fletcher,  and  Rear  Admiral  Richmond 
Kelly  Turner.  Fletcher  had  been  at  Coral 
Sea;  we  know  him.  Ghormley  was  a 
sailor's  sailor,  as  they  speak  of  a  ball- 
player's player.  His  social  contacts  were 
few;  his  vocabulary  was  considered  the 
most  purple  in  a  service  where  good  swear- 
ing is  valued  as  an  art;  his  conversation 
was  naval  shop;  he  had  few  friends  among 
the  younger  officers  who  had  not  heard 
him  talk;  he  was  known  as  the  General 
Board's  man,  with  a  perception,  depth, 
and   grasp  of  principle  that  left  people 

*  The  presence  of  Wasp  and  Hornet  has  been  an- 
nounced and  the  fact  that  the  third  carrier  cele- 
brated the  200,000th  landing  on  her  deck.  The 
Ranger  was  the  only  other  carrier  then  in  commis- 
sion and  she  was  altogether  too  small  and  new  to 
have  had  200,000  landings  at  that  time. 


350 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


astonished.  In  this  campaign  he  was  not 
a  leader  in  the  field  war;  he  had  general 
command  of  the  area,  back  at  the  base — 
a  good  place  for  a  thinker. 

Admiral  Turner''  was  his  antithesis — 
known  in  the  service  as  "Terrible  Turner," 
a  sundowner,  a  hard,  driving  personal 
leader  who  expected  everyone  to  live  up 
to  his  own  impossible  standards,  precise, 
exacting.  In  his  days  as  head  of  the  War 
Plans  Division  of  the  Navy  Department  in 
peacetime,  he  habitually  made  appoint- 
ments to  see  people  at  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening  and  later;  his  would  be  the  only 
light  burning  in  the  long  ramshackle  build- 
ing on  Constitution  Avenue.  This  time 
he  had  the  amphibious  force,  with  the  del- 
icate assignment  of  making  it  possible  for 
the  Marines  to  land  and  seeing  that  no  one 
interfered  with  them  till  they  were  in  full 
possession.  Admiral  Fletcher  had  the  cov- 
ering group,  that  is,  the  carriers  and  their 
attendant  ships,  to  keep  off  long-range, 
large-scale  interference. 

II 

THE  Solomons  run  over  five  hundred 
miles  from  northwest  to  southeast. 
Guadalcanal,  the  southeasternmost  but 
one,  the  size  of  a  fattish  Long  Island,  is 
unique  in  being  the  scene  of  a  very  funny 
story  by  Jack  London  ("The  Terrible 
Solomons")  and  in  having  a  rolling  plain 
along  its  northern  shore,  behind  which 
the  ridges  rise  up  to  typical  Solomons 
country — jagged  limestone  mountains  in 
which  the  tropical  rains  have  worn  caves 
and  ravines,  covered  with  dense  jungle 
growth.  The  only  things  that  live  there 
are  gorgeous  birds,  insects  which  doubt- 
less consider  themselves  gorgeous,  and  the 
"gooks,"  fuzzy-looking  natives  who  are 
good  Presbyterians  or  good  Catholics, 
sometimes  both  at  once.  The  plain,  called 
Lunga,  is  the  reason  why  the  Japs  moved 
in.  It  is  the  only  place  within  three  hun- 
dred miles  (the  extreme  range  of  a  fighter) 
where  an  airfield  can  readily  be  built  by 
hand  labor. 

There  is  no  harbor.  Cargo  vessels  must 
lie  out  a  mile  or  so  and  lighter  their  loads 
in,  but  the  holding  ground  is  good  and  the 
anchorage  fairly  well  protected  by  Florida 
Island,  some  twenty  miles  north,  which  is 


precipitous  to  the  water  and  useless  foi 
any  other  purpose.  Between  the  two  at  the 
eastern  end  submerged  reefs  pinch  in  the 
narrow  Sealark  Channel;  it  broadens  west- 
ward like  a  funnel  and  precisely  in  the' 
center  of  the  funnel  mouth  the  little  round 
island  of  Savo  sticks  its  volcanic  snout  out 
of  the  sea. 

Florida  curves;  inside  the  curve  toward 
Guadalcanal    lie    other    islands — Tulagi,! 
Gavutu,  Tanambogo — enclosing  the  fine, 
deep  Tulagi  Harbor,  where  a  navy  could 
lie  and  take  care  of  itself  if  the  shore  es- ' 
tablishments  were  all  right.     With  Gua-j 
dalcanal's  air  cover,  it  makes  one  of  the 
best  naval  base  sites  in  the  world,  provided 
one  overlooks  the  climate. 

Before  the  day  on  August  7,  1942,  our 
approaching  fleet  ran  out  of  a  region  of 
heavy  weather  that  had  given  it  good  con- 
cealment on  the  way  down,  and  the  navi- 
gating officers  began  to  take  starsights.  A 
correspondent  has  commented  that  there 
was  no  special  early  breakfast,  nothing 
unusual  about  this  approach  to  batde.  ' 
The  men  were  veterans  now;  they  had  seen 
before  the  line  of  flickering  blue  lights 
across  the  deck  of  the  carrier  ahead  where 
her  planes  were  warming  up,  had  seen  i 
them  move  up  and  away;  and  even  seen 
the  one  that  went  down  instead,  to  leave 
nothing  but  a  memory  and  a  ripple  on  the 
black  water.  The  carriers  and  their  reti- 
nue had  split  apart  from  the  rest,  running 
wide  for  the  waters  south  of  Guadalcanal 
to  have  sea  room  when  the  Jap  bombers  . 
should  come  down  from  Rabaul.  A  de- 
stroyer blinkered  to  a  carrier  about  a 
torpedo  wake  under  her  stern.  "Thanks," 
replied  the  carrier;  "we  just  saw  a  black- 
fish  in  the  vicinity." 

Far  to  the  west,  though  these  men  knew 
nothing  of  it.  Flying  Fortresses  from  the 
Mac  Arthur  command  were  at  that  mo- 
ment close  over  Rabaul.     The  same  first    ^j 
light   through   which   our  carrier   planes     ! 
were  approaching  their  objective  would     | 
see  these  bombers  hammering  the  hangars 
and    runways    and    dispersal    areas    with 
everything  they  had  to  keep  the  Japs  at 
home.     In  that  first  light  Admiral  Turner 
was  rounding  the  northern  cape  of  Florida 
with  his  cruisers.     There  was  a  Jap  signal 
station  there  with  a  radio  mast;  the  Quincy 
opened  the  first  gun  of  the  campaign  and 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


351 


brought  down  that  mast  so  rapidly  that  it 
probably  never  got  ofT  a  warning  of  our 
approach,  though  there  was  some  grum- 
bHng  on  the  flagship  about  this — they 
wanted  to  capture  the  station  and  use  it  as 
a  communications  Hnk  with  Pearl  Harbor. 

The  fleet  spHt  as  it  entered  the  funnel- 
mouth  of  Scalark  Channel,  the  Astoria, 
Qiiincy,  and  Vincennes  with  the  Australians' 
Canberra  heading  toward  the  Guadalcanal 
side,  while  their  Australia,  bearing  the  flag 
of  Vice-Admiral  V.  A.  C.  Crutchley,  com- 
mander of  the  cruiser  force,  with  the 
Hobart  and  about  three  of  our  cruisers 
stood  toward  Tulagi. 

It  was  six  o'clock;  the  island  stood  out 
clear  in  the  long-shadowed  early  dawn. 
Just  seventeen  minutes  later  the  Astoria 
opened  fire  against  Guadalcanal,  and  as 
though  the  sound  had  called  them  up,  our 
"dive-bombers  started  to  streak  over. 
There  seemed  to  be  hundreds  of  them." 
They  hit  first  at  the  seaplanes  floating  in 
Tulagi  Harbor  and  the  Japs  were  crushed 
without  getting  a  single  machine  into  the 
air,  so  complete  was  the  surprise,  so  rapidly 
had  the  Quincfs  guns  cleared  out  the 
warning  station.  The  Wasp^s  group  alone 
knocked  out  nine  float  Zeros,  a  four- 
motored  bomber,  and  five  big  flying  boats. 

At  Guadalcanal,  where  the  strongest  re- 
sistance had  been  expected  round  the  air- 
field and  to  which  the  heaviest  dive- 
bomber  formations  had  been  assigned,  the 
Japs  proved  surprisingly  weak.  The  com- 
bination of  heavy  guns  and  bombs  silenced 
their  shore  batteries  and  killed  off  their 
anti-aircraft  fire  so  thoroughly  and  so  fast 
that  at  seven  o'clock,  a  whole  hour  before 
the  scheduled  time,  the  transports  moved 
in  and  the  Marines  had  their  boats  in  the 
water.  At  eight  they  formed  up  and 
pushed  to  the  shore  toward  where  the 
mouths  of  two  little  rivers,  Ilu  and  Tenaru, 
offered  practicable  beaches. 

There  was  no  resistance  but  a  little 
dripping  sniper  fire.  Our  landing  parties 
came  on  a  camp  where  breakfasts  were 
still  cooking  and  captured  a  number  of 
weazened,  undersized  men  who  under 
questioning  turned  out  to  be  labor  troops, 
some  of  them  Korean  and  all  ill-fed. 
They  said  the  Japanese  soldiers  had  taken 
to  the  tall  grass  among  the  hills.  No  at- 
tempt was  made  on  the  airfield  that  day, 


which  was  devoted  mainly  to  getting 
equipment  ashore,  setting  up  AA  guns  and 
communications  links,  and  preparing  for  a 
push  in  the  morning.  By  ten  o'clock  the 
shooting  on  Guadalcanal  was  all  over. 

But  Tulagi  furnished  a  good  example  of 
the  fact  that  any  military  plan  can  be 
modified  by  the  enemy.  Colonel  Merritt 
Edson  had  been  assigned  to  take  it  with 
the  Raider  Battalion,  which  is  to  the 
Marines  as  a  whole  what  the  Marines  are 
to  the  ordinary  military  service — profes- 
sional tough  guys,  specialists  of  peculiar 
skill  in  the  art  of  murder.  They  got 
ashore  at  the  north  point,  reaching  the 
beach  easily  and  by  surprise,  then  began 
to  work  along  both  sides  of  the  central  keel 
of  the  island  through  tropic  brush  so  thick 
that  their  pace  was  half  a  mile  an  hour. 
Two  hours  of  this  brought  them  against 
hills  honeycombed  with  caves,  each  of 
which  held  a  machine  gun  or  bigger  piece 
surrounded  by  Japs  who  knew  and  used 
every  weapon  in  the  book.  Gunfire  from 
the  ships  was  not  very  effective  against 
these  caves  and  had  to  be  lifted  as  the 
Raiders  advanced.  When  grenades  were 
pitched  into  the  cave  mouths  the  Japs 
threw  them  out  again  or  hid  behind  in- 
terior barricades. 

Toward  afternoon  the  Marines  had 
made  so  little  progress  on  Tulagi  that  they 
stopped  and  organized  for  the  night.  At 
Gavutu  the  situation  was  much  the  same; 
and  at  Tanambogo,  which  is  reached  by  a 
causeway  from  Gavutu,  two  attacks  were 
sharply  beaten  oflf.  One  of  them  was  led 
by  tanks  and  supported  by  low-flying 
planes,  but  Jap  artillery  bracketed  the 
causeway  from  the  caves  and  we  lost  the 
tanks,  one  of  them  after  a  desperate  strug- 
gle which  left  twenty-three  dead  Japs 
round  a  single  burned-out  vehicle. 

Toward  afternoon  also  the  Jap  bombers 
did  come  storming  down  from  Rabaul — 
twenty-five  of  them  at  high  level  which 
shed  their  missiles  across  the  anchorage, 
ten  dive-bombers  that  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  decision  to  close  down 
for  the  night,  though  they  did  no  real  dam- 
age ashore.  Afloat  they  hit  a  transport 
and  the  destroyer  Jarvis,  the  latter  so  badly 
that  she  had  to  pull  out  for  Australia  and 
repairs.  No  one  ever  saw  her  again  or  the 
men  aboard;  maybe  because  a  submarine 


352 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


got  her,  maybe  because  she  just  cracked  up 
and  went  down. 

All  told  a  good  day;  loss  light  and  gain 
considerable.  * 

III 

THAT  night  the  Japs  really  started  to 
fight  the  war.  On  both  Gavutu  and 
Tulagi  they  boiled  out  of  their  holes  with 
knife,  tommy  gun,  and  grenade,  scream- 
ing "American,  you  die!"  or  just  scream- 
ing nothing  at  all.  The  Raiders  on  Tulagi 
were  tough  babies  but  except  for  a  few  in- 
credible veterans  like  Lou  Diamond  (who 
is  supposed  to  have  served  aboard  the  Bon 
Homme  Richard  under  John  Paul  Jones) 
they  had  little  physical  experience  of  war. 
The  Japs  broke  through  their  lines,  killed  a 
lot  of  men,  ruined  all  communications  ex- 
cept by  walkie-talkie,  and  isolated  one 
company.  It  was  a  blind,  savage  strug- 
gle, really  hand-to-hand,  that  would  have 
gone  the  worse  for  us  but  for  an  ex-ball- 
player named  Guidone  with  a  good  throw- 
ing arm  and  a  supply  of  grenades. 

The  yells  and  shooting  drifted  out  across 
the  water  where  the  ships  of  the  inshore 
patrol  hovered  anxiously  near,  wishful  to 
cut  in  with  their  guns  but  unable  to  get  a 
fix  on  anything  in  the  confused  melee.  All 
the  men  aboard  were  awake  and  at  Gen- 
eral Quarters,  where  they  had  been  since 
before  dawn,  taking  sandwiches,  coffee, 
and  half-hour  naps  at  their  duty  stations; 
for  Admiral  Crutchley  knew  the  Jap  habit 
of  sneak  attacks  and  did  not  want  his  ships 
in  anything  less  than  complete  readiness. 
Some  of  the  people  were  getting  pretty 
fagged,  for  at  General  Quarters  the  ven- 
tilation system  is  off"  and  such  interior 
spaces  as  the  engine  room  and  plot  were 
by  now  giving  a  fair  approximation  of  hell. 

At  dawn  the  Japs  on  the  Tulagi  side  all 
popped  back  into  their  burrows;  the  Ma- 
rines counted  corpses,  linked  up  their 
lines,  and  began  to  go  for  them.  Captain 
Harry  Torgerson  was  the  star  of  the  occa- 
sion. He  got  after  the  Jap  cave-dwellers 
by  having  four  or  five  of  his  men  cover  him 
with  rifle  fire  while  he  climbed  up  clifi' faces 
and  dumped  into  the  cave-mouths  pieces 
of  board  with  heavy  TNT  demolition 
charges  tied  to  them  and  extremely  short 
fuses  so  that  the  Japs  couldn't  throw  them 
out.     In  the  course  of  the  day  he  used  up 


twenty  cases  of  TNT  this  way  and  blew  his 
own  pants  oflf  with  a  fuse  that  was  a  little 
too  short;  but  some  fifty  caves  were 
smashed  in  on  their  Japanese  tenants. 

A  second  wave  of  tanks  got  a  foothold  on 
Tanambogo  and  that  island  was  overrun 
after  the  same  kind  of  desperate  fighting. 
On  Guadalcanal  the  first  landing  parties 
pushed  westward  and  got  a  grip  on  the  air- 
field, though  not  until  they  had  cleaned 
out  an  area  of  dugouts  and  machine-gun 
posts  behind  log  bunkers.  Noon  of  the 
8th,  in  fact,  found  us  with  a  control  of  the 
whole  area  that  was  eflfective  enough  for 
General  Vandegrift  to  set  up  his  headquar- 
ters on  shore,  though  it  was  still  far  from 
absolute.  For  two  days  afterward  single 
Jap  rifles  would  crack  on  Tulagi  and  men 
would  die  obscurely,  though  again  and 
again  Marine  patrols  quartered  every  inch 
of  the  island. 

Noon  also  saw  the  Jap  bombers  back 
from  Rabaul,  about  forty  of  them,  mostly 
torpedo  planes.  There  was  warning;  our 
carriers  out  to  the  south  had  kept  good 
watch;  the  transports  in  the  roadstead 
were  under  way  for  open  sea  with  the  war- 
ships among  them  and  fighter  patrols  over- 
head. The  attackers  swept  in  at  low 
level,  the  same  whirlwind  of  action  that 
had  been  seen  at  Coral  Sea  and  Midway, 
with  our  fighters  riding  them  down  and 
knocking  ofl*  a  good  third  of  them  before 
they  hit. 

The  others  skimmed  among  our  trans- 
ports, long  gray  pencils,  a  dozen  of  which 
trailed  smoke  and  dived  or  blew  up.  One 
of  the  dives  brought  a  dying  plane  down  on 
the  foredeck  of  the  transport  George  F.  El- 
liott, and  as  luck  would  have  it,  into  a 
hatch.  The  flame  that  burst  forth  seemed 
to  dominate  the  whole  strait;  the  Elliott 
was  already  being  abandoned  as  the  rest 
turned  back  to  their  anchorage,  the  sud- 
den storm  over.  As  the  bombers  re- 
treated our  carrier  fighters  cut  most  of  the 
rest  of  them  to  pieces;  a  mere  handful  came 
back  that  afternoon  and  were  also  shot  up. 
The  double  action  broke  the  back  of  the 
Jap  air  forces  within  the  area.  On  the  9th 
only  thirty  bombers  came,  one  single  raid; 
on  the  next  day  only  ten.  Before  they 
could  appear  in  force  again  they  had  to 
pull  in  reinforcements  from  other  areas 
and  fly  them  down  along  the  island  stages. 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


353 


y  the  night  of  the  8th  everything  was  un- 
er  control,  and  except  for  a  minor  alarm 
/hen  a  small  Jap  patrol  tried  to  work 
cross  the  Tcnaru  there  was  nothing  to 
eport. 

IV 

HAT  happened  that  night  will  be 
argued  as  long  as  Jutland.  The 
)utlines,  with  no  guarantee  of  complete- 
less,  are  something  like  this: 

In  the  afternoon  a  recon  report  ran  in 
that  a  Jap  task  force  had  been  sighted, 
bound  for  the  area.  It  included  at  least 
a  couple  of  their  fast  Kongo-class  battle 
cruisers,  some  light  stuff,  and  a  pair  of  un- 
mistakable seaplane  tenders.  Its  obvious 
'  purpose  was  to  knock  out  our  ships  and  re- 
Itake  Guadalcanal,  the  planes  from  the 
tenders  giving  local  air  cover  to  the  gun- 
nery vessels.  Now  a  seaplane  tender, 
even  in  the  Japanese  navy  wdth  its  pre- 
dilection for  speed,  is  a  relatively  slow 
craft.  Given  the  distance  they  were  com- 
ing, it  was  calculable  that  this  task  force 
could  not  arrive  till  an  hour  or  two  before 
dawn — a  highly  logical  time  for  the  Japs 
to  attack  in  any  case,  since  they  would 
seek  very  close  night  action  to  make  free 
use  of  the  torpedo  and  to  nullify  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  excellent  American  armor. 

In  our  ships  sleep  or  rest  had  been  pre- 
vented during  the  day  by  the  two  air  at- 
tacks and  the  necessity  of  firing  gunnery 
support  for  the  housecleaning  on  Tanam- 
bogo.  The  men  had  been  at  action  sta- 
tions for  seventy-two  hours,  say  some  ac- 
counts; anyhow  at  least  since  4  a.m.  of  the 
7th,  in  paralyzing  heat  and  with  little  air. 
If  they  were  to  be  more  than  half  alive  for 
an  early  morning  battle,  rest  was  impera- 
tive. On  all  the  ships,  therefore,  ''Condi- 
tion Baker"  was  set,  which  opens  ventila- 
tors, passages,  and  galleys  and  requires  the 
manning  of  only  half  the  fighting  equip- 
ment— a  wartime  condition  translatable 
into  full  General  Quarters  in  a  very  few 
minutes. 

That  was  the  internal,  housekeeping  ar- 
rangement. As  to  the  exterior  detail,  a 
destroyer  patrol  was  sent  out  to  the  wide 
part  of  the  funnel  between  Guadalcanal 
and  Florida.  It  seems  to  have  been  alto- 
gether insufficient;  but  one  of  the  funda- 
mental conditions  of  the  campaign  was 


that  it  had  to  be  undertaken  without 
enough  destroyers.  Many  were  needed 
to  protect  the  precious  carriers  to  the 
southward,  where  subs  had  already  been 
reported  nosing  around;  and  the  Jarvis 
had  gone.  Inside  this  destroyer  screen 
the  four  heavy  cruisers  that  had  covered 
the  Guadalcanal  landing — Astoria^  Quincy, 
Vincennes,  Canberra — were  on  a  low-speed, 
uneasy  patrol  from  Guadalcanal  to  the  tip 
of  Florida  and  back.  Admiral  Crutchley 
had  gone  off  in  the  Australia  for  a  confer- 
ence with  Admiral  Turner,  apparently 
some  distance  down  the  eastern  coast  of 
Guadalcanal;  he  had  left  no  one  in  charge. 
The  night  was  black  as  a  hole  in  a  box,  a 
low,  tight  overcast  masking  the  crescent 
moon. 

The  best  evidence  indicates  that  quite  a 
separate  Japanese  task  force,  estimated  by 
one  of  the  Astoria's  officers  at  three  cruisers 
and  seven  destroyers,  had  slipped  down 
into  this  pit  of  dark  so  close  under  the 
coasts  of  the  upper  Solomons  that  they  es- 
caped observation  and  just  barely  escaped 
the  reefs.  At  1:30,  give  or  take  a  little, 
they  charged  through  the  passage  south  of 
Savo  at  twenty-eight  knots.  The  sentinel 
destroyer  there  was  at  the  other  end  of  her 
too-long  beat;  her  lookouts  caught  a 
glimpse  of  the  Japs  as  they  swung  sharply 
left  to  circle  Savo,  perhaps  against  some 
flicker  of  fire  from  Tanambogo,  where 
there  was  still  a  little  yipping  going  on, 
and  she  got  off  a  radio  message.  .  .  . 
Too  late. 

At  the  same  moment  Seaman  Lynn 
Hager,  in  the  sky  control  of  Astoria,  heard 
the  growl  of  an  airplane  engine  overhead 
and  sent  word  to  the  captain.  Before  he 
had  finished  speaking  a  flare  burst  through 
the  cloud  and  went  off  with  its  cushioned 
bang,  throwing  the  four  Allied  ships  into 
brilliant  light.  A  searchlight  pinned  the 
Astoria;  there  was  a  terrific  shock  of  guns; 
the  Vincennes  was  hit  right  through  the 
hangar  and  a  fire  burst  out  on  her  amid- 
ships. Three  torpedoes  struck  the  Can- 
berra almost  together;  she  reeled  and  dived 
into  the  smoke  of  her  own  burning,  her 
guns  already  out  of  action  from  the  loss  of 
power,  firing  her  torpedoes  blindly  in  the 
general  direction  of  the  enemy. 

On  the  Quincy  a  young  officer  at  the  for- 
ward 5-inch  saw  the  searchlights  flick  on 


354 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


The  Night  Battle  Off  Savo  Island 


and  had  time  to  say,  "Oh  boy,  here  it 
comes;  we'll  knock  the  devil  out  of  those 
guys,"  and  will  never  forget  that  remark, 
for  "The  next  moment  I  saw  the  Astoria 
get  hit  and  start  to  burn  all  over,  then  the 
splashes  walk  up  on  the  Vincennes  and  she 
goes,  saw  the  airplanes  hit  and  go  up  and 
the  splashes  walk  up  on  my  own  ship;  see 
the  turrets  swing  and  open  fire.  The  next 
thing  the  forward  turrets  were  hit  and  be- 
gan to  burn  and  then  I  was  in  blood  an 
inch  deep.  When  a  thing  like  that  hap- 
pens you  realize  you  are  taking  a  hell  of  a 
beating  and  it  gives  you  a  mighty  funny 
feeling." 

Seconds  later  the  Quincy  took  a  torpedo 
hit,  and  whether  from  that  or  gunfire  the 
ship  blew  up  with  a  shock  that  roused  the 
sleeping  Marines  on  Guadalcanal,  who 
thought  it  was  a  Jap  ship  and  cheered 
happily.  She  capsized  slowly,  the  gaping 
hole  left  by  the  torpedo  rising  out  of  the 
water  past  the  heads  of  men  gripping  life 
rafts,  debris,  ammunition  cans,  anything 
that  would  float. 

On  the  Vincennes  a  man  below  speaks  of 


no  less  than  six  torpedo  hits  (though  some 
may  have  been  shells  from  big  guns);  all 
the  lights  went  out  and  the  big  cruiser 
tilted  toward  her  doom.  The  hatch  to  the 
main  deck  opened  on  an  inferno  of  flame. 
"There  were  forty-eight  men  in  that  area 
of  the  ship  and  Mr.  Hansen  said  that  those 
who  wished  to  go  could  do  so.  Nine  of  us 
got  out." 

The  Astoria  got  no  torpedoes  and  she 
was  not  quite  burning  all  over,  but  she 
was  in  bad  enough  case,  with  the  oflScers' 
country  ablaze  where  the  wooden  decks, 
transoms,  and  clothing  in  the  rooms  had 
caught  fire.  Her  No.  1  turret  was  out  of 
action,  the  ammunition  in  ready  boxes  for 
the  smaller  guns  was  going  off  from  the 
heat  and  tearing  things  to  pieces,  men  were 
dropping  out  of  the  sky  control  to  the 
deck,  and  "even  the  5-inch  shells  from  the 
Jap  destroyers  were  going  through  us  like 
cheese"  at  ranges  that  ran  down  to  little 
over  a  mile  as  the  enemy  roared  past,  tak- 
ing so  few  hits  and  giving  so  many. 

In  less  than  half  an  hour  they  were 
gone;  so  was  the  Quincy,  with  many  of  her 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


355 


woundrd  trying  to  keep  afloat  in  the  luke- 
warm water,  and  a  young  ensign  named 
Carter  swimming  around  to  gather  strays 
toward  the  life  rafts.  At  about  2:40  the 
Vincennes  went  down,  tenanted  only  by  her 
dead;  with  the  day  destroyers  came  push- 
ing through  the  wreckage  to  pick  up  sur- 
'  vivors  and  to  take  ofTthe  remaining  people 
of  the  Astoria  and  Canberra. 

For  on  the  former  their  water  mains 
were  all  gone  and  they  could  not  get  the 
fires  out  with  bucket  brigades,  though 
even  so  they  came  close  to  saving  her. 
The  Canberra  loomed  big  and  gray  in  the 
dawn,  apparently  intact  save  for  a  few 
scars,  but  her  engines  were  hopelessly 
smashed,  and  it  was  over  a  thousand  miles 
she  would  have  to  be  towed  to  the  nearest 
repair  dock.  They  had  to  scuttle  her. 
The  Japanese  had  won  their  first  real 
naval  victory  in  this  war. 


THEY  had  regained  their  initiative,  even 
though  it  was  now  a  limited  initiative 
which  they  were  required  to  use  for  one 
predictable  purpose.  In  less  than  twenty- 
four  hours  we  had  lost  over  a  quarter 
of  the  combined  American-Australian 
strength  of  nineteen  heavy  cruisers;  for  to 
make  this  disaster  complete  it  was  appar- 
ently in  the  thirty-plane  attack  of  the 
morning  after  Savo  Island  that  the  Chicago 
caught  a  torpedo  and  had  to  be  sent  to  a 
base  for  repairs. 

The  residue  of  strength  seems  to  have 
been  ample  on  our  side,  but  the  residue 
was  not  there  and  there  was  even  some 
question  whether  it  could  be  brought 
there.  The  landing  at  Casablanca  had  to 
be  given  big-gun  cover,  something  had  to 
be  spared  for  the  campaign  in  the  Aleu- 
tians, now  in  its  most  active  phase,  and  the 
carriers  had  to  be  provided  with  gunnery 
protection.  Add  this:  that  at  such  a  dis- 
tance from  base  as  our  ships  were  in  the 
Solomons,  one  in  every  three  must  be  go- 
ing in  for  normal  operational  repairs  or 
supplies — or  covering  the  movement  of 
supplies  to  the  advanced  post. 

We  had  started  the  campaign  with  an 
irreducible  minimum  of  heavy  cruiser 
strength,  all  in  the  front  line.  It  had  been 
wiped  out.     To  use  6-inch-gun  light  cruis- 


ers was  to  court  disaster  at  the  hands  of  the 
Jap  heavies  and  their  fast  battle  cruisers, 
especially  since  these  had  shown  they 
could  manage  unobserved  approaches 
down  the  chain  of  the  islands;  and  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  Admiral 
Ghormley  did  not  have  light  cruisers  at 
hand  even  had  he  wished  to  take  the 
chance. 

There  was  in  fact  no  cover  at  all  that 
could  be  given  the  beachhead  except  that 
which  could  be  provided  fitfully  and  by 
daylight  from  our  carrier  force  cruising  to 
the  south  and  that  which  the  airfield  could 
give  itself  when  our  Seabees  had  finished 
the  lumpy  coral  airstrip.  On  the  after- 
noon of  the  9th  the  transports  hastily  sent 
ashore  all  the  Marines  and  Seabees  not  yet 
landed,  hoisted  anchor,  and  were  ofT  out  of 
an  area  now  become  red-hot. 

A  few  tanks  and  anti-aircraft  guns  and 
some  engineering  equipment  had  already 
been  landed.  The  quantities  of  tentage, 
ammunition,  and  food  that  were  to  make 
this  an  expedition  fitted  out  in  the  normal 
sumptuous  American  style  had  not  been 
landed.  The  need  had  not  been  felt;  dur- 
ing the  hectic  fighting  of  the  first  few  days, 
indeed.  Marine  officers  had  been  forced  to 
plead  with  boys  in  their  first  battle,  quite 
unable  to  understand  the  physical  weak- 
ness they  were  experiencing,  to  eat  the 
canned  rations  they  had  carried  ashore  on 
their  backs.  "It  was  like  sawdust.  With 
those  Jap  snipers  shooting  at  you  from  the 
trees  you  just  don't  think  about  eating." 

Now,  as  the  Marines  of  Guadalcanal 
pushed  out  patrols  and  tommy-gunned 
coconut  trees  to  bring  down  snipers,  there 
was  little  food  left  but  captured  rice  and 
bottles  of  a  beverage  labeled  "Mitsubi- 
champagn  cider."  Also  ammunition  was 
unplentiful. 

The  Japs  seem  to  have  achieved  a  fairly 
clear  picture  of  the  situation  by  at  least  the 
12th,  when  one  of  their  big  submarines 
surfaced  by  daylight  in  Sealark  Channel  to 
find  it  empty  and  tried  to  shoot  up  a  small 
boat  crossing  from  Guadalcanal  to  Tulagi. 
But  the  original  strategic  surprise  had  been 
so  effective  and  the  enemy  had  lost  so  much 
of  their  local  strength  aloft  and  on  the 
ground  in  that  first  shock  that  they  lacked 
the  means  to  press  their  advantage — ■ 
unless  they  were  to  bring  the  cruisers  in 


356 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


again  as  on  August  8th,  to  which  the  ob- 
jection was  that  Admiral  Fletcher  lay 
somewhere  in  the  offing  with  the  carriers 
they  had  learned  to  dread.  The  Japs  had 
good  reason  to  know  these  carriers  had  not 
left  because  on  the  9th  and  again  on  the 
10th  the  Jap  "area"  planes  had  unpleasant 
and  costly  encounters  with  fighter  patrols 
from  these  ships.  Jap  reinforcements 
could  come  down  only  from  Truk  or  in 
from  the  Indies  to  the  west;  and  to  feed 
them  in  slowly  was  asking  for  their  piece- 
meal, ineffective  destruction. 

It  had  to  be  a  major  expedition.  Until 
it  arrived  the  Japs  on  Guadalcanal,  like 
our  Marines,  must  maintain  themselves 
with  what  they  had  plus  emergency  help 
sneaked  in  by  air  or  sea. 

This  accounts  for  the  desperate  charac- 
ter of  the  fighting  on  the  island  during  the 
next  two  weeks.  It  started  with  each 
party  failing  in  a  minor  enterprise:  the 
Americans  in  an  effort  to  land  near  Ma- 
tanikau  on  the  night  of  the  12th — an 
effort  from  which  only  three  men  escaped 
— the  Japs  in  several  tries  at  infiltration. 
This  was  followed  by  a  week  of  ceaseless 
small-war  during  which  each  made  dis- 
coveries about  the  other's  style  of  fight- 
ing, mostly  unpleasant.  The  Jap  learned 
that,  while  his  own  sniper  fire  was  inaccu- 
rate and  his  small  bullet  often  did  not  kill 
when  it  hit,  the  rifle  work  of  the  Marines 
was  beyond  all  expectation  deadly.  Our 
people  found  they  bunched  too  much, 
talked  too  much,  moved  too  much. 

Both  learned  that  in  those  dense  jungles 
the  eye  was  nearly  useless;  friend  could  be 
distinguished  from  foe  only  by  ear.  The 
crack  of  a  Jap  rifle  was  so  much  like  that  of 
our  .45' s  that  the  Marines  took  to  relying 
entirely  on  their  Garands  and  tommy 
guns,  since  the  direction  from  which  fire 
was  coming  offered  no  clue  as  to  who  was 
doing  the  shooting. 

By  the  18th  this  mutual  investigation 
was  over:  General  Vandegrift  ordered  an 
advance,  an  affair  of  strong  patrols, 
against  Matanikau  village,  which  was 
taken  after  some  dogged  fighting.  Tre- 
gaskis,  the  correspondent,  was  at  the  front; 
it  was  there  that  he  first  caught  a  sense  of 
the  mounting  fury  among  our  men,  when  a 
Jap  prisoner  was  led  through  the  lines  to 
an  obbligato  of  shouts:  ''Kill  the  bastard! 


Kick  him  in  the  balls!"  The  prisoner 
guard  grinned  and  conducted  the  scared 
little  man  past  Marines  who,  having  said 
how  they  felt,  turned  back  to  vent  their 
anger  on  Japs  still  in  arms.  During  that 
first  rush  into  camp  round  the  airfield  they 
had  found  a  few  pitiful  trophies — a  purse, 
a  shaving  set,  marked  with  the  names  of 
friends  who  had  been  on  Wake.  In  the 
Matanikau  combat  they  had  encountered 
wounded  Japs  who  cried  for  water,  then 
pulled  the  pins  from  grenades  and  blew 
themselves  up  with  the  men  who  came  to 
help  them,  and  fully  live  Japs  who  hoisted 
the  white  flag  and  then  shot  down  the  men 
who  rose  from  hiding  to  accept  their 
surrender. 

That  same  night  of  the  18th  saw  the  Japs 
running  in  small  transports  and  landing 
some  of  their  own  Marines  at  both  sides  of 
the  narrow  area  round  the  air  strip  for 
counterattack.  There  was  a  big  de- 
stroyer with  them;  our  men  saw  her  from 
shore  in  Sealark  Channel  the  next  morning 
and  saw  a  long-range  B17  go  for  her  and 
hit  her.  It  is  possible  that  the  Japs'  pre- 
liminary reconnaissance  for  the  big  attack 
had  shown  them  that  our  carriers  were  no 
longer  in  the  area  to  the  south,  or  they 
would  hardly  have  dared  leave  ships  in 
Sealark  Channel  by  daylight. 

An  American  patrol  knocked  off  a  hand- 
ful of  Japanese  Marines  on  the  20th;  that 
same  day  American  fighters — Grummans 
— and  light  bombers  came  down  on  the 
now-completed  landing  strip  and  the  Ma- 
rines were  mightily  cheered.  "Morale 
has  gone  up  twenty  points  this  afternoon," 
one  officer  remarked.  The  field  had  been 
named  Henderson  after  the  commander  of 
the  Marine  dive-bombers  at  Midway. 

It  was  as  well  that  those  planes  got 
there.  The  same  night  the  Japs  who  had 
landed  east  of  the  airport  came  on  in  a 
formal  if  loosely  articulated  attack,  while 
those  round  the  rest  of  the  seven-by-four- 
mile  area  held  by  the  Marines  maintained 
their  pressure  and  their  attempts  at  infil- 
tration. The  main  Jap  column  struck  our 
lines  along  the  banks  of  a  river  identified 
at  the  time  as  the  Tenaru,  from  which  the 
battle  takes  its  name  (it  later  proved  to  be 
the  Ilu),  and  tried  to  flank  them  along  a 
sandspit  at  the  river's  mouth. 

The  Japs  ran  into  barbed  wire — some  of 


358 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  equipment  the  Marines  had  landed  in- 
stead of  food;  were  surprised  by  it  and  sim- 
ply crucified.  At  dawn  the  remainder  of 
their  force  dug  inj^in  a  coconut  grove  a 
hundred  and  fifty  yards  from  our  lines  with 
the  little  stream  between.  Colonel  Cress- 
well  led  out  a  flanking  party  well  supplied 
with  mortars,  while  three  light  tanks 
crossed  the  sandspit.  The  Japs  were 
wiped  out  to  the  number  of  more  than  a 
battalion.  One  prisoner.  The  whole 
place  began  to  stink  at  once. 

The  importance  of  our  air  help  became 
apparent  that  afternoon  when  the  Japs 
tried  to  support  their  ground  offensive 
from  the  skies.  The  Grummans  drove 
them  out,  shooting  down  several,  before 
any  bombs  were  dropped  and  the  next 
afternoon  a  handful  of  Army  P40's  reached 
Henderson  Field.  They  went  out  the 
morning  after,  August  23rd,  flying  escort 
for  our  light  bombers  and  dive-bombers  in 
response  to  a  report  of  a  Jap  naval  move- 
ment out  to  the  north,  but  came  back  dis- 
appointed by  lowering  weather  and  that 
night  were  shelled  in  their  dispersal  areas 
by  a  Jap  sub  that  surfaced  in  Sealark 
Channel. 

VI 

NEVERTHELESS  the  report  was  the  goods. 
Out  round  the  fifteen-hundred-mile 
semicircle  from  Rabaul  to  the  Gilberts  our 
reconnoitering  planes  and  submarines  had 
caught  for  a  week  fleeting  glimpses  under 
fire  of  Japanese  ships  moving,  moving. 
It  was  the  counter-concentration  to  retake 
Guadalcanal  before  it  could  become  an- 
other Pearl  Harbor,  and  on  the  24th  of 
August  it  came  sweeping  down. 

The  Jap  force  was  nearly  as  powerful  as 
the  wave  that  had  broken  on  the  beaches 
of  Midway,  but  there  is  evidence  that  it 
was  an  emergency  fleet,  hastily  assembled. 
One  of  its  carriers  was  the  shallow-draft 
Ryujyo,  built  for  operation  off"  the  coast  of 
China  and  not  at  home  in  great  waters;  its 
battleship  cover  was  by  the  slow  Mutsu 
class,  not  the  high-speed  Kongos  which  the 
Japs  normally  use  to  support  such  moves. 

The  fleet  came  swinging  down  from  the 
north  under  the  clouds  of  a  weather  front 
in  a  formation  designed  to  prevent  such 
surprises  as  that  of  the  4th  of  June — a  long 
chain  of  cruisers  and  destroyers  in  visual 


contact  with  each  other  at  the  edge  of  tb 
cloud  area,  the  carriers  and  their  guarcj 
hanging  like  a  series  of  pendants  from  thin 
chain. 

Where  our  forces  were  before  the  battlei 
is  not  clear;  they  were  probably  at  some 
distance.     They  came  rushing  toward  the 
contact,   apparently  from  the  southeast/; 
through  a  region  of  clear  skies  and  small 
clouds   with   whitecaps   beneath,   on  the 
morning  of  the  24th,  a  two-carrier  group:! 
Saratoga  and  the  indestructible  and   for-*! 
tunate  Enterprise,  shooting  out  scout  planes  i 
to  supplement  those  from  Guadalcanal.! 
There  were  some  long-range  Army  planes^ 
about,  which  must  have  come  from  as  far' 
as  Noumea,  since  there  are  no  other  islands ' 
in  that  part  of  the  world.     The  carrier 
group  apparently  found  the  easternmost 
pendant  early  in  the  morning,  the  one  with 
the  Ryujyo  in  it.     The  picture  of  the  Jap 
chain  and  its  other  nodules  had  not  yet 
come  clear  to  our  commander  of  the  day, 
Admiral   Thomas    C.    Kinkaid,    but   the 
Army  men  were  locating  another  group 
far  to  the  west  with  two  big  carriers  and  a 
battleship  in  it. 

Kinkaid  had  been  at  Coral  Sea  and  un- 
derstood the  limitations  of  these  carrier  at- 
tacks. He  considered  the  Ryujyo  still  too 
distant  to  be  hit  with  eff'ect;  his  pilots  had 
lunch  and  sat  down  to  wait,  nervous  in 
their  ready  rooms.  Scouting  reports  kept 
coming  in — from  the  Army  or  the  Guadal- 
canal-based planes  that  had  located  the 
big  group  of  Jap  ships;  from  various  fliers 
who  had  seen  enough  of  the  enemy  scout- 
ing chain  to  identify  it  for  what  it  was. 
An  Army  man  was  over  the  Ryujyo  just 
about  noon,  missed  her  with  his  explosive 
Gg'g,  but  reported,  "This  carrier  is  meat  for 
dive-bombers,"  being  so  weakly  supported. 

She  was  the  only  target  that  could  be 
reached;  the  Admiral  decided  to  take  her. 
It  would  be  mid-afternoon  when  the  at- 
tack group  left  the  deck  and  they  had 
hardly  climbed  the  stairs  of  the  sky  into 
their  formation  when  the  captain  of  one  of 
our  carriers  called  attention  to  a  lump  of 
cloud.  "Looks  like  a  snowfield,"  he  said; 
as  they  watched  it  a  sleigh-track  appeared 
cutting  across  the  field — a  four-motored 
Kawanishi  plane  coming  up  on  our  group 
from  astern,  which  meant  he  had  flown 
right   round   the   American   force.     The 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


359 


ombat  patrol  jumped  him  and  he  went 
!own  under  a  pillar  of  smoke,  blowing  up 
s  he  hit  the  water. 

But  now  the  Japs  presumably  knew 
vhere  our  ships  were  and  how  many  there 
vere.  A  signaled  report  came  across  the 
ormation  from  the  opposite  wing — an- 
)iher  Kawanishi  had  been  shot  down  and 
I  two-float  scout. 

The  decks  of  our  carriers  were  cleared, 
he  combat  patrols  doubled — none  too 
>oon,  for  in  thirty-five  minutes  the  Japs 
were  coming  in  two  groups  of  eighteen 
,  bombers  each,  covered  by  a  group  of  fight- 
ers. Sixty  miles  out  or  more,  another  of 
our  patrols  came  on  a  second  attack  forma- 
.tion,  bombers  and  torpedo  planes.  To 
arrive  so  quickly  they  must  have  had 
reconnaissance  reports  long  before  the  first 
Kawanishi  was  shot  down. 

There  followed  the  most  violent  air  en- 
gagement of  the  war,  according  to  pilots 
who  were  already  veterans  of  Midway  and 
Coral  Sea:  a  double  engagement,  distant 
and  close-in,  whose  boundaries  overlapped. 
In  the  distant  engagement  eight  of  the 
fifteen  Jap  torpedo  planes  were  shot  into 
the  water  far  from  our  carriers  and  the  rest 
could  not  bear  it;  they  fled,  hugging  the 
surface  close;  the  Jap  attack  was  robbed 
of  its  co-ordinated  double  effect  and  the 
close  defense  had  only  bombers  to  deal 
with. 

On  the  carriers  the  loudspeakers  emitted 
"confused  shouting  as  the  fighter  pilots  un- 
consciously screamed  into  their  chest 
microphones  as  they  dived  to  shoot  the 
Jap  bombers  down."  To  another  ob- 
server the  sky  seemed  streaked  with  smoke 
like  a  pattern  on  wallpaper  as  the  enemy 
took  their  heaviest  loss  in  any  air  attack  of 
the  war.  Yet  ten  of  the  bombers  got 
through  to  drop  and  two  of  them  hit  the 
Enterprise  with  heavy  bombs,  one  right 
through  into  the  hangar  deck;  then  the 
battle  was  all  over  save  for  a  few  fitful  com- 
bats among  wandering  planes  of  both 
sides. 

Our  own  carrier  attack  group  found  the 
Ryujyo  just  after  four  with  only  a  cruiser 
and  a  couple  of  destroyers  for  escort — 
meat  for  dive-bombers,  as  the  Army  man 
had  said.  Perhaps  the  Japs  were  over- 
confident or  their  fighters  busy  elsewhere; 
nobody  speaks  of  them  as  having  combat 


patrols  up  and  if  they  had  them  the  pa- 
trols were  insignificant. 

The  Japanese  carrier  went  into  a  tight 
turn,  throwing  AA  into  the  sky;  the  planes 
hit  high  and  low  in  a  co-ordinated  bomb- 
torpedo  attack.  She  seems  to  have  es- 
caped the  torpedo  men,  thanks  to  her  own 
speed  and  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  cruiser, 
which  moved  in  to  take  one  of  the  fish  for 
her.  But  the  American  dive-bombers  laid 
a  row  right  down  her  deck.  The  deck 
peeled  back  like  the  skin  of  a  sprouting 
onion,  a  stem  of  flame  shot  up  into  a  big 
flower  of  smoke,  and  our  planes  were  off 
for  their  mother  ship,  dangerously  low  on 
fuel. 

There  is  a  lack  of  clarity  about  the  re- 
mainder of  our  attacks  that  day.  Appar- 
ently some  of  our  carrier  attack  groups 
split  up,  in  response  to  radioed  orders  after 
they  took  oflf  or  because  they  were  forced 
to  do  so  by  the  weather;  and  all  along  the 
curved  front  of  Japanese  ships,  units  from 
Guadalcanal  as  well  as  those  from  our  car- 
riers kept  coming  on  isolated  enemies. 
The  Marine  dive-bombers  from  Guadal 
hit  a  destroyer  and  four  "additional  ships," 
unidentifiable.  Some  of  the  Army  bomb- 
ers hit  one  of  the  big  Jap  carriers,  and  a 
smallish  attack  unit  found  the  Mutsu  (or 
her  sister)  and  punched  her  heavily.  On 
the  way  home  some  of  our  dive-bombers 
met  and  had  a  singular  dogfight  with  Jap 
planes  of  similar  type  which  seemed  to  be 
wandering  around  in  the  twilight  with  no 
place  to  go,  and  three  of  the  enemy  were 
shot  down.  The  Guadalcanal  fighters 
were  all  in  the  air  when  a  raid  on  that  post 
developed,  and  they  beat  off'  the  enemy 
with  a  score  of  twenty-six  planes  against 
three.  Next  morning  the  Guadalcanal 
dive-bombers  boiled  out  again  with  Major 
R.  C.  Mangrum — who  was  to  make  a 
tremendous  name  for  himself — leading 
them;  they  slapped  a  couple  of  transports 
hard  and  blew  the  bridge  off  a  new  light 
cruiser. 

That  was  the  Battle  of  the  Eastern  Solo- 
mons. Now  it  was  over — a  scrambling, 
artistically  ill-conceived,  tactically  unsatis- 
fying affair,  in  which  one  might  say  noth- 
ing happened,  unless  one  counts  all  the 
lost  aircraft  and  the  Ryujyo,  seen  by  one  of 
our  night  recon  planes  dead  in  the  water 
and   abandoned,   lighting   up   the   whole 


360 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ocean  with  her  burning.  For  us  the  En- 
terprise  was  a  sick  ship,  and  we  were  too 
weak  in  carriers  to  risk  a  hot  pursuit  with 
the  Japs  beginning  to  pour  land-based 
planes  through  Rab^ul  and  Bougainville. 
For  them,  they  had  lost  the  Ryujyo  and, 
more  important  still,  all  their  floating  air 
cover:  ninety-six  planes  shot  down  in  a 
genuine  disaster.  They  turned  back  dur- 
ing the  night;  when  Mangrum  and  his  men 
hit  them  on  the  morning  of  the  25  th  they 


were  all  going  north  and  west  and  our  out- 
post on  Guadalcanal  was  saved. 

But  it  was  like  the  heroine  of  an  old- 
fashioned  melodrama,  who  requires  saving 
anew  in  every  act.     On  the  afternoon  of 
the  25th,   thirty-six  land-based  bombers 
gave  Henderson  Field  a  pounding;  that 
night  seven  Jap  destroyers  ran  in,  landed  ; 
a  lot  of  men  at  Cape  Esperance,  and  came  i 
down  the  channel  to  shell  our  holdings.  : 
There  was  more  trouble  ahead. 


{t^ 


LINCOLN   MEMORIAL 


MARTHA    KELLER 


COMMON  as  dirt  is  and  as  all-rewarding — 
That  gives  to  us  each  day  our  daily  bread — 
He  was  the  cabin  with  the  weathered  boarding, 
The  one  tall  tree  that  towered  overhead. 


He  was  the  horse  and  plow,  the  nearest  neighbor, 
Who  broke  the  wilderness  and  burned  the  weeds. 

His  sole  security — or  ours — the  labor 

By  which  a  man  grows  equal  to  his  needs. 


With  every  rail  he  cut,  he  cut  them  cleaner. 

He  split  his  kindling  carefuller  than  most. 
The  grain  against  him  made  his  judgments  keener. 

He  knew  men's  timber  like  a  fencing  post. 


LINCOLN    MEMORIAL  361 

The  men  who  fought  him  only  made  him  stronger- 
He  got  his  wisdom  any  way  he  could. 

He  grew  as  others  did  but  did  it  longer. 
He  grew  the  way  a  tree  grows  in  a  wood. 


Worn  as  a  gully  that  the  freshets  follow, 

Faint  as  a  footprint  running  through  the  grass. 

He  was  the  deerlick  in  the  stony  hollow, 
Sunk  in  the  sumac  and  the  sassafras. 


Homely  as  mud  is  and  as  good  for  growing. 
As  rank  as  garlic  and  as  sharp  as  mint — 

He  was  the  smoke  that  showed  where  we  were  going, 
When  North  was  tinder  and  the  South  was  flint. 


Almighty  proud — although  he  seemed  so  humble- 
Yet  never  too  particular  of  pride, 

He  was  a  tired  old  horse,  too  wise  to  stumble 
Because  a  gadfly  stung  him  on  the  side. 


Smart  as  a  fox  he  was  and  twice  as  wary. 

He  was  the  man  whose  speeches  all  were  spare. 
His  words  were  as  the  wind  is  on  the  prairie, 

Eternal  and  intuitive  as  air. 


He  knew  that  Egypt-land  goes  on  forever — 
He  saw  the  Mississippi  River  run. 

The  miracle  was  all  in  the  endeavor: 

But  yet  the  seas  were  opened  one  by  one. 


His  faith  was  like  Jehovah's  pillar  rising, 
A  burning  cloud  of  fire  and  second  sight. 

As  plain  as  day — as  sudden  and  surprising— 
Yet  lonelier  and  sadder  than  the  night. 


He  was  our  conscience  and  our  brother's  keeper. 

He  was  the  servant  of  the  very  poor. 
He  was  tenacious  as  Virginia  creeper. 

He  was  a  hound  dog  that  was  slow  but  sure. 


He  was  the  future  as  our  sons  shall  be  it. 
He  was  the  splendor  we  did  not  expect. 

He  was  the  answer-^had  he  lived  to  see  it- 
Born  of  the  ages  and  the  intellect. 


SENATOR   BOB    REYNOLDS 


RETROSPECTIVE    VIEW 


BURKE    DAVIS 


WHEN  the  text  of  the  Moscow  Dec- 
laration came  over  the  wires  last 
November,  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  was  fumbling  around  with  the 
Connally  Resolution.  And  one  of  the 
busiest  maneuverers,  Robert  Rice  Reyn- 
olds, Senator  from  North  Carolina  and 
chairman  of  the  Military  Affairs  Commit- 
tee, was  engaged  in  tacking  on  an  amend- 
ment to  guarantee  the  independence  of 
Poland,  the  Baltic  States,  and  other  neigh- 
bors of  Russia.  A  few  days  later  he  was 
one  of  the  five  who  voted  against  Senate 
approval  of  the  Moscow  Declaration. 

The  reaction  in  North  Carolina  was 
immediate.  This  was  the  last  straw.  Bob 
Reynolds  was  no  longer  the  clown  from 
the  hill  country,  campaigning  with  a 
borrowed  twenty-dollar  bill  in  a  carefully 
unkempt  rattletrap  Ford.  His  act  was 
played  out.  One:  he  had  forgotten  that 
the  South — which  included  his  constitu- 
ents— was  more  feverish  in  support  of  the 
war  than  any  other  part  of  the  country. 
Two:  he  had  played  ball  with  two-bit 
American  fascists,  som.e  of  whom  were  so 
bankrupt  of  ideas  that  they  had  had  to 
import  Hitler's.  An  artist  at  wooing  the 
poor  whites  of  his  native  State,  he  had  tried 
unsuccessfully  to  woo  the  poor  whites  of 
the  nation,  forgetting  how  Huey  had  said: 
"Sure  we  can  have  fascism  here,  but 
they'll  call  it  anti-fascism.'! 


If  Bob's  constituents  didn't  all  have  this 
reasoned  out,  they  could  feel  it  and  they 
were  fed  up.  Reynolds  got  the  point  and 
promptly  announced  that  he  would  not 
make  the  race  for  re-election  in  1 944.  He 
is  not  through  with  politics,  he  says;  he 
plans  to  "continue  in  public  life"  to 
champion  "the  best  interests  of  my  State 
and  my  country";  but  the  prospects  aren't 
so  good.  Bob  is  pushing  sixty.  He  now 
has  no  following  or  organization  in  North 
Carolina  worth  the  name.  His  principal 
capital  is  the  admiration  of  Gerald  L.  K. 
Smith  of  Detroit  and  the  financial  backing 
of  his  wife,  Evalyn  McLean,  the  grand- 
daughter of  Father-Struck-It-Rich  Walsh 
of  Nevada.     These  are  slender  resources. 

But  the  man  deserves  some  examination, 
for  he  has  been  a  remarkable  political 
phenomenon.  In  his  own  State  he  broke 
the  tradition  of  the  string-tie  wheelhorses 
of  the  Rich  Poor  Whites. 

The  Rich  Poor  Whites  are  the  families 
of  the  lucky  and  industrious  among  the 
Southern  poor  whites  who  got  on  and  got 
rich  after  the  Civil  War.  They  were 
country  boys  like  Cannon,  who  arrived  in 
what  is  now  Kannapolis,  N.  C,  barefooted 
and  who  eventually  sold  his  towels  around 
the  world.  They  were  boys  like  Wash 
Duke's  son  Buck,  who  founded  the  to- 
bacco trust  and  eventually  went  into  the 
utility  business  and,  by  virtue  of  electric 


SENATOR    BOB    REYNOLDS:    RETROSPECTIVE    VIEW         363 


power  shares,  made  Duke  University  one 
of  the  most  richly  endowed  institutions  of 
learning  in  the  world.  These  poor  whites 
were  members  of  either  the  Baptist  or 
Methodist  church  and  gave  their  money 
to  the  support  of  those  politically  powerful 
denominations. 

Reynolds  didn't  belong  to  this  crowd 
and  the  fact  that  there  will  be  a  reversion  to 
tradition  in  the  coming  election  and  that 
a  representative  of  the  Rich  Poor  Whites 
will  be  the  next  United  States  Senator 
doesn't  alter  the  case.  Reynolds's  successor 
will  be  either  the  seventy-four-year-old 
tobacco-chewing  Cameron  Morrison,  a 
White  Supremacy  leader  of  forty-five  years 
ago,  or  former  Governor  Clyde  Hoey,  a 
Sunday-school  teacher  and  machine  poli- 
tician. Neither  of  these  gentlemen  ofTers 
anything  new  to  North  Carolina.  It's  the 
same  old  dog-eared  deck  of  cards.  But 
things  aren't  quite  the  same.  For  eight 
years  the  Tarheel  State  has  been  repre- 
sented by  a  man  who  is  by  temperament  a 
cross  between  a  carnival  barker,  a  shell- 
game  operator,  and  a  traveling  salesman. 
He  certainly  ruffled  the  waters  of  the  Bible 
Belt. 

KEYNOLDS  was  born  in  Asheville,  North 
^  Carolina,  in  1884.  Asheville  is  in  the 
mountains  and  though  it  had  something  of  a 
reputation  as  a  summer  and  health  resort 
in  the  days  before  the  Civil  War,  the  place 
never  amounted  to  much  until  George 
Vanderbilt  came  there  in  1889  to  build 
Biltmore  and,  later  on,  E.  W.  Grove,  the 
St.  Louis  manufacturer,  became  interested 
in  the  town  and  began  to  put  his  money  in 
it. 

In  the  years  when  Reynolds  was  young. 
North  Carolina,  like  the  other  Southern 
States,  was  in  something  of  a  turmoil. 
The  carpetbag  era  was  over,  but  the  farm- 
ers— and  they  were  the  great  majority — 
were  in  the  grip  of  perpetual  hard  times. 
Times  were  so  hard,  indeed,  that  Populism 
swept  the  South  and  in  North  Carolina  the 
Populists,  in  partnership  with  the  Repub- 
licans and  the  Negro  voters,  ran  the  State 
from  1892  until  1898. 

In  the  latter  year  there  was  a  rebellion 
by  a  somev/hat  resuscitated  Democratic 
Party.  Manned  by  country  lawyers, 
newspapermen,  and  politicians,  and  aided 


by  Red  Shirts  from  over  the  South  Caro- 
lina line  and  by  one-eyed  Ben  Tillman  in 
person,  the  rebellion  was  a  success.  The 
campaign  was  pitched  on  the  White  Su- 
premacy issue  and  one  of  the  first  acts  of 
the  new  regime  was  to  insert  grandfather 
clauses  in  the  State  constitution  to  prevent 
Negroes  from  voting.  The  rebellion  was 
led  by  Colonel  Furnifold  Simmons,  who 
was  promptly  elected  to  the  United  States 
Senate  and  remained  there  until  1931. 
(He  might  have  stayed  there  until  his 
death  had  not  his  devotion  to  prohibition 
led  him  to  break  with  his  party  over  Al 
Smith.  Hoover  carried  the  State  in  1 928, 
but  Simmons  was  killed  politically.) 

This  crowd  of  politicians,  who  became 
known  as  the  Raleigh  Ring,  ran  the  State 
for  a  generation  thereafter.  They  under- 
stood what  the  score  was  as  far  as  the  tex- 
tile, tobacco,  and  power  interests  were 
concerned.  Education  was  slim — in 
1901  the  annual  school  term  was  less  than 
four  months  and  a  fifth  of  the  white 
population  above  the  age  of  ten  was 
illiterate.  Election  campaigns  were  red 
hot  and  brought  to  the  rural  districts  a 
flavor  and  excitement  that  were  relished 
and  savored  for  months  thereafter.  The 
staple  doctrines  consisted  of  "keeping  the 
nigger  in  his  place,"  guarding  the  hearth- 
stone from  priests  and  the  Pope,  drinking 
bootleg  and  voting  dry,  railing  at  Wall 
Street,  and  tipping  one's  hat  to  the  Method- 
ist panjandrums. 

This  was  the  sort  of  landscape  in  which 
Bob  Reynolds  grew  up.  His  father  had 
been  a  court  clerk,  his  uncle  Gus  had  been 
tax  collector,  his  uncle  Dan  was  sheriff', 
and  his  uncle  Henry  had  been  chief  of 
police.  All  this  was  in  Buncombe  Coun- 
ty, of  which  Asheville  is  the  county  seat. 
His  mother  came  pretty  well  fixed  and 
Bob's  share  of  her  estate  still  brings  him 
some  five  thousand  dollars  a  year. 

But  he  was  not  content  to  hang  around 
Asheville.  He  very  early  wanted  to  see 
the  world  and  started  by  running  away 
when  he  was  fourteen  and  getting  a  job 
breaking  mules  in  Florida.  At  one  time 
or  another  he  has  been  a  book  salesman  in 
Ohio,  a  patent-medicine  spieler  in  the 
Chicago  Loop,  the  editor  of  a  physical 
culture  magazine,  a  professional  wrestler, 
a   vaudeville   actor,    a   roller-skatin.sr-rink 


364 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


operator,  a  stowaway,  and  an  author 
(two  travel  books  called  Wanderlust  and 
Gypsy  Trails  and  a  newspaper  series  on 
Twenty  Famous  Murders).  Six  feet  tall, 
muscular,  sandy-haired,  endowed  with 
the  gift  of  gab,  he  always  wanted  to  keep 
moving.  He  bummed  his  way  around  the 
West;  he  was  quick  on  his  feet;  he  had  a 
reputation  as  a  wisecracker.  He  had  a 
sort  of  quick  sense  that  made  him  accept 
the  vicissitudes  of  life  and  turn  them  to 
account  with  a  smart  crack.  Thus,  years 
later,  when  he  was  in  Mexico,  his  car  was 
halted  by  a  couple  of  stick-up  men.  "I 
became  resigned  to  the  situation,"  said 
Reynolds  later. 

Periodically  he  would  turn  up  in  Ashe- 
ville  again.  It  was  in  1902,  when  he  was 
eighteen,  that  he  set  off  for  Weaver  Col- 
lege (a  small-time  Methodist  school),  pres- 
ently moving  on  to  Chapel  Hill  and  the 
University.  There  he  took  his  law  degree 
in  1906,  and  managed  to  get  a  football 
letter  and  become  captain  of  the  track  team. 
During  a  number  of  summer  vacations  he 
worked  his  way  to  Europe  on  cattle  boats. 

Shortly  after  graduation  Reynolds  set 
up  to  practice  law,  and  a  little  while  after 
that  he  took  his  first  plunge  into  politics. 
In  1910  he  campaigned  for  prosecuting 
attorney  of  the  15th  Judicial  District  of 
North  Carolina.  It  would  cost  only  fifty 
dollars  to  get  on  the  ballot,  it  was  wonder- 
ful advertising  because  his  name  would  be 
seen  by  thousands,  and  such  a  maneuver 
was  so  "ethical."  Thousands  of  pieces  of 
stick  candy,  wrapped  in  tricolored  paper 
bearing  the  legend,  "Tell  your  daddy  to 
vote  for  Bob  Reynolds,"  found  their  way 
into  mountain  homes.  He  assailed  the 
mountain  men  themselves  in  small  gather- 
ings, saying,  "I  don't  give  a  damn  about 
you  people,  and  you  know  it.  If  I  did  I'd 
been  out  to  see  you  sooner.  And  I  don't 
know  anything  about  law.  I  want  this 
job  to  make  money  and  learn  some  law." 
Appreciating  such  direct  speech,  the  moun- 
tain men  elected  Reynolds  decisively. 

A  sharp  knowledge  of  the  temperament 
of  the  mountaineers  is  essential  for  success- 
ful campaigning  among  them.  They  are 
quick-witted  and  observant,  but  most  of 
them  are  easy-going  and  disinclined  to 
steady  exertion.  They  can  become  vio- 
lent and  enraged  and  then  subside  into 


stretches  of  speechless  calm:  Some  years 
ago  an  outlander  discovered  that  the 
neighborhood  of  Highlands,  North  Caro- 
lina, was  excellent  for  the  growing  of  wine 
grapes.  After  a  prolonged  investigation, 
the  outlander  called  a  meeting  of  the 
mountain  families  and  explained  that 
there  were  few  latitudes  in  the  world 
ideally  suited  to  the  growing  of  wine  grapes 
and  that  the  Highlands  region  was  one  of  j 
them.  He  offered  to  bring  in  roots  and! 
help  get  the  project  started.  "Four  or 
five  years'  work,"  he  said,  "and  you'll  never 
have  to  worry  again."  His  address  was 
received  in  dead  silence.  Finally,  after  a 
long  pause,  one  of  the  mountain  men  ob- 
served: "Aint  worryin'  none  now." 

Nowadays  this  whole  region  is  criss- 
crossed by  excellent  highways  and  com- 
munication with  nearby  towns  is  con- 
stant. The  isolation  has  been  broken. 
But  when  Reynolds  first  began  his  cam- 
paigning the  mountain  people  scarcely 
ever  left  the  coves. 

Encouraged  by  his  first  success  at  the 
polls,  Reynolds  decided  to  run  for  Con- 
gress. He  was  snowed  under.  For  a 
long  time  thereafter  he  was  politically  in 
the  Dismal  Swamp.  It  was  twenty  years 
before  he  was  elected  to  ofiice  again  and 
it's  conceivable  that  this  thought  sustains 
him  now,  when  he  is  so  completely  in  the 
doghouse. 

When  the  First  World  War  broke  in 
Europe,  Reynolds  held  a  commission  as 
captain  in  the  North  Carolina  National 
Guard.  He  had  organized  a  cavalry  com- 
pany in  the  Guard.  But  in  1916  he  re- 
signed in  order  to  attend  to  "interests"  in 
Louisiana.  These  interests  included  the 
management  of  a  roller-skating  rink  and 
playing  in  a  vaudeville  sketch  called 
"Captain  Bob  of  the  National  Guard." 
His  company  saw  action  in  France  without 
assistance  from  Reynolds. 

He  was  already  getting  to  be  a  marrying 
man.  His  first  wife,  whom  he  married 
in  1 909,  died  and  in  1 9 1 4  he  married  Mary 
Bland.  Some  time  later  he  divorced  his 
second  wife  and  married  Eva  Brady,  a 
former  Follies  girl.  His  fourth  wife,  not 
mentioned  in  Who's  Who,  was  one  Mile. 
DeNice  D'Uryea  of  New  York  City.  His 
fifth  and  present  wife  is  Evalyn  McLean. 

After  the  war  and  during  the  boom  years 


SENATOR    BOB    REYNOLDS:    RETROSPECTIVE    VIEW        365 


Reynolds  busied  himself  making  a  living  in 
Ashcville.  In  the  middle  twenties  the 
Florida  land-boom  fever  infected  Asheville 
and  the  town  went  wild  putting  on  a  local 
boom  of  its  own.  The  sports  editor  of  the 
local  paper  made  and  lost  $50,000.  There 
was  a  lot  of  showy  building.  Eventually 
the  bubble  blew  up.  The  town  defaulted, 
the  president  of  a  bank  was  sent  to  jail,  a 
former  mayor  shot  himself. 

In  the  midst  of  these  excitements  Reyn- 
olds went  back  into  politics.  In  1924  he 
ran  for  lieutenant  governor.  Equipped 
with  a  North  Carolina  yearbook  and  a 
voters'  list  he  set  off  on  a  trip  around  the 
world.  Thousands  of  voters  received 
postcards  of  Westminster  Abbey,  the 
Pyramids,  the  Taj  Mahal  from  Our  Bob, 
mailed  from  along  the  way.  Many  of 
these  cards  may  yet  be  seen,  tacked  to 
cabin  walls.  Reynolds  returned  just  be- 
fore the  primary  and  was  beaten. 

Two  years  later,  in  1926,  he  determined 
to  run  for  the  Senate.  The  North  Caro- 
lina Senators  at  that  time  looked  eternal: 
Colonel  Simmons  and  Lee  Overman. 
Both  were  sublime  examples  of  the  Ra- 
leigh Ring  era;  both  had  been  in  the  Sen- 
ate forever  and,  according  to  every  sign, 
would  remain  there  until  death  removed 
them.  Against  this  sort  of  opposition, 
Reynolds  campaigned  strenuously.  He 
lost,  but  got  ninety  thousand  votes,  a  total 
that  was  considered  astounding.  From 
this  point  on,  his  chief  aim  was  the  Senate 
and  he  set  to  work  at  once  to  prepare  for 
the  1932  primaries,  six  years  off. 

"There  were  graduation  exercises  to  be 
attended  in  one-room  schoolhouses,"  says 
one  account,  "mountaineers  to  be  cham- 
pioned before  the  bar  without  fees,  until 
Bob  Reynolds  was  recognized  everywhere 
as  the  Little  Father  of  the  Poor."  With- 
out machine  connections  or  an  organi- 
zation worth  the  name,  Reynolds  set  out 
to  canvass  the  State. 


II 

Reynolds's  campaign  in  1932  was  of  a 
^  sort  never  seen  in  North  Carolina 
before.  It  was  a  prolonged  vaudeville. 
Though  Reynolds  is  in  the  Southern 
demagogue  tradition — the  tradition  of 
Vardaman  of  Mississippi,  of  Jeff  Davis  of 


Arkansas,  of  Cole  Blease  of  South  Caro- 
lina, of  "The  Man"  Bilbo — nevertheless 
he  diverged  sharply  from  type.  He  didn't 
devote  himself  to  berating  the  Pope  or 
lambasting  the  "niggers"  in  appeals  to 
White  Supremacy.  Reynolds  was  dif- 
ferent. He  had  been  around.  Though 
eventually  he  went  in  for  a  line  of  political 
appeals  that  would  have  seemed  strange  to 
Vardaman  and  the  old-timers,  in  this 
campaign  of '32  Reynolds  devoted  himself 
to  two  issues:  prohibition  and  guying  the 
life  out  of  his  opponent,  Cameron  Morrison. 

North  Carolina  had  voted  for  Hoover  in 
1928  because,  among  other  things,  AI 
Smith  was  tainted  with  liquor.  The  drys 
were  powerful  and  bootlegging  was  a 
profitable  occupation.  "How  do  you  send 
for  a  bootlegger?"  was  a  popular  ques- 
tion. The  answer  was,  "Just  bang  on 
the  back  door  with  a  spoon."  Reynolds's 
argument  was  pitched  on  this  note:  "I 
don't  ask  you  to  bring  liquor  back.  You 
can't  bring  back  what  has  never  been 
away."  Make  it  legal,  he  said,  and  let's 
have  the  use  of  the  tax  money. 

As  for  Morrison,  he  was — and  is — an 
uninspired  wheelhorse  of  the  Raleigh  Ring 
era.  He  was  a  stalwart  in  the  White 
Supremacy  campaign  of  '98,  he  repre- 
sented the  distillers  back  in  1 903  in  one  of 
the  early  prohibition  fights  in  the  legisla- 
ture, and  he  became  governor  in  1920 
after  a  campaign  in  which  he  fought 
woman  suffrage.  During  his  administra- 
tion the  South  was  in  the  throes  of  the 
fight  over  evolution  and  Morrison  made  a 
sensation  by  forbidding  school  use  of  two 
biology  texts.  He  was  against  any  text- 
book, he  said,  which  "prints  pictures  of  a 
monkey  and  a  man  on  the  same  page." 
Considerable  hilarity  was  aroused  by  re- 
ports that  he  was  casting  sheep's  eyes  at 
the  widow  of  George  Vanderbilt,  the 
owner  of  the  Biltmore  estate.  True  or 
false,  a  story  was  circulated  through  the 
State  to  the  effect  that  Morrison — a  cele- 
brated tobacco-chewer — when  riding  in 
Mrs.  Vanderbilt's  limousine,  thought  he 
saw  the  car  window  open  when  it  wasn't 
and  let  fly  with  a  quid  that  spattered  the 
glass  and  his  hostess.  Mrs.  Vanderbilt 
presently  married  Peter  Gerry,  the  Sena- 
tor from  Rhode  Island.  In  1924  Morri- 
son    married     a     wealthy    woman,    the 


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widow  of  George  Watts  of  Durham;  she 
brought  nine  milhon  dollars'  worth  of 
Duke  tobacco  mo^^y  with  her  to  the 
marriage,  and  presently  Morrison  was  rid- 
ing in  a  Rolls  Royce  that  had  a  shining 
cuspidor  as  one  of  its  accessories.  In  1 930 
Lee  Overman  died  and  Morrison  was 
appointed  to  his  place  in  the  Senate.  In 
1932  he  would  have  to  stand  for  election 
on  his  own.  For  a  politician,  Morrison 
had  made  some  bad  mistakes  after  he 
went  to  Washington.  He  had  hired  the 
bridal  suite  at  the  Mayflower  Hotel  and 
put  on  the  dog  in  various  other  ways  that 
made  him  extremely  vulnerable. 

This  was  the  man  whom  Reynolds  un- 
dertook to  beat.  He  set  out  for  the  vil- 
lages and  the  crossroads  settlements  in  a 
battered  Ford,  accompanied  by  a  cam- 
paign manager  and  an  assistant  who  were 
sufficiently  like-minded  to  enter  with  ex- 
uberance into  the  campaign.  He  would 
draw  up  under  the  dusty  elms  of  a  com- 
pany-owned mill  village  and,  after  a  few 
minutes  of  ad  libbing  to  collect  a  crowd, 
would  produce  a  roll  of  red  carpet  and 
give  an  imitation  of  Morrison  descending 
from  his  car  at  the  Mayflower  and  making 
his  carpeted  way  to  the  lobby.  *'01e  Gam 
can't  get  his  tootsies  dirty!"  Reynolds 
would  mimic  and  grimace  and  lampoon 
his  opponent  with  a  carefully  practiced 
mountain  drawl.  "You  know  Gam  eats 
caveeah?  Know  whut  caveeah  is?  Gav- 
eeah,  them's  feesh  aigs!  Gave6ah  for 
breakfast  at  $1.50  a  bite!  Don't  you-all 
want  a  Senator  who'll  be  satisfied  with 
good  ole  North  Garolina  hen's  eggs  at  26 
cents  a  dozen?" 

Reynolds  worked  hard  at  showing  him- 
self as  a  poor  man  who  was  running  his 
campaign  on  a  shoestring.  Addressing 
crowds  in  schoolhouses  and  courthouses 
he  would  wave  two  dirty  one-dollar  bills, 
proclaiming  that  they  were  his  all.  A 
favorite  trick  during  this  campaign  was  to 
draw  up  at  a  filling  station  and  use  his 
Ford  as  a  rostrum.  After  the  spiel  Reyn- 
olds would  make  a  plea  for  the  loan  of 
fifty  cents — to  reach  the  next  hamlet. 
Soon  the  lender  received  a  Reynolds 
check,  generously  made  out  for  a  dollar. 
Hundreds  of  them  were  never  cashed  but 
remain  to  this  day  as  framed  souvenirs  of 
the  great  man.     Over  a  period  of  months 


Reynolds  drove  up  and  down  the  State. 
Once  he  entered  the  village  of  Golumbia 
in  a  dairy  wagon,  riding  with  a  Negro 
hand. 

This  sort  of  shenanigans  went  on  for  i 
months  with  mounting  effect.     Much  too 
late  in  the  day  Morrison  awoke  to  his  dire 
peril  and  set  out  to  fight.     It  was  no  use.  ^ 
Reynolds  swamped  him  in  the  primary  ^ 
and  then  easily  defeated  his  Republican 
opponent  in  November. 

NGE  in  Washington,  Reynolds  gave 
himself  up  to  the  joys  of  being  a 
Senator.  Life  magazine  described  how 
Huey  Long,  meeting  Reynolds  for  the 
first  time,  paused  in  his  handshaking, 
puzzled. 

"Don't  I  know  you  from  some  place?" 

"Not  to  my  knowledge,  Senator,"  said 
Reynolds. 

"Ever  been  to  Baton  Rouge?" 

Reynolds  admitted  that  he  had. 

"Why,  then,  sure  I  know  you,"  said 
Huey.  "You  used  to  run  that  roller-skat- 
ing rink  down  there." 

"That's  right,"  said  Reynolds.  "And 
now  I  know  you.  You  used  to  come  in  and 
win  all  the  prizes  for  fancy  skating.  That's 
when  you  were  down  there  selling  snake 
oil." 

This  was  the  beginning  of  a  close  friend- 
ship between  the  two  and  Bob  supported 
many  of  Huey's  projects.  In  general, 
though,  Reynolds  in  voting  stuck  to  the 
party  line  and  voted  for  most  of  the  New 
Deal  measures.  One  day  in  the  Senate 
Gotton  Ed  Smith  was  blasting  away, 
charging  that  many  Senators  were  seeking 
to  buy  votes  by  supporting  relief  and  re- 
covery appropriations.  He  seized  Reyn- 
olds by  the  shoulders:  "Look  me  in  the 
face  and  tell  me  you  are  always  moved  by 
a  great  humanitarian  purpose."  "Don't 
press  me,"  said  Reynolds.  During  a  hous- 
ing debate  in  1937  he  said:  "If  $700,000,- 
000  of  the  people's  money  is  to  be  ex- 
pended I  want  North  Garolina,  God  bless 
her,  to  have  her  share — though  she  does 
not  particularly  need  it." 

Reynolds  was  no  more  impressed  than 
Huey  by  the  Senate's  tradition  that  new 
members  should  be  seen  and  not  heard 
during  their  first  session.  He  was  saucy, 
talking  and  wisecracking  constantly.     Nor 


SENATOR    BOB    REYNOLDS:    RETROSPECTIVE    VIEW         367 


I  lid  he  in  any  way  resemble  the  standard 
tring-tie  Southern  member  in  a  come- 
o-Jesus  coat.  He  was  a  snappy  dresser. 
[  le  was  one  of  the  few  who  used  the  Senate 
gymnasium.  He  was  spry  and  affable 
ind  a  favorite  with  the  Senate  page  boys. 
He  kissed  Jean  Harlow  on  the  Capitol 
steps  and  was  proud  to  talk  about  it.  He 
kept  books  on  his  constituents,  assiduously 
looked  after  their  requests,  and,  with  the 
help  of  a  secretary,  never  failed  to  address 
them  by  their  first  names.  "I  play  pol- 
itics every  day  and  all  day,"  he  said.  He 
claimed  to  get  some  265  phone  calls  a  day 
and  500  letters  every  twenty-four  hours. 
He  claimed  to  have  100  visitors  a  day. 
When  it  became  the  fashion  during  the 
depression  to  travel  through  the  United 
States  and  get  acquainted  with  the  coun- 
try, he  did  it  too.  The  man  who  had 
bummed  his  way  around  the  country 
thirty  years  before  now  did  a  9,000-mile 
thirty-day  trailer  tour  of  the  country. 
"Anybody  can  travel  a  month  in  this 
country  for  $100.  .  .  .  I  found  many  peo- 
ple who  had  never  seen  a  U.  S.  Senator 
before.  They  were  usually  surprised  to 
see  one  in  overalls  and  unshaven." 

As  a  member  of  the  Banking  and  Cur- 
rency Committee,  Reynolds  jazzed  up  a 
dull  session  one  day  by  asking  a  prominent 
witness  a  series  of  quick,  piercing  questions. 
While  his  confreres  craned  their  necks  in 
astonishment  and  the  witness  sweated 
nervously.  Bob  whispered  loudly  to  a 
financial  reporter:  "Hey,  bud,  slip  me 
some  more  of  those  questions." 

He  was  as  persistent  a  traveler  as  he  had 
been  in  his  younger  days.  During  his 
first  term  he  went  again  to  Europe,  Rus- 
sia, the  Near  East,  North  Africa,  and  the 
Philippines.  He  went  to  South  America 
and  the  West  Indies,  to  Canada  and 
Alaska.  In  Alaska  he  shot  a  walrus  and 
had  the  mounted  head  hung  in  his  office 
in  the  Senate  Office  Building.  The  ste- 
nographers referred  to  it  as  "Horrible 
Hank." 

Ill 

IN  1938  the  first  term  of  this  peripatetic 
coxcomb  came  to  an  end  and  he  had  to 
run  again.  This  campaign  was  the  turn- 
ing point  in  Reynolds's  career. 

To  be  sure,  the  old  tricks  were  not  want- 


ing. A  regular  smoker  of  Camel  ciga- 
rettes, in  1937  he  endorsed  Lucky  Strikes 
for  a  SI, 000  fee.  In  the  midst  of  a  cam- 
paign speech  he  would  refer  to  that  huge 
joke  on  big  business  and  declare  that  he 
had  given  the  money  to  charity.  A  stooge 
in  the  audience  would  rise  to  ask,  "Whut 
charity's  thet.  Bob?"  to  which  the  reply 
was:  "Well,  you  all  know  that  charity 
begins  at  home." 

But  this  campaign  was  different.  La- 
ter, when  it  was  all  over  and  Reynolds  was 
back  in  Washington,  he  one  day  found 
Tydings  of  Maryland  sitting  in  the  Senate 
and  looking  glum.  Tydings  was  shortly 
due  to  run  for  re-election  but  the  cam- 
paign had  not  yet  come  off.  Reynolds 
clapped  him  on  the  back.  "Millard,"  he 
said,  "let  me  tell  you  something.  Don't 
waste  any  time  talking  issues  in  your  cam- 
paign. Talk  about  the  alien  within  our 
gates.  That's  the  stuff  that  gets  the  votes. 
Take  my  advice,  Millard;  I  know.  It 
worked  like  a  charm  for  me." 

That  was  the  platform  in  Reynolds's 
second  campaign.  It  was  a  safe  issue  in  a 
State  where  there  are  only  a  handful  of  the 
foreign-born — in  1 940  there  were  in  North 
Carolina  171  Austrians,  55  Czechs,  63 
Danes,  9  Finns,  72  Hungarians,  and  other 
races  in  like  numbers.  And  it  was  an 
easy  thing  in  a  region  that  distrusted 
strangers  and  had  flourished  on  phobias 
for  generations.  Here  were  the  people 
who  had  read  the  Menace;  here  the  revived 
Ku  Klux  had  flourished  and  only  recently 
subsided.  Hiram  Wesley  Evans,  the  Im- 
perial Wizard,  had  held  the  first  meeting  of 
his  Grand  Dragons  in  Reynolds's  home 
district,  in  Asheville,  in  July,  1923,  and 
had  told  the  boys  that  "the  time  has  come 
when  the  millions  who  have  led  their 
countries  to  despoliation  [whatever  that 
meant]  should  not  be  admitted  to  our 
country"  and  that  the  Jews  "are  going  to 
quit  setting  up  Jewland  in  America." 

For  Reynolds  to  turn  into  this  sort  of 
rabble-rouser  was  something  new.  Even 
his  five-hour  filibuster  in  the  Senate  in 
1938  against  the  anti-lynching  bill  had 
consisted  largely  of  a  lyrical  description  of 
his  travels  in  foreign  countries.  But  now 
he  began  beating  the  tom-tom,  warning 
against  the  invasion  of  immigrant  alien 
scum  of  the  earth  and  how  they  would 


368 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


snatch  the  jobs  from  true-born  Americans. 
The  whole  campaign  was  thin  and  tinny 
and,  for  an  ambitious  demagogue,  had  a 
great  shortcoming:  Bob  wasn't  promising 
anything  in  the  way  of  jobs,  benefits,  or 
preferment.     He  was  just  warning. 

Still,  he  might  have  continued  to  en- 
trance his  hill  folk  constituents  if  it  hadn't 
been  for  the  war.     That  cooked  him. 

Not  long  after  his  second  term  began 
Reynolds  was  off  to  Europe  again  and 
covered  the  whole  continent,  talking  pol- 
itics and  patronizing  night  clubs  with 
even-handed  diligence.  When  he  got 
home  he  told  the  Senate:  "The  dictators 
are  doing  what  is  best  for  their  people. 
Hitler  and  Mussolini  have  a  date  with 
destiny;  it's  foolish  to  oppose  them,  so  why 
not  play  ball  with  them?" 

In  January,  1939,  the  Administration 
proposed  an  amendment  to  raise  a  WPA 
appropriation  from  725  to  875  million 
dollars.  Barkley,  majority  leader  in  the 
Senate,  thought  he  had  Reynolds's  vote 
nailed  down.  But  the  "economy  bloc," 
led  by  Byrnes,  Harrison,  and  Garner,  was 
maneuvering  against  the  amendment  and 
there  was  also  a  vacancy  on  the  Sen- 
ate Military  Affairs  Committee.  Jimmy 
Byrnes,  then  Senator  from  South  Caro- 
lina, is  said  to  have  been  the  fixer  who 
arranged  that  Reynolds  should  be  named 
to  the  Committee.  He  was  appointed 
and  when  the  vote  on  the  amendment  was 
taken,  Reynolds  voted  "No."  The  amend- 
ment lost  by  one  vote ! 

A  few  days  later,  on  January  31,  1939, 
Reynolds  went  formally  into  business  as  a 
nationalist,  anti-alien  demagogue.  He 
announced  the  organization  of  the  Vindi- 
cators, a  nationalist  outfit  of  his  own,  with 
himself  as  president  and  the  motto  "Amer- 
ica for  Americans  .  .  .  our  citizens,  our 
country  first." 

The  platform  was: 

1.  Keep  America  out  of  war. 

2.  Register  and  fingerprint  all  aliens. 

3.  Stop  immigration  for  the  next  ten  years. 

4.  Deport  all  criminal  and  undesirable  aliens. 

5.  Banish  all  foreign  *'isms." 

There  were  no  dues  to  the  organization, 
but  the  interested  public  were  permitted 
to  subscribe  to  its  periodical,  the  American 
Vindicator,  which  first  appeared  in  April, 
1939.     The  outfit  had  buttons  and  a  flag 


on  which  was  a  rattlesnake  and  the  motto 
"Don't  tread  on  me."  A  feature  was  the 
Border  Patrol,  open  to  anybody  between 
ten  and  eighteen.  The  youth  received  a, 
badge  studded  with  stars  and  stripes  and 
was  given  a  chance  to  win  twenty  dollars  t 
for  catching  "alien  crooks."  Reynolds 
also  had  a  notion  to  form  "Circles  of 
Seven,"  which,  said  the  Senator,  "was 
merely  a  movement  to  get  together  groups 
of  patriotic  Americans,  citizens  in  every 
single  station." 

Thus  equipped  Reynolds  set  forth  to  get  I 
himself  a  national  following.     He  elected  i 
to  side  with  the  isolationists  and  in  that ' 
respect  his  voting  record  in  the  Senate  has  . 
been  consistent  to  this  day.     But  the  isola- 
tionist groups  with  whom  he  was  chummy 
were  for  the  most  part  the  crackpot-reli- 
gion, lunatic-fringe,  patriotic-racket,  two- 
bit-fascist    outfits    that    had    sprouted   so 
luxuriantly  during  the  depression.     Some 
of  them   were   violently   anti-Jew,    some 
yearned  toward  Hitler,  and  they  seem  to 
have  swapped  around  their  mailing  lists 
with  one  another. 

Reynolds  speedily  aroused  the  admira- 
tion of  these  groups.  He  and  Gerald 
L.  K.  Smith,  the  Committee-of-One-Mil- 
lion  rabble-rouser,  vociferously  applauded 
each  other.  The  Senator  and  Gerald 
Winrod,  the  Judophobe  of  Wichita  who 
ran  for  the  Senate  and  who  is  now  under 
Federal  indictment  for  conspiracy,  sent 
each  other  enthusiastic  telegrams.  Reyn- 
olds spoke  before  a  professional  patriots' 
luncheon  in  New  York  and  was  greeted 
with  cheers  by  a  delegation  from  the  Ger- 
man-American Bund,  headed  by  Fritz 
Kuhn.  Reynolds  wrote  to  John  Cecil, 
whose  prejudices  animated  the  American 
Immigration  Conference  Board,  Inc.,  ad- 
dressing him  as  "My  dear  Jack,"  and 
signing  himself  "hastily  but  sincerely  yours, 
Bob."     And  so  on,  and  so  on. 

In  general  the  editorial  conduct  of  the 
American  Vindicator  was  extremely  cagey. 
The  copy  consisted  mostly  of  denuncia- 
tions of  vague  enemies  within  and  without. 
Reynolds,  for  example,  did  not  himself 
go  after  the  Jews,  but  the  Vindicator's  col- 
umns were  opened  to  anti-Jew  letters 
and  the  Senator  allowed  himself  to  say, 
in  a  by-lined  interview  published  in  Hit- 
ler's Voelkischer  Beobachter  on  February  5, 


SENATOR   BOB    REYNOLDS:    RETROSPECTIVE    VIEW         369 


1939,  that  'T  am  glad  to  be  able  to  state 
without  the  least  hesitation  that  I  am 
absolutely  against  the  United  States  wag- 
ing war  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  Jews 
anywhere  in  the  world." 

He  went  abroad  again  in  the  summer  of 
1939  and  was  in  France  when  the  invasion 
of  Poland  came  on  September  1st.  He 
hurried  home  and  explained  to  reporters 
that  "Hitler  went  over  and  took  land  in 
the  way  that  sometimes  the  boys  in  Texas 
and  North  Carolina  used  to  move  a  fence, 
with  the  aid  of  a  shotgun,  instead  of  doing 
it  legally  by  the  way  of  a  surveyor — that's 
all  Hider  did." 

As  the  war  drew  nearer  America,  Reyn- 
olds began  to  hedge  a  litde.  He  an- 
nounced himself  as  against  conscription, 
but  voted  for  it  in  the  end,  declaring  that 
"The  squirrel  hunters  of  North  Carolina 
and  Kentucky  can  keep  Hitler  or  anybody 
else  off  until  the  Marines  arrive  and  the 
situation  is  in  hand."  He  sheered  to  the 
wind  and  the  Vindicator  organization  was 
gently  allowed  to  subside — the  five  million 
members  he  expected  never  materialized. 
The  original  platform  was  changed  so  that 
by  the  summer  of  1943  it  read: 

1.  Win  the  war. 

2.  Outlaw  the  Communist  Party. 

3.  Abolish  all  isms  except  Americanism. 

4.  Stop  all  immigration  now. 

5.  Register  all  labor  unions. 

Bob  had  got  himself  back  on  safe  ground, 
and  in  an  editorial  ironically  headed  "Shift- 
ing Sands,"  he  announced  that  "When 
the  United  Nations  land  in  Europe — and 
they  will  land — Hitler's  sham  fortress  will 
crumble  to  the  earth  from  which  it  was 
raised,  and  the  Nazi-fascist  criminals  will 
be  forever  buried  in  its  ruins." 

But  the  damage  had  been  done.  When, 
through  the  process  of  seniority,  he  suc- 
ceeded to  the  chairmanship  of  the  Military 
Affairs  Committee  in  1941,  the  home- 
State  Charlotte  Observer  was  "absolutely 
appalled."  Toward  the  middle  of  '43  he 
wrote  to  a  friend  in  Winston-Salem,  say- 
ing, "It  is  a  long  time  before  the  Demo- 
cratic primary  of  1 944.     Nevertheless  I  do 


not  think  it  is  too  early  to  make  inquiry  of 
my  personal  friends  as  to  the  political 
situation  in  your  county  in  reference  to  the 
senatorial  contest  in  which  I  am  inter- 
ested." The  friend  replied,  "I  would  not 
be  your  friend  if  I  did  not  tell  you  that 
your  stock  is  not  as  good  here  as  it  has 
been  .  .  .  the  people  in  this  community 
are  with  the  President  on  his  foreign  pol- 
icy .  .  .  my  opinion  is  that  you  are  going 
to  have  hard  sledding." 

What  went  on  in  the  Senator's  mind  as 
a  result  of  correspondence  of  this  character 
can  only  be  surmised.  But  the  outlook 
was  bleak.  On  October  9,  1941,  he 
had  married  Evalyn  McLean.  However 
charming  Miss  McLean  might  be,  the 
marriage  prevented  any  more  guying  of 
Cameron  Morrison,  for  the  new  vi^ife 
brought  SI 00,000  a  year  with  her  and  as 
far  as  plush  living  was  concerned.  Cam 
and  Bob  were  in  the  same  boat.  Indeed, 
when  he  heard  of  the  marriage,  Morrison 
said,  "From  now  on  even  I  can  lick  him." 
Reynolds  couldn't  act  poor  boy  with  the 
mountain  people  any  more  and  his  folks 
were  dead  against  his  war  record.  His 
play  was  played  out. 

Apparently — though  there  are  rumors 
jr\^  that  he  may  become  the  publisher  of 
the  McLeans'  Cincinnati  Enquirer — the 
only  gamble  left  was  with  the  nationalist 
rabble-rousers,  in  the  hope  that  reaction 
after  the  war  would  help  something  turn 
up.  In  December,  1943,  Gerald  L.  K. 
Smith  suggested  that  Reynolds  run  for 
President  on  the  America  First  ticket  in 
1944.  Reynolds  said  he  was  "flattered 
and  honored."  Presently  the  Charlotte 
News  was  reporting  that  expensively  printed 
literature  booming  Bob  for  President  was 
flooding  North  Carolina.  According  to 
this  literature  "The  American  Nationalists 
present  Robert  R.  Reynolds,  United  States 
Senator,  for  President  of  the  United  States 
in  1944." 

But  it  seems  a  little  late  in  the  day  for  a 
sixty-year-old  ex-roller-skating-rink  opera- 
tor to  set  out  to  capture  the  United  States. 


THE    STAGECOACH 

A  Story 


GRIFFITH    BEEMS 


n  FTERWARDS  mv  sistcr  and  I  were  sorry, 
/\\  but  there  is  this  about  Grand- 
^  JA.  father:  if  you  get  something  on 
him  you  have  to  use  it.  Grandfather  is 
seventy-three  and  set  in  his  ways,  and 
when  my  sister  and  I  discovered  the 
discrepancies  in  his  Plummer  story  we 
couldn't  keep  our  mouths  shut.  We  went 
over  together  for  dinner  and  Betty  asked 
him  about  Plummer  Tavern.  It  is  easy 
to  start  him; 

Grandfather  was  slicing  green  onions 
and  mixing  them  with  his  potatoes,  but 
he  laid  down  his  knife.  "Old  Levi  Plum- 
mer," he  said  reminiscendy,  swiping  at  his 
lips  with  his  napkin.  "You  children  don't 
remember  your  great-great-grandfather. 
He  died  a  good  many  years  before  you 
were  born.  Levi  Plummer  fought  in  the 
Civil  War  and  was  wounded  in  the  leg — 
Shiloh,  I  think — and  after  the  war  gan- 
grene set  in.  He  had  four  operations. 
First  they  amputated  his  toe,  then  his 
ankle,  then  they  cut  off  his  leg  at  the  knee, 
finally  at  the  thigh.  It  would  have  killed 
any  other  man.  In  the  end  it  even  killed 
Levi  Plummer.  He  had  five  hundred 
acres  when  he  died,  good  Iowa  land,  every 
inch  of  it,  and  twelve  thousand  dollars  out 
in  first  mortgages. 

"He  was  a  magnificent  specimen — com- 
manding, dignified,  impressive.  Looked 
like  James  G.  Blaine.     Big  full  beard,  griz- 


zled early.  A  real  patriarch.  Every 
morning  he'd  stand  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs 
and  call  his  six  boys:  'George!  Joe! 
Charlie!  Sam!  Hiram!  Taylor!'  He 
had  a  deep  orotund  voice."  It  was  un- 
necessary to  add  this,  for  Grandfather  was 
calling  these  names  in  his  deepest  and  most 
orotund  voice.  "Then  he  called  his 
girls,  'Maggie!  Lizzie!  Ann!  Jane! 
Nora!     Ellen!'" 

"I'll  bet  Lizzie  didn't  always  get  up 
when  he  called,"  said  my  sister.  Eliza- 
beth was  Grandfather's  mother  and  my 
sister  is  named  after  her. 

"She  certainly  did,"  said  Grandfather. 
"They  stepped  around  when  Levi  spoke. 
That  was  one  house  in  which  children 
obeyed.  Even  his  wife  was  afraid  of  him. 
She  always  referred  to  him  as  'Plummer.'  " 

"A  nice  character,"  said  my  sister,  "go- 
ing round  scaring  his  wife  and  children 
with  his  deep  orotund  voice." 

"What  about  the  Tavern?"  I  asked.  I 
wanted  him  freshly  committed  to  the 
story. 

"It's  still  standing,"  he  said.  "You 
children  should  drive  back  there  to  Green- 
castle  and  visit  it  sometime.  From  here 
in  Shelby  County,  it's  not  more  than  a 
hundred-and-fifty-mile  drive."  Of  course 
we  didn't  interrupt  to  tell  him  that  we 
had  just  done  that  very  thing.  "In  those 
days  the  stagecoach  stopped    there.     It 


THE    STAGECOACH 


371 


forded  the  Skunk  just  west  of  Plummer's 
and  changed  horses  at  the  Tavern.  Blue 
wheels  and  canary-colored  body,  that  was 
the  early  stagecoach." 

Grandfather  began  drinking  his  tea, 
filling  the  cup  with  the  invariable  eight 
soda  crackers.  "Most  of  that  was  before 
my  time,"  he  admitted,  "but  once  I  re- 
member the  stagecoach  coming  in.  The 
driver  was  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Bannis- 
ter Brailey.  He  came  driving  those  six 
horses  up  to  the  Tavern  at  a  smart  clip 
and  he  stood  up,  I  remember — he  had 
all  the  lines  knotted  together — and  he 
stood  up  and  slewed  to  a  stop,  and  then  he 
jumped,  throwing  the  lines  to  Levi  Plum- 
mer,  and  made  a  beeline  for  the  house. 
He  was  prancing,  I'll  tell  you.  It  was 
along  in  the  spring  and  crossing  the  river 
— I  suppose  it  was  high;  it  always  was  in 
the  spring — one  of  the  lead  horses  snarled 
her  harness  and  he'd  had  to  wade  out 
there  up  to  his  armpits  in  the  river  and 
free  her  and  afterwards  on  the  box  in  the 
wind  he  was  freezing.  I'll  never  forget 
that — Bannister  Brailey,  standing  up  in  his 
frozen  clothes,  tossing  the  lines  to  my 
grandfather  on  the  ground,  and  leaping 
off  before  the  horses  stopped.  He  never 
waited  for  the  passengers.  Bannister  Brai- 
ley, the  stagecoach  driver." 

"What  about  the  Tavern?"  I  demanded. 
He  had  to  be  nailed  down  to  the  story  or 
he  would  wriggle  out  of  it.  "What  would 
Betty  and  I  see  if  we  did  go  back  there?" 

Grandfather's  teaspoon  had  disappeared 
as  usual  and  instead  of  asking  for  another 
he  worked  himself  up  without  any  expla- 
nation and  shuffled  out  to  the  pantry, 
dragging  his  right  leg  a  little  as  he  does 
now  since  his  stroke  last  fall.  Watching 
that  game  leg  hurts,  because  Grandfather 
was  always  proud  of  his  agility.  Right 
up  to  the  stroke  he  used  to  entertain  on 
the  slightest  provocation  with  a  little 
shuffling  jig  that  he  called  ''the  whing- 
ding."  No  one  dares  mention  it  any 
more.  Now  he  came  back  with  a  table- 
spoon, which  infuriates  Grandmother 
— acting  as  if  she  didn't  have  enough  tea- 
spoons— but  I  really  believe  he  prefers  the 
larger  spoon  for  eating  his  crackers  soaked 
in  tea.  Grandmother  started  scolding 
him,  but  he  paid  no  attention. 

"Things  have  a  way  of  shrinking,"  he 


said.  "I  don't  suppose  the  Tavern  would 
look  so  big  to  me  now  as  it  did  then.  But 
it  was  a  fine  big  house  for  those  days,  bet- 
ter than  most  people  had,  and  finished  all 
inside  with  walnut.  The  thing  I  remem- 
ber most  in  particular  was  the  public  room 
of  the  Tavern.  That's  what  you'd  look 
for  first  if  you  went  back  there.  The  pub- 
lic room  went  up  thirty  feet — two  full 
stories — and  up  above  there  was  a  balcony 
and  the  bedrooms  upstairs  opened  off  this 
balcony,  same  as  in  all  old-fashioned  ho- 
tels. I  can  remember  as  if  it  were  yester- 
day, peeking  through  the  balcony  railing 
down  at  that  big  room — as  big  as  a  barn 
it  seemed  to  me  then." 

THERE  it  was,  more  or  less  complete, 
the  way  he  always  told  it. 

"You  want  us  to  believe  that,  don't 
you.  Grandpa?"  my  sister  began,  scorn- 
fully sweet. 

He  was  undoing  the  cellophane  from 
the  one  after-dinner  cigar  that  the  doctor 
allows  him.  She  put  him  on  suspicion  at 
once.  "People  don't  have  to  believe  it 
to  eat  at  my  table,"  he  said  mildly. 

She  fiddle-faddled  with  our  triumph. 
"It  was  all  imagination,  wasn't  it?"  she 
coaxed.  "First  you  imagined  that  big 
room,  two  stories  high,  and  then  you  told 
about  it  so  often  that  you  came  to  believe 
it  almost,  didn't  you?" 

"No,"  he  said  slowly,  "I  saw  that 
room." 

He  spoke  strongly  and  she  was  flustered. 

"Then  where  is  it?"  she  cried.  "Where 
is  it?"  She  threw  her  hands  around  like 
a  three-year-old. 

He  caught  on  at  once.  "If  you've 
been  out  there,"  he  said,  "you  didn't  find 
the  room.  I  could  have  told  you  that 
beforehand.  I  drove  out  there  thirty 
years  ago,  hired  a  rig  from  the  livery  stable 
in  Greencastle  and  drove  out  there,  and 
the  house  was  changed  then.  They'd 
put  flooring  across  and  converted  the  upper 
part  into  a  bedroom.  But  the  walnut  is 
still  there,  isn't  it,  all  the  woodwork  and 
paneling  of  walnut?'! 

"No,"  I  said. 

"That  so?"  he  remarked,  imperturba- 
ble, tipping  his  ashes  into  the  tea  saucer 
with  an  ash  tray  squarely  in  front  of  him. 
Grandmother    remonstrated.     "Probably 


372 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ripped  out  the  walnut  and  sold  it  during 
the  First  World  War  for  gunstocks.  Wal- 
nut was  high  then.  That's  where  it 
went." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say,"  belligerently 
shouted  my  sister,  "that  you've  been  tell- 
ing us  all  our  lives  to  go  see  a  Plummer 
Tavern  that  you  knew  didn't  exist?" 
My  sister  is  excitable.  "That  you  delib- 
erately sent  us  on  a  wild-goose  chase?" 

"If  you'd  listened  to  me  a  bit  more  care- 
fully," he  retorted,  matching  her  vio- 
lence, "you'd  have  noticed  that  I've  never 
said  what  you'd  find  if  you  went  out  there 
now." 

"W^e  just  asked  you  what  we'd  find," 
Betty  contradicted,  "and  you  said — " 

He  interrupted,  louder.  "Don't  you 
put  words  in  my  mouth,  young  lady. 
What  I  just  said — " 

Grandmother  pounded  on  the  table 
with  a  knife  handle.  She  had  the  look 
round  her  lips  that  means  business.  "You 
stop  raising  your  voice,"  she  told  Grand- 
father. "Remember  your  color.  The 
doctor  said  you  had  to  keep  your  color 
down.     And  your  voice." 

"You're  flushed  up  like  a  peony  your- 
self," he  told  her.  "You  keep  out  of  this. 
This  is  a  peaceable  argument  until  you 
and  the  doctors  get  in  it.  Betty  isn't  going 
to  twist  my  words  with  me  sitting  here 
able  to  open  my  mouth  and  contradict  her. 
I  don't  care  what  the  doctors  say." 

"Contradict  her  quietly,"  said  Grand- 
mother. 

Grandfather  snorted,  but  he  did  lower 
his  voice.  'Tve  never  said  what  you'd 
find  there  now.  I've  always  described  it 
the  way  it  was,  the  way  I  remember  it. 
It's  been  quite  a  while  ago.  Remember, 
we  left  in  '73.  My  folks  moved  west  here 
to  Shelby  County.  In  the  spring  of  '73 
we  packed  up  and  moved  west." 

We  hadn't  finished  with  him.  On  our 
trip,  Betty  had  remembered  Bannister 
Brailey  and  we  had  stopped  at  the  Green- 
castle  post  office  and  inquired  for  him. 
It  turned  out  that  Bannister  Brailey  was 
dead  but  he  had  a  daughter,  now  Mrs. 
R.  B.  Yount.  She  was  about  sixty  and 
had  been  indignant  at  the  suggestion  that 
her  father.  Bannister  Brailey,  might  have 
driven  a  stagecoach  in  his  youth.  I  think 
she  considered  stagecoach-driving  fit  occu- 


pation only  for  limbs  of  the  devil.     She 

had  been  positive  her  father  hadn't.  Be- 
sides being  a  respectable  farmer  all  his 
life,  Bannister  Brailey  had  been  nothing 
less  than  a  Free  Methodist.  After  correct- 
ing us,  Mrs.  Yount  had  shut  the  door  in 
our  faces.     We  reported  this. 

Grandfather  surprised  us.  Instead  of 
arguing,  he  remembered  some  new  facts 
that  we  had  never  heard  before.  "I'll 
tell  you,"  he  confessed  after  reflection, 
"what  makes  me  believe  the  driver  was 
Bannister  Brailey.  I  remember  after  we 
came  out  here  to  Shelby  County,  one  win- 
ter a  bobsled  stopped  in  the  road  and  a 
man  got  out  and  broke  his  way  through 
the  drifts  up  to  our  house.  He  was  Ban- 
nister Brailey  and  he  stayed  with  us  that 
night  and  slept  in  my  bed.  And  I  re- 
member my  father  and  mother  and  Ban- 
nister Brailey  talking  that  evening  and 
what  they  talked  about  were  the  old 
stagecoach  days.  That's  where  I  found 
out  that  Bannister  Brailey  drove  the  stage- 
coach. I  got  it  that  night.  And  I  still 
think  he  did." 

"His  own  daughter  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding," said  my  sister. 

"Daughters  don't  know  everything." 

"I'm  sure  of  it,"  said  my  sister.  "'Grand- 
daughters are  difi'erent." 

"Another  thing  I  remember  about 
Bannister  Brailey,"  he  went  on,  "'is  that 
we  had  a  well  down  by  the  slough,  and 
even  in  winter,  unless  we  melted  snow,  we 
had  to  go  for  water;  and  the  next  day 
Bannister  Brailey  and  my  father  drove 
down  to  the  well  with  the  team,  and  com- 
ing back  Bannister  Brailey  was  holding 
the  bucket  out  to  one  side  to  keep  the 
water  from  slopping  on  him  and  my  father 
drove  badly  and  the  sled  tipped  over  and 
Bannister  Brailey  spilled  water  all  over  his 
clothes." 

"And  made  a  beeline  for  the  house," 
shouted  my  sister,  spilling  her  cofl'ee  as 
she  put  down  her  cup  in  her  excitement. 
"There  you  have  the  entire  basis  for  the 
story  of  Bannister  Brailey,  the  stagecoach 
driver,  tearing  up  from  Skunk  River  in 
his  wet  clothes,  his  six  horses  in  a  lather, 
jumping  ofi*  and  running  for  the  house!" 

Even  Grandfather  looked  momentarily 
startled.  He  worked  at  his  cigar  for  a  full 
minute    and    then    he    shook    his    head. 


THE    STAGECOACH 


373 


"No,"  he  said.  "It  couldn't  be.  I  saw 
that'stagecoach.  Maybe  it  wasn't  Ban- 
nister Hrailey  driving.  But  I  saw  that 
stagecoach."  He  shut  his  eyes.  'T  still 
can." 

Tiii:n  the  argument  really  began. 
I  iliink  we  all  wanted  to  get  to  the 
bottom  of  it.  Betty  and  I  figured  there 
must  be  Grcencastle  people,  still  hale, 
whose  memories  went  back  further  than 
Grandfather's.  We  made  the  trip  again 
and  consulted  the  editor  of  the  local  paper, 
and  he  suggested  Lucy  Batchelder,  Tan- 
ner that  was,  who'd  had  the  farm  adjoin- 
ing Plunmier's  on  the  west.  Mrs.  Batch- 
elder  was  eighty-eight.  Her  daughter 
asked  us  in.  Mrs.  Batchelder  was  sitting 
in  a  rocker  —a  tall,  wasted-away,  vinegary 
old  woman,  thin  as  paper,  but  straight, 
her  long  shriveled  hands  in  her  lap — and 
she  was  wearing  a  sort  of  old-fashioned 
mobcap  and  a  spotless  blue  apron.  At 
first  we  thought  she  might  be  feeble,  her 
voice  was  so  faint  and  she  sat  so  quietly, 
her  hands  folded,  her  knees  together,  and 
her  feet  in  Congress  slippers  side  by  side 
on  the  floor.  In  the  way  she  sat,  the 
straightness  of  her  back,  the  crossing  of  her 
emaciated  hands,  the  jointing  and  folding 
of  that  tall  spare  skeleton,  there  was  the 
neatness  and  angularity  of  the  positions 
of  an  open  jackknife.  When  she  was 
young  she  must  have  been  one  of  those 
long,  lanky,  unfortunate  girls,  too  tall  for 
any  of  the  boys  in  the  neighborhood. 

After  a  few  commonplaces  with  her 
daughter,  I  told  Mrs.  Batchelder  that  she 
certainly  didn't  look  eighty-eight.  She 
resented  the  remark.  She  gave  me  a  sharp 
look,  as  much  as  to  say  that  fine  words 
didn't  take  her  in  and  that  I  was  a  liar. 
With  the  flash  of  those  suspicious  old  eyes, 
I  knew  there  was  nothing  feeble  about  her. 

Her  voice  quavered  a  little  before  it 
settled  down.  "So  you're  Plummers?" 
she  began,  after  I  had  explained  what  we 
were  after.  "You  look  kind  of  like  Plum- 
mers. My  stars,  though,  you're  too 
young  to  tell.  The  Plummers  was  always 
built  short  and  chunky,  fleshed  up  early, 
and  they  never  lived  long.  Got  un- 
healthy fat— kind  that  dies  of  diabetes. 
Doctors  didn't  know  what  it  was  then,  but 
that's  what  it  was.     Levi  Plummer  died 


of  diabetes.  I  remember  it  was  raining 
and  the  minister  stopped. 

"  'Been  burying  today,'  he  says. 

"  'Who?'  says  Pa. 

"  'Old  Levi  Plummer,'  says  the  Rev- 
erend Lampman. 

"'What!'  says  Pa,  'I  was  over  to  see 
Levi  just  a  couple  days  ago.  A  little 
bedridden  but  as  mean  as  ever.' 

"  'Well,'  says  the  Reverend  Lampman, 
'he's  gone.  I  was  hard  put  to  say  some- 
thing for  Levi.  It  rained  like  pitchforks 
all  the  time  I  was  a-burying  him.' 

"'Could  have  said  he  was  good  to  his 
stock,'  says  Pa.  'Never  seen  a  heifer 
fatten  up  like  she'd  do  for  Levi.'  " 

Mrs.  Batchelder  had  begun  to  rock 
gently,  lifting  and  lowering  her  heels. 
She  folded  her  long  arms.  "I  remember 
that  between  Reverend  Lampman  and 
Pa  like  it  was  yesterday.  It  was  still 
a-raining  outside  and  that  was  the  day 
Levi  Plummer  was  buried.  He  always 
lived  over  the  crick  from  us."  Mrs. 
Batchelder  meditated  a  moment.  "He 
was  a  peculiar  man,  Levi  Plummer,  pe- 
culiar. Little  pig  eyes  and  his  ears  laid 
back,  didn't  stand  out  natural.  Crazy 
as  a  betsey  bug  most  of  the  time.  Never 
got  along  with  people,  Levi  didn't.  To 
begin  with  he  was  from  Kentucky,  a  slav- 
ery man.  During  the  war  I  guess  he 
never  dared  stick  his  head  out  of  doors  in 
the  night.  Copperhead,  that's  what  he 
was.  He  paid  a  bushel  basket  of  gold  to 
keep  his  boys  out  of  the  war.  Heard  him 
say  so  myself.  Feeling  run  so  high  they 
went  one  night  and  tarred  and  feathered 
the  fence  posts  front  of  his  house.  He 
hushed  down  after  that." 

I  mentioned  Bannister  Brailey  and  the 
Tavern. 

"Can't  say,"  she  said,  rocking  more  de- 
cidedly, "but  wouldn't  be  surprised.  Ban- 
nister Brailey'd  drive  anything  that  was 
heading  fast  for  blazes,  that  one  would. 
Most  drove  his  pa  and  ma  mad  'fore  he 
settled  down.  Mamie  Erlitzer,  she  settled 
him  down,  I  can  tell  you."  Every  now  and 
then  in  her  rocking,  Mrs.  Batchelder's  bony 
hand  went  up,  her  head  came  down,  she 
fingered  the  lobe  of  her  right  ear,  gave  it  a 
slight  tug,  and  folded  her  arms  again  with- 
out interrupting  the  running  of  her  talk  by 
so  much  as  a  breath. 


374 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"About  that  stagecoach.  Never  seen 
one  in  my  time.  Railroad  come  through 
in  ^66.  After  the  railroads  there  wasn't 
no  use  for  stagecoaches.  I  must  have 
seen  'em  but  I  don't  remember  'em.  I've 
heard  'em  talk  about  Plummer  Tavern, 
though.  That  house  out  there  now  that 
you  seen,  that  ain't  Plummer  Tavern. 
That  house  out  there  was  built  right  after 
the  Civil  War.  We  built  a  house  the  year 
after  the  war,  first  house  around  here 
wasn't  made  of  native  timber.  My  pa, 
he  ordered  pine  from  Chicago.  One  day 
when  it  was  a-building,  Levi  Plummer 
come  over  to  look  at  it.  Talked  half  a 
day  with  Pa.  The  next  year  he  built. 
Bought  his  pine  from  Chicago,  same  as 
Pa  told  him  to.  He  finished  the  house 
up  nice  inside,  I'll  say  that  for  him.  All 
walnut  fixings.  Had  a  lot  of  land  there, 
wasn't  good  for  nothing  but  walnut  and 
hazelbrush  and  such  like.  Wasn't  smart, 
Levi  Plummer.  Didn't  get  the  best  land 
when  he  could.  All  the  county  to  choose 
from  when  he  come  out  here — Levi 
Plummer  was  one  of  the  first — but  cockle- 
burs  and  horseweeds  is  what  he  bought 
from  the  government. 

"I  remember  the  old  Tavern,  little 
squatty  building,  one  room  of  logs,  other 
room  of  boards  and  battens,  linn  I  guess, 
fireplace  at  each  end.  Tore  it  down  in  the 
eighties.  Never  knowed  how  they  all 
lived  in  that  house,  Levi  and  his  wife  and 
twelve  children,  I  think  it  was,  and  there 
was  old  Grandma  Morrow  as  lived  with 
them,  ugly- tempered  as  sin.  After  her 
limbs  was- paralyzed  she'd  sit  by  the  door 
and  throw  water  on  the  children  to  keep 
'em  from  coming  in.  Then  there  was 
uncle  John  Morrow  too.  He  was  a  crip- 
ple. Fell  off  a  horse,  I  guess,  and  walked 
with  a  cane.  I  never  knowed  where  they 
put  them  all.  Boys  must  have  slept  in  the 
barn.  Joe,  I  know,  he  said  he  used  to 
sleep  in  the  barn.  'You  sleep  in  the  hay,' 
he  says,  'and  it'll  make  your  hair  curl.' 
Joe  Plummer,  he  had  the  prettiest  head — " 

Mrs.  Batchelder  tugged  at  her  ear,  but 
this  time  she  interrupted  herself,  and  her 
voice  trailed  off  and  slowly  she  ceased  to 
rock.  For  a  full  minute  she  was  silent. 
Then  she  glanced  at  us  suspiciously,  as  if 
we  might  have  been  reading  her  thoughts, 
folded  her  arms,  and  sniffed.     The  sniff 


was  a  crushing  judgment.  "Tavern, 
they  called  it,"  she  said  contemptu- 
ously, resuming  her  rocking.  "Don't 
know  why.  Changed  horses  there.  That's 
all  they  ever  done.  Never  put  nobody 
up.  Couldn't  put  themselves  up  before 
they  built  the  new  house." 

Her  arms  tightened.  "Wasn't  no  lace 
on  their  petticoats,  I  can  tell  you.  How 
old  you  say  your  grandfather  is?  Seventy- 
three.  What  he  seen  was  the  balcony 
round  the  portico  of  the  new  house. 
That's  what  he  seen.  Can't  believe  what 
children  remembers.  Levi  Plummer  put 
a  portico  front  of  his  house.  Round  the 
top  of  the  portico  there  was  a  gimcracky 
railing.  That's  what  your  grandpa  seen 
when  he  looked  out  the  upstairs  window. 
Levi  Plummer  put  it  there  because  we 
didn't  have  one.  Right  after  the  war  it 
was.     He  was  fixing  to  be  pretty  fine. 

"But  his  wife  looked  out  the  window  one 
day,  watched  him  going  down  to  the 
barn.  Right  off  she  seen  he  didn't  look 
right.  One  shoulder  higher'n  the  other, 
slumping  along,  don't  look  right.  'What's 
the  matter  with  your  foot?'  she  says. 
'You  don't  walk  right.'  'Nothing,'  he 
says.  But  she  made  him  sit  down.  'I'm 
going  to  wash  your  feet,'  she  says.  He 
wouldn't  hear  of  it.  But  she  done  it. 
Front  of  his  toe  there  was  a  sore,  mean 
pussy-looking  sore.  Had  to  have  his  toe 
off.  Then  they  broke  out  on  his  leg. 
Diabetes,  that's  what  it  was,  but  doctors 
didn't  know.  Seems  like  he  couldn't 
get  enough  sugar.  Had  a  craving.  Sugar 
costs  money.  Wife  hid  the  sugar  bowl 
and  he'd  sneak  down  cellar  and  eat 
up  her  preserves.  Had  to  have  sweet 
stuff.  That's  the  way  diabetes  takes  you. 
When  those  sores  was  a-running,  Levi 
Plummer  was  himself,  but  when  they 
healed,  he  was  crazy  as  a  betsey  bug.  His 
wife  found  the  butcher  knife  under  his 
pillow.  'I'm  'fraid  for  my  life  of  him,' 
she  told  Mahala  Baker,  but  she  never  let 
him  know,  spunked  right  up  to  him  al- 
ways. One  day  he  tried  to  kill  hisself, 
propped  his  shotgun  up  against  a  stump, 
going  to  blow  his  head  off.  Joe  Plummer, 
he  kicked  the  gun  over  just  in  time. 

"That  Joe  Plummer  was  a  holy  terror. 
When  he  got  hold  of  you,  you'd  better 
look  out.     All  them  Plummer  boys  was 


THE    STAGECOACH 


375 


devils.  Spiteful  and  mean,  that's  what 
ihcy  mostly  was.  Levi'd  say  to  Joe, 
'Joe,  I  want  you  to  use  the  sorrels  today 
on  the  back  forty,'  and  fifteen  minutes 
after  he'd  look  from  the  window  and  there'd 
be  Joe  driving  the  blacks  on  the  front 
eighty.  Or  he'd  say,  'George,  I  want  you 
to  put  new  riders  on  the  fence,'  and  George 
would  say,  'I'll  ride  you,  old  man,  that's 
what  I'll  do.'  That  was  the  way  they 
talked  to  him,  and  him  in  bed  with  his 
sores.  He  had  a  red  muley  cow  and  Sam 
sold  her  and  kept  the  money.  The  boys 
stealed  off  their  father  right  and  left. 
And  the  doctors  had  his  leg  off,  a  chop 
at  a  time. 

"I  remember  one  summer  I  tried  to 
work  for  Ma  Plummer.  Three  days  of 
the  Plummers  was  all  I  could  stand. 
That  Joe  Plummer  he  was  a  devil.  He 
could  make  you  laugh  and  laugh  when 
he  wanted  to  and  the  next  minute  you'd 
like  to  smack  him  down.  When  old  Levi 
died  they  all  took  to  fighting  among 
themselves.  There  wasn't  one  of  them 
could  be  sweet  enough  to  Ma  Plummer. 
She  had  the  money.  And  oh  my,  how 
they  did  hate  each  other.  It  got  to  be  a 
scandal  almost.  They  hated  Joe  the 
most  because  he  could  get  round  his  ma. 
But  Joe,  he  wasn't  dependable.  'You 
don't  want  ever  to  get  mixed  up  with 
those  Plummers,'  my  pa  says  to  me. 
'There's  bad  blood  in  all  of  'em.'  And 
there  was."  She  stopped,  rocking.  "I 
never  consorted  with  none  of  'em,"  Mrs. 
Batchelder  said  firmly. 

WHEN  we  related  it  all.  Grandfather 
immediately  pooh-poohed  it  away. 
"Lucy  wanted  to  marry  Joe  Plummer  and 
Joe  wouldn't  have  her.  I  remember  that 
story.  I  wouldn't  believe  Mrs.  Batchelder 
under  oath.  I  don't  believe  she  was  even 
living  around  Greencastle  when  we  left  in 
'73.  I  certainly  don't  recall  her." 
"I  believe  her,"  Betty  insisted. 
^  "So  do  I,"  I  said.  "Mrs.  Batchelder  is 
eighty-eight.  She  was  a  girl  in  her  teens 
when  you  were  born.  Naturally  she  re- 
members better  than  you  do.  I  can  see 
the  process.  After  you  get  to  Shelby 
County,  your  mother  tells  you  about  the 
gimcracky  railing  on  the  outside  portico  of 
her  old  home  and  in  your  mind  you  turn 


it  into  the  inside  balcony  for  an  enormous 
public  tavern  room,  two  stories  high." 

"You  probably  didn't  know  what  a 
portico  was,"  Betty  suggested. 

"Your  mother  told  you  other  things," 
I  said,  "and  then,  childlike,  you  garbled  it 
in  your  mind  until  now  you  remember 
things  that  happened  to  your  mother  be- 
fore you  were  born,  before  even  Mrs. 
Batchelder  can  remember,  like  the  stage- 
coach, because  your  mother  was  older 
than  Mrs.  Batchelder." 

Grandmother  leaned  over  to  Betty  and 
they  whispered  together.  Betty  alertly 
sat  up.     "How  old  are  you.  Grandpa?" 

"Seventy-three,"  said  Grandmother, 
"and  his  birthday  is  on  the  3rd  of  June." 

My  sister  calculated  painfully. 

Grandfather  gibed  at  her.  "You'll 
never  manage  sums  in  your  head,"  he 
told  her,  "unless  you  learn  how  to  wrap 
your  tongue  round  your  teeth  correctly." 

"You  were  born  on  June  3,  1871,"  she 
charged,  "and  you  left  Greencastle  to 
come  west  out  here  to  Shelby  County  in 
1873,  so  all  these  things  you've  been  telling 
us  happened  before  you  were  two  years 
old.  Isn't  that  precocious,  Grandpa, 
even  for  you?" 

I  could  have  kicked  myself  for  not  hav- 
ing thought  it  through  before. 

"Who  said  I  was  born  in  1871?"  he 
countered  mildly.  "I  never  said  that." 
We  roared  contradiction  in  unison.  "I 
was  born  in  '68,"  he  insisted,  and  became 
suddenly  heated.  "Your  grandmother 
invented  the  other.  I  ought  to  know. 
I'm  seventy-six.     Let's  see.     I  was — " 

"Careful,  Grandpa,  careful.  Get  your 
arithmetic  right." 

"I  was  five,"  he  asserted,  fully  aroused. 
"It's  not  a  matter  of  arithmetic.  It's  a 
fact.  A  child  of  five  remembers  a  lot. 
Such  things  as  I've  told  you  I  remember 
distinctly.  They're  part  of  me.  My 
mind  isn't  cluttered  up  with  supposes. 
It's  filled  with  the  things  that  have  actually 
happened.  I'll  remember  what  I  remem- 
ber as  long  as  I  live.  It's  built  into  me, 
part  and  parcel,  like  my  own  bones. 
You  aren't  going  to  make  me  forget 
things,  Betty,  after  remembering  them  all 
my  life.  Why,  I  can  see  that  stagecoach, 
every  detail."  He  shut  his  eyes;  the  lids 
screwed   together.     "I    can   see   it   right 


376 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


down  to  the  hub  nut  and  the  blue  fellies." 
Then  he  snorted  with  the  vigor  of  his  cer- 
titude, opened  his  eyes,  and  stood  up  care- 
fully because  of  his  leg. 

"I'd  be  the  first  to  admit  that  my  mem- 
ory had  played  me  false  if  any  evidence 
were  forthcoming,"  he  announced,  re- 
treating with  dignity  toward  his  newspaper. 
We  made  disbelieving  murmurs.  "There 
hasn't  been  any  evidence  yet."  He 
picked  up  the  newspaper.  "I'd  like  less 
loose  talk  and  more  proof."  Behind  his 
newspaper  he  is  unassailable.  It  is  his  way 
of  retiring  from  the  field.  "Stop  talking 
and  get  proof  for  a  change,"  he  said,  and 
disappeared  behind  the  sheet. 

"Let's  prove  it,"  Betty  said  to  me. 

"How?"  I  said.  "You  wouldn't  know 
proof  from  prunes." 

"Maybe  she  would,"  Grandmother 
said.  "Listen,  Betty,  go  up  to  the  attic. 
On  the  right-hand  side  there  is  a  pile  of 
screens  and  behind  the  screens  there's  an 
old  baby  carriage  without  any  wheels  and 
right  near  there  is  a  family  Bible.  I  think 
it's  down  in  the  foot  of  the  baby  carriage." 

Grandfather  lowered  his  newspaper. 
"You  keep  out  of  this,"  he  warned  Grand- 
mother, his  voice  suddenly  violent. 

"I'm  sure  you  want  to  get  at  the  truth," 
she  told  him  severely. 

In  ten  minutes  Betty  came  down,  yip- 
ping  jubilantly.  "You  were  born  on  June 
3,  1871,"  she  proclaimed,  reading  the 
entry.  "So  at  the  most,  since  you  moved 
from  Greencastle  to  Shelby  County  in 
1873,  you  were  only" — she  sat  on  the  arm 
of  his  chair,  wriggling  with  excitement — 
"two  years  and  a  few  months  old  when  you 
arrived  here.  Everything  you've  been 
talking  about  happened  back  in  Green- 
castle before  that." 

Calmly  he  laid  down  the  newspaper. 
"Let's  see  the  page,"  he  demanded.  The 
book  was  too  heavy  for  him  to  hold,  but  no 
one  dared  remind  him.  He  knew  it  too. 
"Put  it  on  the  table,"  he  ordered.  He 
dragged  back  to  the  table  and  sat  down 
with  the  book  before  him. 

"There  must  have  been  two  Levi  Plum- 
mers,"  cried  my  sister,  dancing  behind  his 
chair.  Teasing,  she  shook  his  shoulder. 
"You  and  Mrs.  Batchelder  don't  agree 
very   well.     Someone  must  be  given  to 


misremembering,    huh,    Grandpa?"     She 
hovered  by  his  ear.     "Huh?" 

Grandfather  wasn't  listening.  He  was 
engrossed  in  the  entries  in  the  back  of  the 
Bible.  Now^e  looked  up.  "Levi  Plum- 
mer  was  only  sixty-three  when  he  died," 
he  exclaimed,  pointing  on  the  page.  I 
think  he  was  startled.  "I've  always 
thought  of  Levi  Plummer  as  an  old,  old 
man." 

He  turned  on  my  sister  unexpectedly. 
"Sit  down,"  he  commanded.  She  didn't 
sit  down,  but  she  subsided  slightly. 
"There  were  two  Levi  Plummers,"  he 
agreed,  suddenly  stern.  "You  children 
don't  know  the  length  of  a  lifetime,  a 
man's  lifetime.  You  don't  know  what 
time  is." 

"I've  waited  two  days  to  spring  Mrs. 
Batchelder  on  you,"  cried  my  sister. 

"Be  quiet,"  he  said.  "You've  been 
hearing  about  a  man's  life.  It  didn't 
happen  in  an  instant."  He  pointed  again 
at  the  page.  "It  lasted  sixty-three  years. 
Old  Levi  Plummer  lasted  sixty-three  years. 
He  died  in  1883.  And  there  were  two  of 
him.  There  usually  are.  There's  a  sick 
man  at  the  end,  dragging  around  for 
months  and  years,  half-paralyzed.  Mrs. 
Batchelder  knew  the  sick  Levi  Plummer. 
That's  the  one  she's  chosen  to  remember. 
That's  the  one  she  told  you  about.  Be- 
fore that  there  was  another  man  that  all 
his  life  was  well  and  strong.  My  mother 
knew  the  other  Levi  Plummer,  the  well 
one.  That's  the  one  she  told  me  about 
and  that's  the  one  I've  told  you  about. 
That's  the  one  to  remember,  the  one  that 
was  well  and  strong.  That's  the  man 
that  matters.  I  want  you  always  to  re- 
member the  one  that  was  well  and  strong" 
■ — he  stood  up,  hands  on  the  table,  tenta- 
tive because  of  his  leg — "the  one  that  was 
able  to  'do  the  whingding'  if  he  liked,"  he 
added  gruffly. 

My  sister  is  irrepressible  at  times.  "If 
it  was  your  mother's  Levi  Plummer  that 
you  knew,"  she  put  in,  "then  it  was  your 
mother's  stagecoach,  wasn't  it?" 

Our  grandfather  closed  the  cover  on  the 
family  page.  He  abruptly  shoved  the 
book  from  him.  I  think  he  included  us  all 
in  that  shove.  "No,"  he  said.  "That 
was  my  stagecoach." 


i 


SOME   REAL  TROUBLE   IN   SOUTH 

AMERICA 

The  Truth  About  the  Argentine  Crisis 
RICARDO     SETARO 


,N  THE  26th  of  January,  1944, 
Argentina  broke  with  the  Axis. 
There  were  expressions  of  pro- 
found satisfaction  in  Washington  and  the 
general  impression  given  by  the  news- 
papers was  that  Hemisphere  soHdarity 
was  at  last  achieved  and  harmonious 
co-operation  among  all  the  American 
republics  must  follow  as  the  night  the  day. 
Such  is  not  the  case.  The  United  States 
is  in  very  real  trouble  in  South  America. 
This  trouble  has  not  been  the  work 
of  remote-control  political  maneuvering 
from  Berlin,  though  newspapers  in  the 
United  States  seemed  to  think  it  was. 
The  Nazis  were  only  an  incidental  factor. 
The  actual  trouble  was — and  is — this: 
Working  out  from  its  financial  center  in 
Buenos  Aires,  Argentina  has  established 
economic  and  political  ties  of  the  closest 
character  with  Paraguay  and  Bolivia.  To 
these  nations  may  be  added  shortly  Chile, 
Peru,  and  Uruguay.  The  economic  ties 
are  not  a  recent  development;  they  were 
begun  years  ago;  they  are  strongly  backed 
by  both  European  and  international  in- 
terests which  are  in  intense  opposition  to 
what  might  be  called  the  native  business 
interests  of  the  United  States.  In  the  past 
few  months  Argentina's  ties  with  her 
neighbors  have  been  much  strengthened. 


Argentina,  now  bossed  by  a  reactionary 
dictatorship  similar  to  European  models 
— strongly  anti-Semitic,  with  a  controlled 
press,  no  right  of  assembly,  and  no  reli- 
gious freedom — heads  this  coalition  of 
neighboring  states.  Cartel  capital,  leav- 
ing Germany  by  way  of  Spain,  has  been 
coming  into  Argentina  in  large  amounts. 
Many  Germans  involved  in  these  transac- 
tions are  still  in  Buenos  Aires  and  are 
likely  to  remain  there.  Simultaneously 
great  sums  of  British  capital  are  coming 
in.  (This  is  in  addition  to  already  existing 
British  investment  in  Argentina,  which, 
accumulating  over  the  years,  amounts  to 
a  huge  total.)  This  money  and  these  in- 
terests made  connections  with  the  army 
colonels  of  the  dictatorship  and  are  being 
employed  in  Argentina's  present  moves. 
Last  August  the  Ramirez  government, 
being  short  of  armament,  applied  to  the 
United  States  for  arms  via  Lend-Lease. 
The  request  was  refused  out  of  hand.  It 
is  now  known  that  arms  have  been  moving 
into  Buenos  Aires  for  the  use  of  the  dicta- 
torship. These  arms  did  not  and  do  not 
come  from  either  Spanish  or  Axis  sources. 
The  purpose  of  this  article  is  to  show  how 
this  situation  came  about  and  why  the 
United  States  at  last  has  real  trouble  on 
its  hands  in  South  America. 


378 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


THE  military  coup  of  June  4,  1943, 
which  brought  into  power  the  fascist 
forces  that  now  rule  the  Argentine  Repub- 
lic was  not  the  result  of  any  hastily  con- 
ceived plan.  It  was,  on  the  contrary,  only 
the  most  recent  development  of  a  trend 
that  has  been  evident  in  Argentina  for 
years.  No  hazy  thought  lies  behind  the 
recent  events  in  Buenos  Aires;  the  theory  is 
clear  and  well  defined. 

This  theory  argues  for  a  customs  union 
among  the  nations  of  South  America,  with 
Argentina  playing  the  dominant  role  in 
the  union.  Many  Argentines,  over  the 
years,  have  been  attracted  by  this  theory 
and  it  has  been  discussed  from  every 
possible  angle.  Perhaps  the  simplest  way 
to  illustrate  it  here  would  be  to  tell 
something  of  the  life  and  career  and 
ideas  of  Alejandro  E.  Bunge,  one  of  the 
best-known  Argentine  intellectuals. 

More  than  thirty  years  ago,  as  a  young 
Argentine  professor,  Bunge  visited  Europe, 
and  during  his  stay  in  Germany  in  1909 
he  delivered  a  lecture  in  the  Municipal 
Theater  in  Mannheim.  The  theme  of  his 
lecture  was  "The  Customs  Union  of  the 
South,"  and  it  was  received  with  close 
attention.  The  genesis  of  the  idea,  of 
course,  was  the  Zollverein,  the  customs 
union  which  linked  the  independent  Ger- 
man states  in  the  early  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  before  the  organization  of 
the  German  Empire. 

But  Professor  Bunge  had  elaborated  the 
idea;  he  had  a  world  view.  According  to 
him  there  were  three  great  economic  units 
— Continental  Europe  including  Great 
Britain,  the  United  States  of  America,  and 
Argentina  and  her  neighbors.  This  last 
group  included  Chile,  Bolivia,  Uruguay, 
Paraguay,  and,  possibly,  Brazil.  If  Brazil 
were  excluded,  then  Peru  would  automati- 
cally enter  the  group.  In  foreign  com- 
merce the  function  of  these  nations  was 
to  export  agricultural  products  and  raw 
materials.  Bunge  thought  that  if  tariffs 
were  obliterated  among  these  Latin- 
American  states,  goods  could  circulate 
freely  and  the  influence  of  the  group 
as  a  consolidated  source  of  raw  materials 
would  be  enormously  strengthened. 

Bunge  could,  without  difficulty,  assem- 
ble statistics  to  give  his  theory  a  most  im- 
posing fagade.     The  southern  republics — 


Argentina,  Bolivia,  Chile,  Paraguay,  and 
Uruguay — now  have  a  combined  area  of 
2,120,847  square  miles  and  a  population  of 
about  25  million  persons.  Within  this 
territory  there  are  enough  raw  materials 
— including  iron  and  solid  and  liquid 
fuels — to  place  the  proposed  Union  in  a 
commanding  position  in  respect  to  both 
Europe  and  the  United  States.  Within 
that  territory  large  fractions  of  the  world's 
tin  and  copper  are  mined;  there  is  a  mo- 
nopoly of  iodine  and  tannin.  This  region 
is  the  source  of  40  per  cent  of  the  world's 
output  of  drugs  and  has  the  world's  largest 
deposits  of  borax.  From  it  comes  85  per 
cent  of  the  world's  linseed  export,  70  per 
cent  of  the  world's  export  of  corn  and  23 
per  cent  of  the  wheat.  Its  animal  popula- 
tion includes  50  million  head  of  cattle,  70 
million  sheep,  and  9  million  horses.  All 
in  all,  the  proponents  of  the  theory  could 
list  formidable  economic  weapons. 

EVENTS  did  not  favor  the  rapid  develop- 
'  ment  of  the  theory  in  the  years  follow- 
ing Bunge's  lecture  in  1909,  but  it  was  not 
forgotten.  With  the  onset  of  the  World 
Depression  and  the  coming  of  the  present 
war,  the  idea  of  the  union  received  in- 
creasing attention.  Sr.  Bunge,  still  alive 
and  with  even  greater  reputation,  con- 
tinued to  urge  action  along  the  lines  of  the 
argument  which  had  absorbed  his  atten- 
tion for  so  many  years. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  Argen- 
tine economic  structure,  erected  during 
the  past  fifty  years  of  stable  government, 
is  one  of  servitude  to  the  European  market 
in  general  and  to  the  British  market  in 
particular.  Argentine  exports  in  1940, 
when  the  effects  of  World  War  II  began 
to  be  felt,  were  divided  as  follows: 

To  Great  Britain  36.4  per  cent 

"   the  United  States  17.5    "      " 

"    Continental  Europe  24.5    "      " 

"   the  remainder  21.6    "      " 

The  disappearance  of  many  European 
markets,  the  restrictions  of  trading  with  the 
United  Kingdom,  submarine  warfare,  and 
other  manifestations  of  the  war  have  been 
felt  in  Argentina  in  more  or  less  the  same 
degree  as  elsewhere.  But  one  effect  has 
been  most  powerful  in  Argentina:  it  has 
made  clearer  than  ever  to  the  Argentines 
the  fact  that  their  economy  is  designed  to 


SOME    REAL    TROUBLE    IN    SOUTH    AMERICA 


379 


serve  a  foreign  and  not  a  national  in- 
terest. 

Public  opinion,  reflecting  economic  un- 
rest, divided  into  two  groups.  One  group 
demands  active  co-operation  with  the 
democratic  elements  among  the  United 
Nations.  It  is  this  group  which  desper- 
ately wants  to  see  the  great  estates  broken 
up,  democratic  institutions  strengthened, 
home-owned  industry  established.  The 
other  group,  fighting  for  a  distant,  oppor- 
tunistic policy,  wants  to  maintain  the 
economic  status  quo.  It  is  the  latter 
group  which  now  supports  the  dictatorship. 

Partisans  of  this  latter  group  have  af- 
firmed that  "Argentina,  in  view  of  her 
territorial  patrimony  and  the  fundamental 
conditions  of  her  people,  can  live  a  life 
which  can  be  independent  in  every  sense." 
Argentina  should  "trade  freely  with  the 
great  world  units,  from  an  equidistant  po- 
sition, as  it  has  done  until  today." 

But  Argentines  should  "banish  forever 
any  sense  of  inferiority";  each  citizen 
should  realize  that  "whatever  any  race  or 
any  country  can  attain  through  its  spiritual 
and  physical  qualities,  can  be  attained  by 
Argentina  also."  What  this  amounts  to  is 
this:  keep  the  old  economic  structure  and 
buttress  it  with  a  system  of  Spartan,  self- 
sacrificing  "ideals." 

These  ideals,  which  echo  in  every  line  the 
fascist  doctrines  of  the  corporate  state,  are 
set  forth  by  Bunge  in  his  A  New  Argentina: 

1.  Cultivate  habits  of  industry  and  diligence 
and  revere  the  institution  of  the  family;  abhor 
materialism,  laziness,  selfishness,  and  the  evil  of  a 
diminished  birthrate. 

2.  Demand  respect  for  the  general  interests  of 
the  country,  which  in  themselves  are  a  bulwark 
of  virtue  and  order. 

3.  Root  out  every  interest  and  attitude  which, 
through  class  feeling,  tends  to  divide  society  and 
foster  negative  and  destructive  thought. 

4.  Rephrase  social  and  political  precepts  so 
that  they  may  reflect  both  the  old  and  the  new  ideals 
of  a  hierarchical  state  in  which  each  individual 
gladly  subjects  himself  to  discipline  and  faithfully 
discharges  his  individual  duty.  [Italics  ours.] 

^  5.  Demand  in  every  field  the  maximum  effi- 
ciency in  work  and  effort,  "according  to  the 
Evangel." 

6.  Suppress  all  barriers  ''recently  erected" 
which  may  affect  discipline,  the  rate  of  produc- 
tion and  the  national  interests.  [In  other  words: 
out  the  window  with  trade  unions,  independent 
schools  and  newspapers,  competing  political  par- 
ties, and  all  religious  bodies  other  than  the  Cath- 
olic Church.] 


To  the  end  that  these  ideals  may  be 
realized,  let  all  laws  and  regulations  affect- 
ing work  and  production,  whether  na- 
tional, provincial,  or  local,  be  carefully 
examined  and  revised.  Such  are  the  doc- 
trines of  Sr.  Alejandro  Bunge. 

The  economic  measures  advocated  by 
the  Bunge  school  include  a  shaving  of  the 
demands  of  the  export  trade,  which  are 
judged  to  be  out  of  proportion  with  inter- 
nal needs:  stabilization  is  recommended 
and,  in  some  cases,  perhaps  a  cut  in  ex- 
port production  until,  after  the  war,  the 
status  of  the  traditional  Argentine  market 
is  clear.  At  the  same  time,  although  very 
cautiously,  a  prudent  increase  is  suggested 
in  the  manufacture  of  a  number  of  articles 
now  imported  in  order  to  ease  the  demand 
in  the  internal  market.  But  this  last  must 
be  done  carefully  in  order  to  avoid  endanger- 
ing  the  resumption  oj  normal  imports  ajter  the 


war. 


Clearly  this  is  no  program  of  vigorous 
expansion  and  change.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  carefully  designed  to  preserve  an 
already  delicate  equilibrium.  It  seeks  to 
shore  up  and  fortify  the  status  quo,  even 
to  the  extent  of  asking  existing  interests  to 
submit  to  mild  self-denying  ordinances  of 
various  sorts.  The  preservation  of  the 
dominant  vested  interests  in  Argentina 
calls  for  strong  political  government  and 
a  willingness  on  the  part  of  the  shareholder 
to  pare  his  dividend  a  little  in  order  to 
avoid  losing  it  altogether. 

The  quintessence  of  the  Bunge  theory  is 
distilled  in  the  phrase:  "To  imbue  the  Ad- 
ministration, to  a  military  degree,  with 
the  spirit  of  abnegation,  efficiency,  disci- 
pline and  rank." 

Bunge  asked  himself,  as  far  back  as  1 940, 
"Is  it  not  possible  that  we  need  a  change 
in  our  form  of  government,  in  order  to 
invigorate  the  country,  as  France  tried  to 
do,  a  bit  too  late,  in  1938?  Don't  we 
perhaps  need  a  new  constitution?" 

He  answered  his  own  questions  in  words 
which  make  all  too  clear  the  events  of  the 
past  few  months:  "We  believe  that  our 
fundamental  democracy  does  not  compel 
us  to  lead  a  pernicious  electioneering  life, 
holding  elections  so  often  throughout  the 
country;  nor  that  it  compels  us  to  suffer 
indefinitely  to  be  represented  by  mediocri- 
ties, often  out  of  touch  with  regional  and 


380 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


national  realities  and  with  the  corporative 
interests  of  our  country." 

This  is  the  theory'' which  forms  the  in- 
tellectual base  of  t^.e  fascist  revolution  in 
Argentina. 

II 

A  START  was  made  in  applying  Bunge's 
principles  before  the  coup  d'etat 
occurred.  Diplomatic  and  commercial 
activity,  initiated  by  Buenos  Aires,  was  on 
the  upgrade  through  1940.  Accords  were 
signed  with  several  American  republics 
providing  for  the  exchange  of  Argentine 
products  for  those  of  other  Latin-American 
nations.  A  most-favored-nation  treaty 
was  signed  with  Brazil  on  January  23, 
1940,  calling  for  limited  free  interchange 
and  ample  tariff  concessions.  An  un- 
conditional most-favored-nation  accord 
was  concluded  with  Chile  on  February  18, 
1940;  it  became  effective  the  following 
October.  A  similar  agreement  was  made 
with  Colombia  on  October  17,  1940;  and 
oh  December  20,  1940,  another  uncondi- 
tional most-favored-nation  treaty  with 
Cuba.  At  the  close  of  December,  1940, 
the  foreign  ministers  of  Argentina  and 
Uruguay  met  to  consider  the  "possibility 
of  establishing  a  customs  union."  On 
October  6,  1940,  the  finance  ministers  of 
Argentina  and  Brazil  signed  at  Rio  several 
recommendations  for  progressively  freer 
trade  between  the  two  countries.  Feb- 
ruary 6, 1941,  the  representatives  of  Bolivia 
and  Paraguay  went  to  Buenos  Aires.  The 
results  of  their  meetings  with  the  Argentine 
representatives  were: 

1.  An  Argentine-Bolivian  treaty,  stipulating 
that  Argentina  was  to  lend  money  to  Bolivia  for 
building  a  railroad  between  Yacuiba  and  Santa 
Cruz,  and  for  drilling  and  operating  oil  wells  in 
the  Sanandita  region.  Also,  funds  were  to  be  lent 
to  Bolivia  for  building  a  pipeline  from  the  Bermejo 
oilfields  in  Bolivia  to  Gran  or  another  Argentine 
station  on  the  Argentine  Northern-Central  Rail- 
road. 

2.  An  Argentine-Bolivian  agreement  on  tour- 
ism, reciprocally  abolishing  entry  and  exit  duties. 

3.  A  protocol  to  the  Argentine-Bolivian  bound- 
ary treaty  of  1925. 

4.  An  accord  among  Argentina,  Bolivia,  and 
Paraguay  for  the  study  of  utilization  of  the  waters 
of  the  Pilcomayo  River,  to  the  benefit  of  the  three 
parties  concerned. 

5.  A  treaty  between  Argentina  and  Paraguay 
creating  a  fund  for  the  stabilization  of  Paraguayan 
currency. 


It  is  significant  that,  in  value  of  goods,; 
Argentina  was  second  only  to  the  United! 
States  in  respect  to  exports  to  Bolivia  in 
1939.  As  for  Paraguay,  Argentina  sup-' 
plied  37  per  cent  of  the  value  of  its  imports 
in  1939,  a  figure  which  rose  to  45  per  cent 
in  1 940.  The  United  States  was  in  second  i 
place.  The  semi-dependence  on  Argen-1 
tina  of  neighboring  nations  makes  Buenos  'I 
Aires  the  headquarters  for  any  strategy  \\ 
concerning  the  southern  extremity  of  the  1 
continent.  i 

THE  present  war  brought  a  violent  clash  ' 
among   the   groups   in   Buenos  Aires  ^ 
which   represent  foreign   capital   and   its 
Argentine   allies.     The   total   foreign   in-  '^ 
vestment  in  Argentina  amounts  to  about  ^ 
two  and  a  quarter  billion  dollars.     Of  this 
more  than  half— $1,375,000,000— is  held   ] 
in   Great   Britain.     United   States   direct   1 
investments  trail  far  behind;  according  to 
Treasury  Department  figures  these  invest- 
ments in  1943  were  $311,000,000.     The 
remainder  of  the  total  is  divided  among 
France,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  the  Nether- 
lands,  Germany,   and   Italy;  it  does  not 
include  the  sums  sent  by  Germany  and  her 
satellites  as  a  hedge  against  defeat  in  the 
war. 

It  is  significant  that  the  group  which 
represents  American  investment  has  wide- 
spread popular  support — even  though 
Yankee  imperialism  is  not  admired — as 
against  the  British  group,  which  is  closely 
allied  with  the  dictatorship. 

The  upshot  of  the  clash  between  these 
groups  is  the  crisis  which  came  to  a  head 
in  1940  and  which  steadily  grows  more 
acute.  Argentine  public  opinion  distin- 
guishes sharply  between  British  capital 
and  the  British  people.  Thus  in  1940, 
when  fate  seemed  to  frown  on  Allied  arms, 
there  was  a  panic  in  the  United  Nations 
group.  The  result  of  this  panic  v/as  the 
Pinedo  Plan. 

Dr.  Federico  Pinedo — now  a  voluntary 
exile  in  Montevideo — was  Minister  of  Fi- 
nance. Dr.  Pinedo — somewhat  naively 
— proposed  that  Argentina  should  take 
over  all  British  investments,  beginning 
with  loans  floated  for  the  purpose  in  the 
United  States.  His  plan  provoked  violent 
political  repercussions.  The  groups  whose 
interests  are  closely  tied  to  British  capital 


SOME    REAL    TROUBLE    IN    SOUTH    AMERICA 


381 


were  instant  in  their  opposition.  Fore- 
most among  them  were  the  large  cattle 
growers,  whose  resolution  was  fortified  by 
the  steady  renewal  of  meat  contracts  by 
Britain.  (These  were  finally  consolidated 
in  the  1943  agreement  through  which 
Britain  undertook  to  buy  all  the  Argentine 
meat  surplus  available  for  export  through 
the  period  ending  September  30,  1944. 
Later  similar  agreements  were  signed  with 
Brazil,  Uruguay,  and  Paraguay,  all  of 
which  depend  in  greater  or  lesser  degree 
on  the  British  packing  plants  in  Argentina. 
The  purchase  price  set  for  Argentine  meat 
was  the  highest  in  eighteen  years.)  The 
opposition  to  Pinedo's  plan  promptly 
forced  the  Minister's  resignation.  The 
illness  and  retirement  from  office  of  Presi- 
dent Roberto  Ortiz  in  July,  1940,  proved 
to  be  another  advantage  to  those  who  sub- 
sequently brought  in  the  dictatorship. 

This  will  become  clear  if  political  divi- 
sions in  Argentina  are  understood.  The 
conservatives  include  the  cattle  raisers, 
the  great  landholders,  and  those  in  Buenos 
Aires  whose  interests  are  tied  to  the  strong- 
est foreign  capital  groups.  The  opposi- 
tion has  the  support  of  the  middle  and 
lower  classes  in  the  provincial  towns;  its 
overwhelming  strength  is  in  Buenos  Aires, 
where  it  includes  the  middle  class  and  the 
trade  unions.  Some  years  ago  the  oppo- 
sition was  split  as  a  result  of  a  quarrel 
among  its  leaders  and  one  group  went 
over  to  the  conservatives.  This  produced 
the  peculiar  spectacle  of  a  single  party  pre- 
senting an  election  ticket  that  included 
both  liberal  and  conservative  candidates. 
Such  was  the  case  in  1937  when  the  con- 
servatives won  the  national  election,  elect- 
ing Roberto  Ortiz,  formerly  of  the  opposi- 
tion, as  President  and  Ramon  Castillo,  a 
reactionary  lawyer,  as  Vice-President. 
Elections  in  Argentina  are  notoriously 
corrupt  and  this  particular  election  was  no 
exception.  The  constitution  provides  that 
the  federal  government  may  intervene  in 
the  provinces  for  the  preservation  of  public 
order,  and  this  provision  has  been  em- 
ployed by  the  conservative  landholders 
and  catde  raisers  again  and  again  to  stuff 
provincial  ballot  boxes,  swamp  the  opposi- 
tion, and  return  majorities  favorable  to 
themselves. 

The  country  found  itself  in  1937  in  a 


position  where  all  liberal  and  progressive 
action  depended  on  the  state  of  mind  of 
Ortiz.  Would  he  refrain  from  interfer- 
ence in  subsequent  provincial  elections? 
His  views  were  antithetical  to  those  of  his 
Vice-President,  Castillo.  Would  he  re- 
main firm  in  his  opposition?  The  an- 
swer turned  out  to  be:  no.  Ortiz  fell  ill; 
his  eyesight  began  to  fail.  In  July,  1 940 — 
when  the  Pinedo  Plan  crisis  was  at  its 
height — Ortiz  relinquished  his  office  in  the 
hope  of  regaining  his  health  and  Castillo 
became  President.  This  development  put 
the  conservatives  firmly  in  the  saddle  and 
popular  discontent  rapidly  increased. 

Castillo's  regime  now  found  itself  in  a 
dilemma.  Either  it  could  represent  the 
popular  will,  which  was  pro-United  Na- 
tions, anti-British  capital,  and  for  industrial 
expansion  in  Argentina,  or  it  could  repre- 
sent the  status  quo.  If  it  chose  the  latter, 
electoral  frauds  of  colossal  dimensions 
would  be  necessary  and  it  was  questionable 
whether  the  Castillo  government  could 
bring  them  off*.  Castillo  chose  to  make 
the  attempt  and  backed  the  candidacy  of 
Robustiano  Patron  Costas,  one  of  the 
most  unpopular  men  in  Argentina.  The 
tension  increased  and  it  was  clear  that 
there  would  be  outbreaks  at  the  election. 
At  this  juncture  the  GOU  (Grupo  de 
Oficiales  Unificados  or  Group  of  United 
Officers),  a  clique  of  colonels  who  pro- 
foundly admired  the  direct-action  tactics 
of  the  Nazis,  took  it  upon  itself  to  cut  the 
Gordian  knot.  Castillo  was  overthrown. 
But  Castillo  did  not  fall  because  the  GOU 
opposed  his  policies;  he  Jell  because  the  con-' 
tinuity  of  his  policies  was  endangered, 

III 

THE  coup  d'etat  came  on  June  4,  1943, 
and  the  present  military  dictatorship 
was  installed.  By  October  10th,  accord- 
ing to  Lewis  L.  Nettleton  in  the  financial 
section  of  the  New  Tork  Times,  financial 
commentators  in  London  had  noticed  the 
gains  registered  in  the  London  market  by 
Argentine  railroad  stocks  "in  view  of  the 
improved  outlook  for  those  companies." 

In  the  middle  of  October,  1943,  a  Brit- 
ish delegation  arrived  in  Buenos  Aires. 
It  was  made  up  of  Messrs.  John  Montague 
Eddy,  Harold  Charles  Drayton,  and  other 


382 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


presidents  and  directors  of  the  most  impor- 
tant British  railroads  in  Argentina  and  of 
the  Bank  of  London  and  South  America. 
Mr.  Eddy,  in  an  interview  given  to  La 
Nacion  of  Buenos  Aires,  said,  "The  war 
will  come  to  an  end,  and  we  must  be  pre- 
pared. We  come  to  see  what  rolling  stock 
is  needed,  and  what  material  for  tracks 
and  other  installations.  We  have  to  pre- 
pare the  railways  for  the  postwar  period. 
The  other  war  brought  about  the  competi- 
tion of  motor  traffic.  This  one  may  bring 
about  air  competition.  It  is  a  timely 
moment  to  discuss  with  the  men  in  the 
government  [Ramirez,  etc.]  ways  and 
means  to  come  to  an  understanding  for 
that  purpose,  which  means  better  service 
and  maintaining  the  usual  channels  for  Argen- 
tine production,  which  must  surely  expand 
considerably  in  coming  years.  We  shall 
stay  two  months,  although  we  are  ready 
to  continue  here  as  long  as  it  is  necessary 
to  solve  these  problems  completely." 
[Italics  ours.]  A  few  days  later  a  mixed 
commission  of  British  delegates  and  Ar- 
gentine functionaries  was  created,  which 
at  the  present  moment  is  deliberating  upon 
postwar  problems. 

One  of  the  items  upon  which  Bunge 
dwelt  in  his  consideration  of  a  customs 
union  was  the  "monopoly  of  the  world's  ex- 
portable production  of  iodin  and  tannin." 

Neither  in  Argentina  nor  in  the  United 
States  is  the  man  in  the  street  aware  of 
si  tuations  of  this  sort.  Therefore  it  created 
a  sensation  in  both  countries  when  the 
Chairman  of  the  Senate  Military  Affairs 
Committee's  Subcommittee  on  War  Mo- 
bilization, Senator  Harley  Kilgore,  and 
the  Assistant  Attorney  General,  Mr. 
Wendell  Berge,  denounced  the  Argentine 
cartel  which  controls  the  production  of 
tannin  and  limits  the  amount  that  is 
shipped  to  the  United  States. 

What  is  this  cartel?  La  Forestal  Land, 
Timber  and  Railway  Co.,  controlled  by 
British  capital,  is  responsible  for  the  pro- 
duction of  89  per  cent  of  all  the  tannin  in 
Argentina  and  Paraguay.  The  Argen- 
tine Navigation  Company,  Dodero  &  Co., 
Ltd.,  controls  practically  all  water  trans- 
portation on  the  Paraguay,  Parana,  and 
Uruguay  rivers,  through  which  tannin 
leaves  the  country.  This  company  is  also 
British-controlled.     Mr.  Kilgore  declared 


that  "this  united  front  in  quebracho  oper- 
ates with  the  authorization  and  acquies- 
cence of  the  government  of  Argentina." 

A  NOTHER  sector  of  the  supporters  of  the 
£\^  dictatorship  is  made  up  of  those  who, 
while  thinking  that  Germany  will  lose  the 
war,  believe  nevertheless  that  the  democ- 
racies, with  their  typical  liberal  tolerance, 
will  either  permit  a  renascence  of  Ger- 
many after  the  war  or  will  help  promote  a 
European  economic  bloc  (the  old  customs 
union  idea)  which  not  only  will  not  oppose 
Argentine  expansion  in  South  America 
but  will  need  it  for  its  own  ends  in  that  part 
of  the  world. 

Through  the  Aun6s  Spanish  mission, 
Argentina  opened  the  doors  of  South 
America  to  all  the  dollar  and  pound  ster- 
ling notes  circulating  in  Europe  at  the  out- 
break of  the  war.  In  addition,  a  great 
current  of  European  capital,  chiefly  Ger- 
man, has  been  funneling  into  Argentina 
and  there  expended  mainly  on  public 
works.  This  capital  is  lent  on  a  long-term 
basis.  In  one  month  the  present  govern- 
ment ordered  highway  construction  worth 
6  million  pesos;  it  has  announced  plans  for 
cheap  housing  to  cost  50  million  pesos. 
(A  few  weeks  ago  when  an  earthquake 
leveled  the  city  of  San  Juan,  General 
Ramirez  announced  that  the  government 
would  spend  500  million  pesos  to  restore 
the  town ;  he  did  not  say  where  the  money 
was  coming  from!)  It  is  estimated  that 
the  flow  of  this  kind  of  European  capital 
has  reached  a  total  of  one  billion  reichs- 
marks. 

The  Black  List  furnishes  the  names  of 
many  of  the  enterprises  (and  their  direc- 
tors) engaged  in  work  of  this  character. 
Siemens-Bauunion  and  Weiss  &  Freytag 
are  in  the  forefront.  Numerous  out- 
standing personalities  in  the  Ramirez  re- 
gime were  closely  associated  with  these 
companies:  General  Basilio  Pertine,  mayor 
of  Buenos  Aires  until  the  Axis  break,  is  one; 
Carlos  Ibarguren  is  another. 

Incidentally,  the  publication  of  official 
statistics  in  Madrid  presents  an  interesting 
sidelight  on  the  present  status  of  Argentine 
foreign  trade.  In  1939  Spain  received, 
all  told,  a  total  of  115,682  tons  of  Argen- 
tine products.  Spanish  figures  published 
at  the  beginning  of  1 944  reveal  a  startling 


SOME    REAL    TROUBLE    IN    SOUTH    AMERICA 


383 


change:  the  Spanish  imports  from  Ar- 
gentina for  the  year  1943  included  496,- 
887  tons  of  wheat,  1,150  tons  of  frozen 
meat,  2,599  tons  of  wheat  flour,  4,212  tons 
of  lentils,  1,128  tons  of  powdered  milk, 
and  7,184  tons  of  beans.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  these  imports  were  all  ab- 
sorbed in  Spain  any  more  than  it  is  to  be 
supposed  that  Spanish  industries  supplied, 
for  example,  the  cargo  of  the  Spanish  ship, 
the  Monte  Ayalan,  that  docked  at  Buenos 
Aires  in  January,  1944,  with  a  cargo  of 
1,000  tons  of  steel  and  consignments  of 
machinery,  ink,  and  textiles. 


IV 

MEANTIME  the  GOU  has  been  running 
Argentina.  Since  last  June  demo- 
cratic institutions  have  been  destroyed  and 
a  police-dominated  state  has  been  or- 
ganized. Directly  the  dictatorship  was 
installed,  presidential  elections  were  post- 
poned indefinitely.  Congress  was  dis- 
banded. Home  rule  in  the  provinces  was 
done  away  with  and  military  governors 
appointed  who  are  responsible  only  to  the 
federal  government.  Freedom  of  speech, 
freedom  of  the  press  and  of  public  assem- 
bly are  denied.  Political  parties,  labor 
unions,  and  democratic  organizations  of 
all  sorts  have  been  dissolved.  Individual 
guarantees  have  been  suspended;  there  is 
no  longer  a  right  of  habeas  corpus.  Com- 
pulsory religious  teaching  has  been  de- 
creed for  grade  and  high  schools  in  viola- 
tion of  the  constitution.  Concentration 
camps  have  been  established  in  the  terri- 
tories of  Neuquen,  Santa  Cruz,  and  Chaco. 
More  than  3,000  political  and  labor 
leaders  are  in  jail  or  concentration  camps. 
Others  have  had  to  flee  abroad.  The 
only  thing  yet  undone  is  the  creation  of  a 
single,  official  political  party  and  of  a 
Chamber  of  Corporations;  then  the  state 
machinery  will  be  complete  on  the  Ger- 
man, Italian,  and  Spanish  model. 

But  this  last  is  a  difficult  problem.  The 
dictatorship  doesn't  have  the  popular  fol- 
lowing that  Hider  and  Mussolini  had  in 
their  early  days,  the  supporters  who 
cheered  them  to  power.  For  that  reason 
the  continental  plans  have  had  to  be 
rushed.  If  the  Ramirez  dictatorship  can 
deal  successfully  with  those  in  the  neigh- 


boring countries  whose  interests  coincide, 
the  regime  can  buttress  itself  even  though 
popular  support  at  home  is  lacking. 

So,  building  upon  the  foundations 
already  laid  during  the  Castillo  adminis- 
tration, the  dictatorship  pushes  ahead. 
To  rivet  the  ties  with  Paraguay  was  no 
difFicult  task.  Paraguay  is  a  dependency 
of  Argentina  and  of  the  European  capital 
which  functions  through  Argentina.  Hi- 
ginio  Morinigo  is  a  dictator  of  anti- 
democratic origin.  He  chose  to  destroy 
the  bloom  of  "honoris  causa"  at  Ford- 
ham  University  by  also  accepting  a  de- 
gree at  Buenos  Aires.  This  acceptance  was 
the  GOU's  first  victory  in  the  Hemisphere. 
Significantly  enough,  there  was  an  at- 
tempted revolution  in  Paraguay  on  Janu- 
ary 26th,  the  very  day  Argentina  broke  with 
the  Axis.  General  Morinigo  suppressed 
the  rebellion  with  ease  and  then  tele- 
graphed to  headquarters — Buenos  Aires — 
that  the  government  and  people  of  Para- 
guay had  "joyously"  received  the  news  of 
the  "transcendental  Argentina  decision 
whereby  relations  with  the  Axis  have  been 
broken." 

Next,  the  Argentine  Foreign  Minister, 
General  Alberto  Gilbert,  gave  an  inter- 
view to  the  correspondent  of  the  Chilean 
daily,  La  Hora  of  Santiago.  In  this  inter- 
view, which  was  given  in  the  presence  of 
the  Chilean  Ambassador,  Conrado  Rios 
Gallardo,  General  Gilbert  suggested  a 
customs  union  with  Chile.  After  blaming 
the  United  States  for  the  shortage  of  ma- 
chinery and  various  articles  badly  needed 
in  South  America,  he  said:  "War  has 
opened  our  eyes  to  our  own  continental 
possibilities  in  South  America,  and  the 
postwar  period  will  give  us  an  opportunity 
to  explore  them." 

Present  plans  call  for  the  building  of 
highways  and  railroads  and  the  drilling  of 
a  new  tunnel  through  the  Andes  for  motor 
traffic.  The  expropriation  of  the  Amer- 
ican-owned streetcar  company  in  Tucu- 
man,  the  various  steps  against  the  American- 
owned  or  -controlled  electric  companies, 
and  finally  the  announcement  of  a  possible 
nationalization  of  the  telephone  compa- 
nies controlled  by  the  International  Tele- 
phone and  Telegraph  Company  all  lend 
strength  to  the  belief  that  a  definite  plan 
has  been  in  operation. 


384 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


iUT  there  was  one  weak  spot  in  the  plan 
for  the  estabhshment  of  a  Customs 
Union  of  the  South  ^s  a  focus  of  opposi- 
tion to  the  United  States  and  the  nations 
in  the  hemisphere  triendly  to  the  United 
States.  That  weakness  lay  in  the  fact  that 
Argentina  was  short  of  military  equip- 
ment while  other  South  American  nations 
— notably  Brazil — were  arming  with  great 
rapidity.  As  a  first  move,  Argentina  last 
August  blandly  asked  for  American  arms, 
via  Lend-Lease.  The  request  was  abrupt- 
ly refused.  Next  it  was  publicly  stated 
in  Santiago  de  Chile  that  Argentina  was 
sounding  out  Spain  with  a  view  to  obtain- 
ing arms  in  exchange  for  agricultural  prod- 
ucts. It  is  now  known  that  arms  have 
been  coming  into  Buenos  Aires  and  that 
these  arms  do  not  come  from  Spanish  or 
Axis  sources.  Toward  the  end  of  1943 
several  elaborate  air-raid  drills  were  con- 
ducted in  Buenos  Aires.  These  served  the 
purpose  of  exhibiting  publicly  all  kinds  of 
modern  weapons.  The  drills  had  to  be 
cut  short  because  the  city  was  flooded  with 
anti-Ramirez  leaflets  during  the  blackouts. 

Then  came  the  overthrow  of  Pefiaranda 
in  Bolivia  and  public  opinion  in  the 
United  States  was  at  last  jolted  into  pay- 
ing attention.  But  here  again  the  papers 
were  so  absorbed  with  "Nazi  plots"  that 
they  failed  to  grasp  the  significance  of  what 
was  going  on. 

Meantime  the  propaganda  of  the  GOU 
has  been  denounced  in  the  Chilean  parlia- 
ment; it  is  charged  that  the  GOU  is  at- 
tempting to  foster  a  Chilean  coup  d'etat. 
Similar  rumors  are  flooding  Uruguay, 
where  the  finger  points — we  could  say 
through  force  of  habit — to  Luis  Alberto  de 
Herrera  and  the  fascists  who  are  his  follow- 
ers. There  is  no  country  in  Latin  America 
that  does  not  harbor  some  groups,  how- 
ever small,  that  sympathize  with  the  GOU, 
Ramirez,  and  the  anti-United  States  policy 
of  the  present  Argentine  government. 


The  great  mass  of  the  Argentine  people 
has  seen  the  cost  of  living  soar  to  unprece- 
dented heights,  while  wage  and  salary  in-, 
creases    have    been    hardly    noticeable. 
Farmers,    medium    and    small    manufac- 
turers,  laborers  and  clerks,   professionals, 
and  public  servants  had  been  clamoring* 
for  raw  materials,  measures  against  specu- 
lation,    co-operation     with     the     United 
Nations,  and  similar  steps.     In  such  co- 
operation these  people  saw  a  possible  so- 
lution for  the  problems  arising  from  fifty 
years  of  an  economic  policy  tied  to  the  I   r 
European    market.     These    hopes    were 
smashed  by  the  coup  d'etat  and  they  are 
in  no  way  raised  by  the  break  with  the 
Axis.     The  union  between  native  fascists 
and  foreign  finance  is  as  strong  as  it  ever 
was. 

SUCH  is  the  danger  that  confronts  the 
Hemisphere. 

The  same  forces  which  helped  destroy 
the  Weimar  Republic,  which  stopped 
sanctions  against  Italy  during  the  Abys- 
sinian crisis,  which  supplied  Japan  for  its 
attack  on  China,  which  helped  Franco 
against  Spain,  are  now  all  hearts-and- 
flowers  toward  the  fascist  regime  in  Argen- 
tina. They  encourage  it;  they  lend  it 
diplomatic  aid;  they  put  their  money  there 
in  order  to  establish  a  bridgehead  in  the 
Americas  against  such  forces  of  honest 
democracy  as  may  be. 

Argentina  is  not  a  country  isolated  from 
the  world,  nor  is  its  foreign  policy — or  its 
domestic  policy  either — native  to  the 
southern  shore  of  the  River  Plate.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  now,  as  it  always  has  been, 
dominated  by  what  happens  in  Europe. 
It  is  conceivable  that  this  tendency  might 
be  reversed;  that  Argentina  might  grow 
in  stature  and  influence  in  free  association 
with  the  nations  of  this  Hemisphere.  But 
as  things  are  now  there  is  no  promise  that 
this  will  occur. 


For  information  concerning  the  contributors  to  this  issue, 
see  Personal  and  Otherwise  among  the  following  pages. 


For  20  vital  seconds, 
the  pilot  isn't  human! 


A.A.  FLAK 


END  OF  RUN 
frYROPItOT  OFF 


eOMBER   APPROACHES 

OBJECTIVE 


N  American  bomber  ap- 
oachcs  its  target,  there  are 
nds  that  determine  the  suc- 
•   failure   of   the    bomber's 


g  the  vital  20  seconds  of  the 
bombing  run,  the  pilot's  hands 
ft  on  the  controls. 

Seconds!  This  is  the  time 
takes  for  the  bomber  to 
ike  its  run  and  drop  its 
mbs. 

Seconds!  To  make  these 
onds  count,  the  bomber 
!W  was  trained  two  years, 
r  these,  they  have  fought 
arms  of  enemy  fighters  and 
dged  clouds  of  flak. 

low  .  .  .  unless  the  plane  is 
xactly  on  the  course  that  the 
ardier  directs  ...  the  bombs 
liss,  and  all  the  hours  of  the 
will  be  wasted. 

iring  these  20  seconds,  the 
ot  of  this  bomber  isn't 
iman.  It's  a  machine— the 
erry  Electronic  Gyropilot, 
nerican  fliers  call  it  Elmer, 
le  British  call  it  George. 

Sperry   Gyropilot  holds   the 


SPERRY  GYRO  PILOT  TAKES  OVER  AND 

LEt^ELS    PLANE    FOR   BO/MBIN&  RUN  .^^^.!?^ 


bomber  on  its  bombing  run  with 
nerveless  precision.  Its  errorless 
control  is  one  of  the  big  reasons 
for  the  accuracy  of  American  high- 
level  bombing. 

Surprisingly  enough,  this  amaz- 
ing device  is  not  new.  Sperry  in- 
vented and  built  a  workable  Gyro- 
pilot before  the  first  World  War.  In 
1933,  Wiley  Post  flew  around  the 
World  alone  with  the  aid  of  a 
Sperry  Gyropilot.  Soon  after  that, 
Sperry  Gyropilots  became  stand- 
ard equipment  on  American  trans- 
port planes.  When  the  present  war 
came,  the  device  was  quickly 
adapted  to  give  it  the  precision 
needed  for  bombing  work. 

Today,  in  addition  to  Sperry, 
A.C.  Sparkplug  Division  of  Gen- 
eral Motors,  Electric  Auto-Lite 
Co.^,  and  Eversharp,  Inc.,  are  turn- 
ing out  various  types  of  Sperry 
Gyropilots  in  large  quantities. 


Birth  of  the  Gyropilot.  The  late 
Lawrence  Sperry  and  his  mechanic 
leave  the  controls,  while  the  Gyro- 
pilot holds  the  plane  on  its  course, 
{France,  1914.) 

The  Gyropilot  is  but  one  of  sev- 
eral hundred  precision  devices,  for 


war  and  peace,  developed  and 
manufactured  by  the  three  Sperry 
companies.  Solving  difficult  tech- 
nical problems  through  research, 
invention,  and  precision  engineer- 
ing is  Sperry 's  business,  and  we 
work  at  it  constantly. 


Section  of  instrument  panel  on  a 
Consolidated  8-24,  showing  controls 
for  the  Sperry  Gyropilot.  Once  set  on 
a  course,  nothing  less  than  destruc- 
tion can  affect  its  efficiency. 

When  the  war  is  over,  the 
Gyropilot,  along  with  many  other 
products  of  Sperry,  will  return  to 
peacetime  work. 

lef's  AW  Keep  Backing 
the  Attack 


I  SPIlif  I 

I  CORPORATION  ' 

'  I 

I  30  Rockefeller  Plaza,  New  York  20  . 

I  

I  FORD  INSTRUMENT  CO.,  INC. 

I  SPERRY  GYROSCOPE  CO.,  INC. 

I  ViCKERS,  INC.  ' 

,  Waterbury  Tool  Division.  ViCKERS,  INC.  1 


LCT  (Landing  Craft  Tanks)  105  ft, 


LCV  (P)  (Landing  Craft  Vehicle  Personnel)  36  ft. 


AMERICi(S  FIGHTERS  MOVE  IN 
-WITH  6  M  DIESELS 

In  the  face  of  enemy  fire  these  remarkable  invasion  boats  nose  in 
on  enemy  shores  and  pour  out  America's  tough  fighters  and  fighting 
equipment. 

They  move  on  split-second  orders — must  get  in  and  out  again  by 
themselves — on  the  dot,  come  hell  or  high  water. 

it's  the  kind  of  service  that  calls  for  utmost  reliability,  maneuverability 
and  quick  response. 

In  these  capable  craft— from  the  36-foot  LCV  (P)  to  the  big  328-foot 
LST — you  find  the  engines  America  and  our  Allies  know  so  well. 
General  Motors  Diesels. 

To  these  engines  are  assigned  the  jobs  that  call  for  the  greatest 
dependability  the  engine  world  knows. 


DIESEL 
POWER 


ENGINES  .  .  .  15  to  250  H.  P.  .  .  .  DETROIT  DIESBL  ENGINE  DIVISION,  Defrost,  Mich. 
Engines  of  this  series  power  the  LCI  and  ail  the  smailer  landing  craft 

LOCOMOTIVES ELECTfjtO-MOTIVE  DIVISION,  La  Grange,  W. 

Engines  from  this  Division  propel  the  giant  LST  vessels 


ENGINES  .  .  150  to  2000  H.P..,  CLEVELAND  DIESEL  ENGINE  DIVISION,  Cleveland,  Ohio 
More  than  40  types  of  Navy  vessels  are  powered  by  engines  of  this  Division 


Pll  -1     1^^    MRPAQV 


PERSONAL  AND  Otiiervvisc 


LAST     STRAIV 

In  November  Harper^ s  there  is  one  of  the  most 
outrageous  articles  we  have  yet  read  on  those  re- 
cent happenings  ["The  Truth  About  the  Detroit 
Riot"].  In  today's  mail  we  had  a  notice  that  our 
subscription  to  Harper'' s  is  out.  Wc  threw  it  in  the 
wastebasket  and  we  threw  it  hard. 

— Delta  Democrat-Times^  Greenville, 
Mississippi,  November  21,   1943 

IPiF^    SOMETHIXt;     i;O.XK     ^ROIVG? 

READERS  of  C.  Hartley  Grattan's  "Beveridge 
^  Plans  Are  Not  Enough,"  published  last 
year  in  the  March  issue,  will  be  interested  in 
this  advertisement  w^hich  appeared  in  the 
classified  columns  of  London's  The  New  States- 
man and  Nation  for  November  27,  1943: 


Personal 

oOCIAL  Security  League  (President:  Sir  Wm. 
•^  Beveridge)  urgently  needs  funds  to  keep  cam- 
paign going.  51  Tothill  St.,  S.W.I.  ABB.  3377. 


Fir^ALLY    .    .    . 

TI 
reports  of  action  in  the  war,  written 
by  participants.  Harold  Azine,  author  of 
"Bougainville  Landing,"  was  with  the  Ma- 
rines when  they  landed  on  the  island  of  Bou- 
gainville on  November  1,  1943.  The  Edi- 
tors' headnote  explains  in  what  circumstances 
Mr.  Azine  vv^rote  his  story.  At  the  time  the 
author  was  a  Marine  Corps  combat  corre- 
spondent with  the  rank  of  Technical  Sergeant. 
Some  time  later  he  was  recommended  for 
Officers  Candidate  School  and  he  is  now  in 
training  at  Quantico. 


Captain  William  D.  Banks  wrote  "Tar 
get:  Ploesti,"  in  collaboration  with  A.  B.  C 
Whipple  of  the  Washington  office  of  Time 
who,  after  the  Captain  had  written  his  firsi 
draft,  rewrote  and  polished  it  in  consultatior 
with  him.     Captain  Banks  was  born  in  Co 
lumbus,  Ohio,  in  1918.     He  attended  Ohic 
State  University  and  for  a  while  worked  foi 
the  Ohio  Finance  Company.     A  friend  ha< 
this  to  say  about  him:  "He  never  was  an) 
more  of  a  bug  on  flying  than  the  rest  of  us,  buT 
enlisted  in  the  Air  Corps  because  he  liked  thei 
idea  of  flying  better  than  plowing  through) 
mud   on   foot.     He   trained   in   about   every} 
camp  in  the  United  States,  watched  many  ai 
friend  wash  out,  and  somehow  managed  tcj 
get  through  all  the  red  tape  to  the  job  he 
wanted — bomber   pilot.     He   went   overseas  I 
in  the  early  spring  of  1943  and  stayed  at  the 
little  field  in  Libya  from  which  he  took  off  for 
the  missions  over  Rome  and  Ploesti.     By  ai 
quirk  of  luck  and  the  exigencies  of  maneuver- 1 
ing.  Bill's  plane,  the  'Sad  Sack,'  happened  to 
be  the  first  U.  S.  bomber  over  Rome.     This 
does  not  mean  that  Bill  led  the  mission.     As 
the   group  swung  in  over  the   target,   Bill's 
element  was  in  the  lead.     A  short  while  after 
the   Ploesti  mission,   another  crew  took  the 
'Sad  Sack'  on  a  mission  and  didn't  come  back,  i 
Bill  and  his  crew  had  to  use  another  plane 
thereafter  until  they  had  finished  the  required 
300  hours  of  combat  flying.     At  the  last  count 
they  were  all  back  in  this  country. 

"He  was  a  first  lieutenant  at  the  time  of  the 
Ploesti  mission,  was  awarded  the  Silver  Star 
for  his  part  in  it,  and  was  promoted  to  captain 
soon  thereafter.  His  citation  for  the  Silver 
Star  reads:  'As  a  pilot  of  a  B-24,  Lieutenant 


{ 


His  home  town 
jf  Mt.  Carmel 


treats  Howard  Barlow  to  a 


THE  world  of  music  was  alive  with  news  of  a 
great  "miracle"  instrument  developed   at 
Mt.  Carmel,  Illinois  . . . 

And  Howard  Barlow^,  sjmiphony  conductor — 
one  of  the  great  American-born  music  masters 
of  his  time — was  to  be  first  from  the  outside 
world  to  break  the  mystery  surrounding  the 
music  room  at  Mt.  Carmel  high  school — where 
the  new  instrument  is  on  loan  "for  the  duration." 

Rightly  so,  too,  for  Howard  Barlow  was  "a 
home -town  boy."  And,  as  he  waited  in  the  pre- 
audition  hush,  h3  prepared  himself  for  what  he 
feared  most . . .  disappointment! 

Instead,  as  Howard  Barlow  himself  described 
it:  "The  room  was  suddenly  filled  with  the  music 
of  my  own  orchestra— amazingly  real,  crystal 
clear— as  all-pervading  as  if  the  instruments  were 
no  more  than  a  baton's  length  from  my  own 
hand.  I  heard  recorded  music  reproduced  exactly 
as  my  orchestra  played  it.  What  a  gift  to  man- 
kind, to  music,  is  this  new  science . . .  electronics!" 


Howard  Barlow  had  just  been  listening  to 
the  only  Meissner  electronic  radio-phonograph 
in  existence — the  final  laboratory  model  per- 
fected just  before  war  turned  all  of  Meissner's 
skill  and  knowledge  to  the  manufacture  of  elec- 
tronic war  equipment. 

This  priceless  set  will  have  its  luxurious  post- 
war counterparts  for  all  who  enjoy  the  good 
things  of  life . . .  for  all  the  lovers  of  artistic  perfec- 
tion who  have  long  been  irritated  by  the  "missing 
elements"  in  much  of  today's  recorded  music. 
For  them,  Meissner  offers  these  and  many  other 
important  advantages: 

Automatic  Record  Changer  —  plays  both  sides  of  a  record  in 

sequence,  one  side  only,  or  repeats  a  record  just  played  .  . . 

avoids  record  breakage.  Provides  2  hours  or  more  of  music 

without  your  touching  a  record. 

Frequency  Modulation— plus  advanced  electronic  features  for 

fidelity  and  tonal  range  greatly  surpassing  such  qualities  in 

home  radio-phonographs  now  in  use. 

Super  Shortwave  .  .  .  Distinguished  Cabinets  .  . .  New  Ideas  in  a 

host  of  other  advancements  already  being  engineered  into 

Meissner  electronic  equipment  for  our  armed  forces  around 

the  world. 


f^      A  NEW   WORL. 


ORLD    OF  SOVXO  Jf^J^  /J  j)  J^  J^  Jf 

AT    YOUR     FINGER     TIPS       W^^\    Manufacturing  company  .  mt   carmel.  ill. 

ADVANCED  ELECTBOmC  RESEARCH  A\D  mNUFACTURE 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Catching  His  Breath 

Wendell  Willkie  on  the  station  platform  at  125th  Street,  New  York  City. 
The  picture  was  taken  during  the  1940  campaign 


Banks  flew  his  plane  into  the  heavily  fortified 
target  area,  undaunted  by  a  hail  of  anti-air- 
craft fire,  barrage  balloons,  and  enemy  pur- 
suits which  attacked  persistently.  Skimming 
in  at  200  feet  he  passed  over  the  objectives 
so  that  it  was  possible  to  bomb  them  with  great 
resulting  destruction.  The  courageous  and 
able  way  in  which  Lieutenant  Banks  did  his 
duty  in  this  mission  of  international  signifi- 
cance was  such  as  to  win  for  himself,  and  for 
the  Army  Air  Forces,  great  and  lasting 
honor.' " 


CANDID    CANDIDATE? 

^«yT  MAY  be,"  says  Fred  Rodell  in  "Wen- 
1  dell  Willkie:  Man  of  Words,"  that 
Willkie  "is  fated  to  go  down  in  history  as  a 
voice  forever  crying  in  the  wilderness  of  the 
electorate,  as  a  twentieth-century  Henry 
Clay,  as  Wall  Street's  William  Jennings 
Bryan."  Mr.  Rodell  first  began  investigat- 
ing Willkie  in  1940.  During  the  summer  of 
that  year  he  was  engaged,  with  two  assistants, 
in  digging  out  the  facts  of  Willkie's  record  and 
the  story  of  Commonwealth  &  Southern  for  a 


{Continued  on  second  -page  following) 


EADERS  DO  THINGS  FIRST 

Leadership  rests  upon  the  ability  to  foresee,  to  develop, 
and  to  achieve  —  first.   *  On  that  critical  basis,  weigh 
the  position  of  the  Allison  engine.   •  Allison  built 
the  first  aircraft  engine  in  the  world  to  receive 
official   military    rating    of   more   than    i,ooo 
horsepower.    •   Allison    manufactured    the 
first  airplane  engine  in  all  the  world  to 
weigh  less  than  one  pound  per  horse- 
power. •  These  are  only  two 
of  the  thirteen  major 
technical  advances  in 
aircraft-powering 
credited  to  Allison. 
ic    Leadership    is 
earned  by  achieve- 
ments at  the  fore- 
front of  devel- 
opment. 


POWERED  BY  ALLISON: 

P-38-Lightmng   •  P-3g- Airacobra  •   P-^o-JVarhawk  •  A-36 and  P.^i— Mustang 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


series  of  twenty-four  articles  for  the  Chicago 
Times.  A  portion  of  his  present  portrait  is 
based  on  those  researches. 

Mr.  Rodell  is  Professor  of  Law  at  the  Yale 
Law  School.  He  is  thirty-seven  years  old. 
He  was  born  in  Philadel}  hia  and  educated  at 
Yale.  He  commenced  teaching  at  the  Yale 
Law  School  in  1933  and  has  been  at  it  ever 
since,  except  for  a  year  (1937-38)  when  he 
served  on  the  editorial  board  of  Fortune. 
He  still  maintains  a  writing  connection  with 
the  Luce  publications,  however,  and  has 
written  some  of  the  articles  in  the  "Back- 
ground for  Peace"  series  which  have  appeared 
in  Time.  In  addition  to  his  work  for  Time 
Mr.  Rodell  writes  for  other  periodicals.  He 
is  a  regular  contributor  to  The  Progressive. 
Readers  may  recall  an  icy  piece  of  dissection 
he  did  for  us  in  October,  1941.  It  was  called 
"Felix  Frankfurter,  Conservative." 

THY    ROCKS     AIVD    RILI.S 

THY     l¥OODS     AND    TEMPLED    HILI.S 

Bernard  DeVoto^s  charming — that's  a 
I  fair  word  for  it — sketch  of  the  life  and 
ideas  of  Henry  Gilpin  is  called  "Geopolitics 
with  the  Dew  on  It."  And,  upon  reading  it, 
damned  if  one  doesn't  feel  that  Columbia  isn't 
haggard  and  doddering  and  crippled.  No. 
There's  life  in  the  old  girl  yet.  It  must  be 
true.  Where  in  the  world  but  in  the  United 
States  of  a  century  ago  could  a  man  like  Gilpin 
have  lived  and  thought?  Well,  as  the  twig  is 
bent,  so  the  tree  is  inclined.  It  is  hard  to  be- 
lieve that  a  century  can  kill  off  the  vitality  of 
the  society  that  produced  Gilpin.  During  the 
depression  years  and  following  the  outbreak 
of  the  war,  patriotic  and  American  themes 
took  so  hard  a  beating  that  most  people  wanted 
to  hear  no  more  for  a  long  while.  But  Gilpin 
is  bona  fide  and  it's  reasonable  to  let  the  eagle 
scream  a  little. 

Incidentally,  this  article  produced  some- 
thing of  an  argument  in  the  editorial  sanctum. 
Webster  defines  geopolitik  as  a  German  word 
meaning  "a  science  concerned  with  the  de- 
pendence of  the  domestic  and  foreign  politics 
of  a  people  upon  the  physical  environment." 
If  true,  said  one  of  the  editors,  why  doesn't 
Jefferson  as  a  geopolitician  antedate  Gilpin — 
referring  to  Jefferson's  connection  with  Loui- 
siana, the  Lewis  and  Clark  expedition,  and 
the  political  implications  of  the  same.  The 
opposite  argument  was:  No.  It  isn't  geo- 
politics unless  it's  global.  But  Webster  says 
nothing  about  any  global  connotations. 


Mr.  DeVoto,  as  all  hands  know,  is  the  oc- 
cupant of  "The  Easy  Chair."  The  most  re-' 
cent  of  his  many  books  is  The  Tear  of  Decision, 
a  historical  work  about  the  decisive  character 
of  the  events  of  1846  in  American  history. 
It  was  a  Book-of-the-Month  Club  selection 
last  year. 

REPLY    FROM    THE    FIELD 

THE  Editors'  headnote  explains  how  we 
came  by  John  B.  Voris's  "The  Kind  of 
Freedom  We  Need."  Mr.  Voris  is  a  Techni- 
cian, Fifth  Grade,  in  the  United  States  Army 
overseas.  He  is  replying  to  Henry  M.  Wris- 
ton's  "Why  Not  Try  Freedom?"  which  we 
published  last  August. 

In  compressing  Mr.  Voris's  letter,  many 
excellent  bits  had  to  be  discarded.  We  sal- 
vage one  of  them  and  print  it  here — the  re- 
flections of  a  man  who  is  conscious  of  the 
mutations  of  history  and  can  discuss  them  in 
simpler  and  more  convincing  terms  than  those 
employed  by  our  more  pompous  and  senten- 
tious foreign  correspondents: 

"It  is  pointless  to  call  in  man's  willingness 
to  sacrifice  in  war  as  evidence  of  his  willing- 
ness to  sacrifice  for  freedom's  sake.  Of  course 
he  is  willing,  but  neither  our  Revolution  or 
the  Second  World  War  was  fought  with  the 
idea  that  in  twenty  years  we  would  be  poorer 
than  if  we  had  not  taken  up  arms.  They 
were  fought  to  maintain  our  freedom  and  our 
economic  position.  To  sacrifice  one  is  to  lose 
the  other  at  the  same  time.  The  two  are  in- 
separable. 

"And  the  maintenance  of  both  is  essential 
to  progress  and  any  form  of  life  satisfying  to 
such  men  as  we  are.  I  have  been  newly  im- 
pressed with  this  fact  as  I  have  walked  over 
these  old  countries  with  their  narrow,  limited, 
and  poverty-stricken  daily  life,  and  their  an- 
cient ruins,  monuments  to  a  bolder  life  that 
has  long  been  dead." 

LOOKING    lYESTliYARD 

"r^AN  Francisco  Looks  West"  is  a  report  by 
1^  John  Dos  Passos  of  his  impressions  of 
San  Francisco  in  wartime.  This  marks  the 
end  of  Mr.  Dos  Passos's  travels  for  us.  He 
can't  go  farther  without  falling  into  the  water. 
He  began  this  job  more  than  a  year  ago.  We 
had  "Downeasters  Building  Ships,"  which  was 
about  Maine;  we  had  "The  Men  Who  Make 
the  Motors,"  which  concerned  Detroit;  then 
in  "Gold  Rush  in  the  South"  Mr.  Dos  Passos 


(Continued  on  fourth  page  following)  , 


Tock...Tick-Tock...  NOW  TASTE  WHAT  TIME  HAS  DONE ! 


^Lm 


^"^^ 


m 


% 


\  I  / 


Mm 


J' 


V. 


'^fS&T 


(T^ucKYS  riiilV; 


\ 


W^i 


•/ 


m^  ^t^'tf 


^>. 


WM^~ 


f 


rhe  Old  Charter  that  you        ^^^^.j^,  o/ 

^re-tvar  whishies.  uu  j,^^^  1942. 

not  made  v:hiskey  since  U  j,y  j,as 

Tile  that  date  ^^^^/^J^Jn  of  aleo- 

heen  converted  to  P     ^^^   ^^^^rnment. 

hoi  for  u>ar  useo^^^^^^^^ ^ 


STILL  FEEL  that  silkiness,  mellowness,  smoothness  are  just  ad- 
words  .  .  .  chances  are  you've  never  tasted  Old  Charter  !   If  you 

3  no  real  choice  between  brands  of  whiskey  .  .  .  chances  are  you've 

sted  Old  Charter.  If  your  own  palate  has  never  told  you  what 
leisured  years  of  ripening  can  do  for  a  noble  whiskey  .  .  .  chances 

ve  never  tasted  Old  Charter  — and  you  ought  to,  soon! 


m  mkwm 


A  SUPERB       ^■ 

AMERICAN 

WHISKEY 


BUY  MORE  WAR  BONDS-TODA ' 


is  7  Years  Old  ■  Straight  Bourbon  Whiskey  ■  90  Proof    Bernheim  Distilling  Co. ,  Inc. ,  Louisyille,  Ky.  (  Tune  in  !  Schenley  's"Cresta  Blanca  Wine  Carnival.  "  Every  Wed.  Eve,  C  B 


'Oh,  What  a  Beautiful  Morning 


You  will  say  many  nice  things  about  Schenley  Reserve.  But 
one  thing  all  who  taste  it  agree  upon :  this  fine  smooth  flavor 
is  like  morning  sunshine  in  your  glass  .  .  .  so  mellow  and  light 
...  a  work  of  genius  .  .  .  each  sunny  amber  drop  a  glowing  part 
of  a  magnificent  whole.  Over  all  others,  Schenley  Reserve  is 
America's  first  choice  among  whiskies  because  we  made  it 
America's  finest.  Be  sure  to  try  it.  Soon! 

Mellow  and  light  as  a  perfect  iiiorning! 


The  whiskies  in  Schenley 
Reserve  are  supplied  only 
from  existing  stocks.  Our 
distilleries  are  now  produc- 
ing only  alcohol  forjmmi- 
tions,  synthetic 
rubber  and  other 
important  uses. 
Schenley  has  pro- 
duced no  whiskey 
since   Oct.    1942. 


BUY  MORE 
WAR  BONDS! 


Schenley 


Blended  whiskey 


Sche 


«!.«  Pi.till.«  f ,,»    «....  V..I,  ri.„   .A  ,..>»  -  .8 >l.....nl  <.,irf..J>i.iilWJ.,u.^lruil.mAi:«d,. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


went  to  Mobile,  and  on  to  Texas  for  "New 
Industries  Make  New  Men."  He  doubled 
back  to  the  Potomac  for  "Washington  Eve- 
ning" which  we  published  last  October. 
Now  with  San  Francisco  he*reaches  the  end 
of  the  line. 

Mr.  Dos  Passos's  most  recent  novel  is  Num- 
ber One,  published  last  spring.  In  addition  to 
Manhattan  Transfer,  The  42d  Parallel^  and  all 
the  other  well  remembered  novels,  he  has  also 
written  essays,  poetry,  and  plays  and  a  book 
called  The  Ground  We  Stand  On,  an  investiga- 
tion of  "the  basis  of  the  present  American 
conception  of  thought." 

COMMUNICATE,    MOTHER-IN-L  AlV! 

Rudolf  Fleschf  author  of  "How  Basic  Is 
^ Basic  English?",  says:  "Since  I  wrote  the 
article  I  have  discovered  that  simplified  lan^ 
guage,  like  everything  else,  has  become  in- 
volved in  the  war  effort.  Manufacturers  of 
Army  and  Navy  equipment  are  required  to 
furnish  instruction  books  in  plain,  nontechni- 
cal English  and,  for  some  months  now,  have 
been  finding  out  that  this  is  not  as  easy  as  it 
seems.  One  company,  apparently  persuaded 
by  an  enthusiast,  has  actually  put  out  a  man- 
ual in  Basic  English." 

Mr.  Flesch  says  about  himself:  "Trained  as 
a  librarian,  I  worked  for  some  time  in  the 
Readability  Laboratory  of  the  American 
Association  for  Adult  Education,  and  have 
been  fascinated  by  the  possibilities  of  simpli- 
fied language  ever  since.  When  the  Labora- 
tory folded  up,  I  carried  on  with  my  research, 
published  some  articles  in  library  and  psy- 
chological journals,  finished  the  work  for 
my  Columbia  University  Ph.D.,  and  finally 
wound  up  with  a  statistical  formula  by  which 
language  simplicity  can  be  measured  and  sys- 
tematically increased.  This  formula  has  just 
been  published  by  Teachers  College,  Colum- 
bia University,  in  a  book  called  Marks  of 
Readable  Style.  I  spent  most  of  the  past  year 
applying  the  formula  to  all  kinds  of  material, 
from  Department  of  Agriculture  leaflets  to 
radio  forums.  At  present  I  am  working  for 
the  Columbia  Broadcasting  System." 

FAR    A'WAY    AND    BLOODY 

rWAS  the  French  explorer  Bougainville  who 
named  the  islands  Land  of  the  Assassins — 
an  identification  that  seems  very  apposite 
right  now — but  two  hundred  years  before 
they  had  been  seen  by  a  Spaniard  sailing  from 


Peru.  He  called  them  the  Solomons  because 
of  their  luxuriant  vegetation.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  untold  riches  might  come  out  of  this 
distant  archipelago.  Eventually  riches  did 
come,  for  Lever  Brothers  set  out  coconut 
plantations  there  and  used  the  coconut  oil  for 
soap.  Recently  we  have  seen  photographs  of 
those  groves  after  they  had  been  used  for  a 
battlefield  and  no  picture  of  the  French  devas- 
tated areas  of  the  last  war  ever  looked  more 
desolate  than  the  views  of  the  tattered, 
smashed  coconut  farms  of  the  Solomon 
Islands. 

"Bloody  Island"  is  the  first  of  a  series  of 
articles  by  Fletcher  Pratt  about  "The  Cam- 
paign for  the  Solomons."  The  next  install- 
ment will  appear  in  the  April  issue. 

This  is  the  second  series  by  Mr.  Pratt  to 
appear  in  Harper's.  The  first,  called  "Ameri- 
cans in  Battle,"  was  completed  last  month. 
The  nine  installments  dealt  mostly  with  naval 
action  in  the  Pacific,  but  included  also  "Car- 
ibbean Command"  and  "Memorial  of  the 
Wasp.^^  Both  series  will  be  included  later  in 
a  book  by  Mr.  Pratt. 


FASHION    PLATE    ON 

''~r    AM    presently   editor 


SKATES 

of    the    Charlotte 


J^  News,''  says  Burke  Davis,  the  author  of 
"Senator  Bob  Reynolds:  Retrospective  View," 
adding  modestly  that  this  is  "a  wartime  meas- 
ure in  the  absence  of  the  boss.  I  was  associ- 
ate editor  for  a  short  time  in  1 942  and,  before 
that,  had  been  sports  editor  since  1939." 

Mr.  Davis  got  his  schooling  at  Duke  Uni- 
versity, Guilford  College,  and  the  University 
of  North  Carolina.  At  the  moment  he  is 
working  on  a  biography  of  George  Luks,  the 
artist. 

By  the  way:  Wilbur  J.  Cash,  who  wrote  The 
Mind  of  the  South,  Marion  Hargrove,  author  of 
See  Here,  Private  Hargrove,  and  Tom  Pridgen, 
author  of  Tory  Oath,  all  were  members  of  the 
staff'  of  the  Charlotte  News,  (advt.) 

I    REMEMBER,    I    REMEMBER 

''r-p»HE  Stage  Coach"  is  the  first  story  by 
I  Griffith  Beems  that  we  have  had  in  a 
long  time.  (Nearly  six  years,  to  be  exact:  the 
most  recent  was  "Bond  Salesman"  which  ap- 
peared in  the  December  number,  1 937.)  Mr. 
Beems  was  born  in  Iowa  and  subsequently 
lived  and  wrote  in  New  York  City.  In  1938 
Mr.  Beems  went  back  to  Cedar  Rapids  to 
grease  the  gears  of  a  wholesale  business,  but 


(Continued  on  second  page  following) 


^^^^1 


This  is  your  old  man  talking. 

We've  ^ot  bi^  plans  for  you,  son.  Nothing's 
going  to  stop  your  being  a  big  man  in  Hfc  .  .  .  not 
it'  I  can  help  it. 

Oh,  you'll  get  a  few  bumps  along  the  way — 
everyone  docs — a  black  eye  from  some  husky  play- 
mate or  a  reprimand  for  the  way  you  scuff  your 
shoes.  But  if  lots  of  love,  a  happy  home,  and  a 
good  echication  can  develop  a  fme  boy  into  a 
healthy,  well-adjusted  man  who's  going  places  .  .  . 
then,  little  man,  that's  your  future. 

Just  to  be  sure  that  nothing  prevents  your  get- 
ting this  good  start  in  life,  today  I've  taken 
enough  life  insurance  to  protect  you  and  your 
mother  in  case  anything  happens  to  me.  Now  I 


know  you'll  both  be  taken  care  of.  You  see  what  I 
mean.^  I'm  taking  no  chances  on  your  future. 

It  is  a  prime  purpose  of  The  Prudential  to 
provide  the  protection  this  father  wants  for  his 
son — and  you  want  for  your  loved  ones  in  time  of 
emergency.  Not  only  does  Prudential  life  insur- 
ance provide  a  safe  future  ...  it  does  so  at  low 
cost.  For  68  years  there  has  been  no  safer  way  of 
protecting  your  family. 

Buy  War  Savings  Stamps  from  your  Prudential  Agent 


THE    PRUDENTIAL 

INSURANCE      COMPANY      OF      AMERICA 

A  mutual  life  insurance  company 

HOME    office:     NEWARK,    new   jersey 


THE    FUTURE    BELONGS    TO    THOSE    WHO    PREPARE    FOR    IT 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Pour  it  into  your  finest 
stemware,  this  pale  gold  of  the  vintner's 

sun.  Twirl  the  glass  and  catch  its 
delicate  bouquet.  Then  sip  it  reverently. 

Nearly  three  quarters  of  a  century's 
experience  has  gone  into  the  making  of 

this  delicious  champagne,  naturally 

fermented  in  the  bottle.  Write  for  a  free 

copy  of  our  24-page  Wine  Recipe 

Book.  Address  Dept.  33, 

L.  N.  Renault  &  Sons,  Inc.,  . 

Egg  Harber  City,  N.  J.  Distributed 

through  McKesson  &  Robbins,  Inc., 

New  York. 

Buy  War  Bonds 


in  1943  he  quit  to  give  his  whole  time  to  writ- 
ing. 


IVO    TAl^GO    THIS    TIME 

THE  casual  reader  of  American  newspapers 
would  suppose  that  the  recent  coup  d'etat 
in  Bolivia  and  the  subsequent  turmoil  in  Ar- 
gentina had  been  brought  about  exclusively 
by  the  plotting  of  Nazi  secret  agents.  Such  is 
not  the  case  amd,  in  "Some  Real  Trouble  in 
South  America,"  Ricardo  Setaro  undertakes 
to  tell  the  truth  about  the  Argentine  crisis. 
Mr.  Setaro,  who  now  lives  in  New  York,  was 
formerly  a  reporter  for  the  Buenos  Aires 
Critica.  He  reported  the  Spanish  Civil  War 
and  the  Chaco  War  between  Bolivia  and 
Paraguay.  He  is  the  author  of  three  books: 
La  vida  privada  del  Periodismo  (The  Private  Life 
of  Journalism),  Imageries  Seer  etas  de  la  Guerra  del 
Chaco  (Secret  Pictures  of  the  Chaco  War),  and 
Secretos  de  Estado  Mayor  (General  Staff  Secrets) . 
The  last  named  also  was  concerned  with  the 
Chaco  War. 

LESS-THAX-A-PACiE 

''attention:  State  Department"  is  by 
£\^  Karl  P.  Schmidt,  Chief  Curator  of 
Zoology  at  the  Chicago  Natural  Museum. 
In  addition  to  various  technical  papers,  Mr. 
Schmidt  has  written  two  books  for  children: 
Homes  and  Habits  of  Wild  Animals  and  Friendly 
Animals  and  Whence  They  Came.  He  lectures  in 
zoology  at  the  University  of  Chicago;  he  is 
contributing  editor  to  Copeia  and  the  Amer- 
ican Midland  Naturalist  and  section  editor 
(amphibians  and  reptiles)  of  Biological  Ab- 
stracts. 

POET 

THE  only  poet  this  month  is  Martha 
Keller,  a  frequent  contributor.  Miss 
Keller  has  written  poetry  for  numerous 
periodicals  besides  Harper's  and  is  the  author 
of  a  book  of  verse  called  Mirror  to  Mortality. 
She  is  married  and  is  the  mother  of  two  chil- 
dren. She  is  fond  of  hunting  and  fishing  but 
says  that  she  doesn't  see  much  of  it  now,  what 
with  the  gas  shortage  and  a  husband  away, 
working  for  the  government. 

S€»I.»IERS^    FAITH 

BERNARD  Iddings  Bell,  who  wrotc  the  let- 
I  ter  to  the  churches  called  "Before  the 
Men  March  Home" — published  in  the  Jan- 
uary Harper's — sends  us  a  letter: 


1 


;.  I 


'!!!■« 


irwi 


! 


THE  MAGNA  CHART  A 

OF  THE  U.  S. 
MERCHANT  MARINE 


From  the  Merchant  Marine  Act  of  1936, 
as  amended:  "It  is  necessary  for  the 
national  defense  and  development  of  its 
foreign  and  domestic  commerce  that  the 
United  Stat<'s  shall  have  a  merchant 
niarint^  (a)  sufficient  to  carry  its  domestic 
waterhorne  commerce  and  a  substantial 
portion  of  the  waterhorne  export  and  im- 
port foreign  commerce  of  the  United 
States,  and  to  provide  shipping  service 
on  all  routes  essential  for  maintaining  the 
flow  of  such  domestic  and  foreign  water- 
borne  commerce  at  all  times,  (b)  capable 
of  serving  as  a  naval  and  military  auxil- 
iary in  time  of  war  or  national  emergency, 
(c)  owned  and  operated  under  the 
United  States  flag  by  citizens  of  the 
United  States  insofar  as  may  be  prac- 
ticable, and  (d)  composed  of  the  best- 
equipped,  safest,  and  most  suitable  types 
of  vessels,  constructed  in  the  United 
States  and  manned  with  a  trained  and 
efficient  citizen  personnel.  It  is  hereby 
declared  to  be  the  policy  of  the  United 
States  to  foster  the  development  and 
encourage  the  maintenance  of  such  a 
merchan:  marine."         (Public  Act  835) 


liili  i:: 


/ 


H  I 


.4 


MARY'S    TRIP    TO     INDIA 


On  every  U.  S.-flag  ship  that  lifts  its  bows  to 
the  Indian  Ocean  swells,  Mary  is  a  passenger — 
in  spirit.  For  her  job  and  her  salary  depend, 
in  part,  on  her  company's  overseas  business. 

Her  company  may  have  built  that  particular 
ship  or  some  of  its  equipment,  supplied  it, 
clothed  the  crew  or  furnished  a  part  of  the 
cargo.  And  Mary  hersejf  probably  wears  or 
eats  or  uses  a  number  of  things  that  this  ship 
and  others  have  brought  in  from  foreign  lands. 

In  such  direct  and  indirect  ways,  every 
American  has  a  stake  in  our  merchant  marine. 
Congress  recognized  this,  and  in  the  Merchant 
Marine  Act  of  1936,  called  for  all-American 
shipping  sufficient  for  ''service  on  all  routes 


essential  for  maintaining  the  flow  of  (our) 
domestic  and  foreign  waterhorne  commerce." 

War  emphasized  this  need  as  a  matter  of  na- 
tional defense  —  and  today  we  have,  for  the 
first  time,  shipping  enough  to  secure  our  foreign 
trade.  Many  of  the  new  ships  are  operated, 
under  the  War  Shipping  Administration,  by 
American  Export  Lines,  utilizing  our  experi- 
ence in  Mediterranean  and  Indian  Ocean  trade. 

Now  our  cargoes  and  destinations  are  chosen 
by  military  necessity  .  .  .  after  Victory,  they 
will  be  selected  by  the  needs  of  Mary — and  the 
needs  of  the  millions  of  farmers,  miners,  office 
and  factory  workers  who  will  share  the  benefits 
of  America's  new  security  of  the  seas. 


American  Export  lines 


H.  W.    AYER   a   SON 


25  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK  CITY  4 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Set  your  course  due  southwest  for  the 
sunniest  point  on  the  compass-for  Phoenix,  of 
course,  in  the  friendly,  fascinating  Valley  of  the  Sun. 
Even  if  wartime  tasks  and  travel  have  tied  you 
down  for  the  duration,  this  delightful  Certifisd- 
Ciimste  is  well  worth  waiting  for!  Meanwhile,  you 
can  a\  least  begin  dreaming  of  your  Valley  of  the 
Sun  sojourn— and  buying  more  Bonds  to  hasten 
the  day  of  your  liberation. 

*  ..."Certified"  when  the  VaUey 
of  the  Sun  was  chosen  by  the 
U.S.  Army  as  one  of  America's 
foremost  aviation  training 
centers  because  of  its  unexcelled 
climate  and  weather  conditions. 


_/t 


For  free,  profusely  iliuslrated  booklet  and 
cartograph  map,  write  Valley  of  the  Sun  Qub, 
524     Chamber  of  Commerce  BIdg.,  Phoenix. 


IPhcenix  /^rizcna 


-Get  the  1944  Edition  of  the- 


Magazine  of  y(Q\i\me  Travel 


The  GIMLET 


GIVES    PLACES 
AND  PRICES 

Hotels  and  Rates,  Restaurants  and  Prices  —  Where  to  Go  — 
What  to  See.  The  Costs,  Recommendations  Canada  to  Florida,  in- 
cludes N.  Y.  City.  Postpoid  50c.  The  Gimlet,  551  5fh  Ave.,  N.  Y.  City  17. 
Typical  Hotels  Recommended: 


New  York 

WALDORF-ASTORIA 

Boston,  Mass. 

KENMORE 
Philadelphia,  Pa. 

BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 
Wilmington,  Del. 

HOTEL  DUPONT 
Hot  Springs,  Va. 

THE  HOMESTEAD 
Wilmington,  N.  C. 

CAPE  FEAR  HOTEL 
Savannah,  Ga. 

GENERAL  OGLETHORPE 
Brunswick,  Go. 

OGLETHORPE 
Waycross,  Ga. 

WARE  HOTEL 


Pensacola,  Fla. 

SAN  CARLOS 
Pointe  Vedra,  Fla. 

THE  INN 
Daytono  Beach,  Fla. 

PRINCESS  ISSENA 
Palm  Beach,  Fla. 

PALM  BEACH  HOTEL 
Hollywood,  Fla. 

SEA  CREST  MANOR 
N.  Miami  Beach,  Fla. 

GREEN  HERON 
Miami,  Fla. 

EL  COMODORO 
Fort  Myers,  Fla. 

FRANKLIN  ARMS 
Bradenton,  Fla. 

DIXIE  GRANDE 


.Dine  at  OIney  Inrvs,  N.  Y.  C.  &  Miami  Beach- 


The  School  —  the  College 
the  Junior  College  — 


m^mP  or  the  SUMMER  CAMP  you  seek  will 
'_^Kii^  probably  be  found  in  the  "Schools  ami  Col- 
leges" Section  of  this  issue.  I  f  the  one  you 
want  is  not  listed  our  School  Bureau  will  be  glad  to  help 
you.  Address 

SCHOOL  BUREAU,  Harpers  Magazine 
49  E.  33rd  Street,  New  York 


"Comments  on  my  January  article  still  con- 
tinue to  pour  in — the  most  interesting  of  them 
from  chaplains  to  the  forces.  And,  somewhat  to 
my  astonishment,  not  one  finds  fault  with  the 
main  thesis.  Incidentals  seem  to  some  to  be 
defectively  put  by  me — and  several  have  sug- 
gested that  the  chaplains,  too,  will  come  out 
what  they  went  in,  so  that  while  most  of  them 
will  have  discovered  that  something  is  terribly 
wrong,  they  will  have  neither  brains  enough  to 
know  what  it  is  exactly  nor  guts  to  do  anything 
about  it.  There  may  be  something  to  that. 
A  lot  of  chaplains  will,  alas,  be  concerned  after 
the  war  chiefly  with  getting  parishes  and  pulpits 
and  with  pleasing  those  of  the  laity  who  did  not 
go  to  war  but  stayed  home  and  by  neat  profiteer- 
ing got  together  some  cash.  So  say  a  few  of 
the  commentators. 

But  the  encouraging  thing  is  the  penitent  re- 
action of  the  clerical  commentators. 


e>sy3 


THOSE    COVERS 


SUBSCRIBERS  who  get  their  copies  by  mail 
'  are  complaining  bitterly.  The  Magazine 
is  now  rolled  tightly  before  wrapping  and 
mailing — this  is  done  to  save  paper — and 
sometimes  copies  arrive  scuffed  around  the 
edges.  We  feel  badly  about  this  but  we 
can't  do  anything  about  it.  The  paper  short- 
age has  a  hammer  lock  on  us  and  though  we 
do  the  best  we  can,  we  can  see  nothing  for 
subscribers  to  do  about  this  wrapper  question 
but  grin  and  bear  it.  • 

BUTTER    ON    THE    RIJI^ 

REMEMBER  Wcslcy  McCuuc's  "The  Oleo- 
^  margarine  Rebellion"  that  we  printed 
in  the  December  issue?  We  have  just  noted 
with  some  relish  the  most  recent  oleo- 
margarine production  figures.  For  1943: 
610,131,000  pounds.  For  1942:  423,277,000 
pounds. 


nBACK 


THE 


ATTACK- 


Every  Bond  you  buy  is  a  blow  at  the 
enemies  who  would  destroy  your  home, 
your  family,  your  future.  Start  saving 
now  for  all  the  things  you  cannot  buy 
today  which  will  be  plentiful  when 
Victory  is  ours! 


Harper^ 


VOL    188     TVo    1127     April    1944 


OCCUPY    JAPA?^? 


NATHANIEL    PEFFER 


ris  no  particular  secret  that  we  are 
now  planning  what  to  do  with  Japan 
after  it  is  defeated.  It  is  no  particular 
secret,  either,  that  the  trend  of  opinion  in 
both  official  and  unofficial  quarters  is 
toward  military  occupation — a  prolonged 
occupation  in  force,  government  through 
an  AMG;  disarmament  of  the  fighting 
services,  dismantling  of  heavy  industry  to 
keep  the  country  from  rearming,  super- 
vision of  education,  and  regulation  of  in- 
dustrial production.  The  point  I  want 
to  make  in  this  article  is  that  the  whole 
idea  is  fantastic  and  had  better  be  dropped. 
Occupation  of  Japan  is  not  necessary  for 
our  purpose  and,  most  of  all,  is  not  prac- 
ticable. Even  if  it  can  be  imposed  at  the 
beginning  it  can  be  sustained  only  at  a 
human  cost  that  will  be  harrowing  and 
self-defeating  in  the  end. 

What  is  it  that  we  want  with  respect  to 
Japan?  What  is  it  that  we  have  to  be 
sure  of?      Onlj  that  it  be  so  thoroughly  crushed 

Copj-right,  19-14,  by  Harper  k 


in  defeat  as  to  be  beyond  capability  of  recovery 
for  a  long  period — ^so  long  a  period  that  the 
rest  of  the  world  can  have  time  to  regain 
equilibrium  and,  if  possible,  establish  an 
international  system  or  at  least  an  align- 
ment of  power  that  will  prevent  future 
infractions  of  international  decency  such 
as  the  Japanese  and  German  infractions 
of  the  past  few  years.  That  is,  if  not  all  we 
want,  at  any  rate  all  we  need.  A  demo- 
cratic system  in  Japan  would  be  added 
assurance  or  insurance.  So  also  would 
be  the  disestablishment  of  militarism  and 
the  inculcation  of  a  new  scale  of  values, 
one  that  did  not  elevate  the  martial  virtues 
above  all  other  qualities  and  the  warrior 
caste  above  all  other  social  classes.  But 
these  are  not  indispensable  to  us.  All 
that  is  indispensable  is  that  Japan  be 
unable  to  embark  on  further  aggressive 
adventures,  no  matter  what  its  internal 
condition  and  the  thought  of  its  people 
may  be. 

Brothers.     All  Rights  Reserved. 


386 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


s  A  matter  of  fact  we  are  now  com- 
pensating for  our  previous  under- 
estimation of  Japan  by  overestimating  it. 
Therefore  we  are  needlessly  complicating 
the  question  of  the  postwar  settlement. 
In  the  first  place,  false  c  nalogies  are  being 
drawn  from  the  quick  recovery  of  Ger- 
many after  1918.  Actually  Germany's 
recovery  was  not  so  quick:  it  took 
twenty  years.  Furthermore,  Germany 
had  less  to  recover  from  than  Japan  will 
have.  Its  soil  was  untouched.  Its  physi- 
cal structure  was  left  sound.  Its  indus- 
trial plant  was  worn  but  intact.  And 
then  we  of  the  victor  countries,  America 
and  Great  Britain  in  particular,  lent  Ger- 
many the  money  with  which  to  replace  its 
worn  plant  with  the  newest  and  most 
efficient  implements  of  production — better 
implements  than  we  ourselves  had,  since 
they  were  newer.  Still  further,  Germany 
is  as  technically  proficient  a  country  as 
the  world  knows,  with  an  industrial 
establishment  and  industrial  experience 
going  back  a  century.  Japan  is  not  Ger- 
many. It  will  have  to  rebuild,  not  renew, 
and  it  will  not  be  able  to  call  on  the  human 
resources  that  Germany  did.  For  if  we 
can  defeat  Japan  at  all  it  will  be  only  after 
at  least  the  modernized,  industrialized 
part  of  the  country  has  been  devastated. 

I  am  assuming  now,  as  I  think  it  can  be 
assumed,  that  we  shall  not  make  a  com- 
promise peace,  that  we  shall  continue 
until  Japan  sues  for  peace  on  any  terms. 
And  Japan  will  not  do  this  until  it  has 
felt  American  blows  on  its  national  body. 
All  Japanese  energies,  therefore,  will  have 
to  be  expended  for  at  least  ten  to  twenty 
years  just  in  rehabilitation,  first  physical 
rehabilitation  and  then  economic  rehabili- 
tation. Japan  will  not  be  ready  for  more 
adventures  in  twenty  years  even  if  we 
never  set  foot  in  Tokyo.  And  unless  we 
give  it  financial  help  in  the  form  of  credits 
— which  can  be  made  conditional  on  good 
behavior — it  will  not  begin  to  attain  real 
strength  for  twice  twenty  years. 

False  analogies  are  drawn  also  from 
Japan's  almost  miraculous  rise  to  pow- 
er between  1870  and  1920.  That  was 
brought  about  by  a  fortuitous  combination 
of  peculiar  circumstances  that  will  not 
recur.  It  constitutes  an  almost  unique 
chapter  in  political  history.    Japan  was 


the  first  Oriental  country  to  modernize 
and  industrialize,  and  thereby  it  acquired 
potentialities  of  power  while  all  around  it 
lay  countries  still  somnolent,  unchanging, 
and  weak.  By  1910,  indeed,  Japan  had  a 
preponderance  of  power  in  its  own  en- 
virons such  as  no  other  country  has  ever 
enjoyed.  The  only  check  against  Japan 
was  interposed  by  the  great  Western  em- 
pires— Great  Britain,  Russia,  Germany, 
and  France — and  they  were  just  at  the  be- 
ginning of  their  decline,  for  they  were  in 
the  preliminaries  of  the  world  wars.  And 
since  1914,  of  course,  even  that  check  has 
failed  to  operate.  Hence  Japan's  ap- 
parently miraculous  rise  to  power.  But 
the  conditions  which  made  it  possible 
have  passed,  never  to  return. 

Never  again  can  Japan  enjoy  an  un- 
challengeable preponderance  of  power  in 
its  environs,  never  again  will  it  alone  be 
strong  among  the  weak.  First,  there  will 
be  China,  now  modernized  and  indus- 
trializing too,  now  responding  to  the  drive 
of  nationalism,  now  possessing  strength 
and  conscious  of  its  strength — 400,000,000 
people  who  are  aware  of  national  identity, 
who  are  learning  fast  to  produce  modern 
weapons,  who  have  learned  how  to  fight. 
Second,  there  will  be  Russia,  now  fully 
industrialized  and  extended  in  modern- 
ization and  potentiality  of  economic  and 
military  power  across  Asia  to  eastern 
Siberia.  Under  no  conceivable  combina- 
tion of  circumstances  are  both  those  coun- 
tries likely  again  to  fall  into  helplessness 
or  negligibility  simultaneously — as  they 
must  if  Japan  is  ever  again  to  be  able  to 
run  riot  with  ease  as  it  has  for  thirty-five 
years.  Whatever  it  aspires  to  do,  it  will 
have  to  do  with  circumspection  and  then 
only  with  the  consent  or  partnership  of  its 
neighbors.  All  this  apart  from  the  fact 
that  Great  Britain  and  America  will  not 
be  negligible  in  the  near  future. 

In  short,  no  matter  what  happens,  Ja- 
pan cannot  be  again  what  it  was  in  the 
past  thirty  years.  Indeed,  it  is  more 
likely  that  Japan's  sun  has  set,  not  to  rise 
again  in  this  period  in  history.  It  had  a 
fleeting  moment  of  resplendent  glory  that 
was  as  false  as  it  was  dazzling.  We  are 
worrying  overmuch  about  the  future  Ja- 
pan. There  may  be  no  need  to  worry  at 
all,  if  she  is  completely  beaten  now. 


OCCUPY    JAPAN? 


387 


11 


IF  THIS  is  true,  or  even  if  there  is  only  a 
reasonable  chance  that  it  is  true,  then 
it  would  be  sheer  masochism  to  undertake 
a  task  of  the  dimensions  of  occupying  and 
governing  Japan,  especially  at  the  close  of 
a  long  war  in  which  the  losses  in  American 
men  will  already  have  been  such  as  to 
leave  the  country  shaken.  Let  there  be 
no  illusion  about  one  thing:  it  will  be  one 
of  the  most  difficult  undertakings  in  mili- 
tary history.  It  will  mean  the  occupa- 
tion, pacification,  and  administration  of  a 
country  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe;  not 
a  "colonial"  country  inhabited  by  a 
backward  and  helpless  population  but  a 
nation  of  75,000,000  people,  highly  organ- 
ized, technically  advanced,  fanatically  pa- 
triotic, with  an  old  warrior  tradition  and 
military  experience  second  to  none.  The 
Japanese  died  to  a  man  on  Attu,  Tarawa, 
and  Munda,  barren  or  malarial  spots  far 
from  their  homeland.  Is  it  to  be  expected 
that  they  will  meekly  lay  down  their  arms 
when  it  is  their  own  soil  they  defend 
against  the  invader?  If  Japan  is  bludg- 
eoned until  all  hope  is  demonstrably  gone, 
it  may  surrender,  disgorge  its  territorial 
and  economic  spoils,  and  accept  what  fate 
decrees — provided  its  own  soil  is  inviolate. 
But  if  Japan  is  invaded  and  the  invader 
gives  evidence  of  desire  to  remain,  then  by 
all  that  can  be  read  in  its  history  and  all 
that  it  has  revealed  of  its  psychology,  it 
can  be  expected  to  continue  to  struggle 
until  few  but  the  aged  and  halt  are  left. 

A  distinction  must  be  drawn  between 
landing  an  army  in  Japan  in  the  last 
stages  of  the  war  to  force  surrender  and 
landing  an  army  to  occupy  and  administer 
the  country.  In  the  first  case,  presumably 
we  shall  have  no  choice;  we  shall  have  to 
land.  But  it  will  be  wise  to  make  sure 
beyond  doubt  that  there  really  is  no 
choice,  that  there  is  no  other  way  of  bring- 
ing about  complete  defeat.  For  what  has 
happened  in  Italy,  under  easier  circum- 
stances, is  an  indication  of  what  can  be 
expected  in  Japan.  Geography  is  an  ally 
of  the  defender  in  Japan  even  more  than 
in  Italy,  and  even  if  we  have  bases  in 
China,  the  difficulty  of  establishing  and 
holding  beachheads  in  Japan  will  be  far 
greater    than    in    Italy    unless  Japanese 


strength  has  already  been  well  sapped.  If 
we  have  bases  near  enough  Japan  to  make 
landing  operations  practicable,  we  shall 
also  have  bases  from  which  the  pulveriza- 
tion of  Japanese  cities,  industries,  com- 
munications, and  the  whole  mechanism  of 
resistance  also  can  be  carried  out.  In 
that  case,  if  at  the  same  time  Japanese 
troops  have  been  driven  out  of  the  other 
areas  they  have  conquered,  we  have  a 
more  than  good  chance  that  the  Japanese 
will  lay  down  their  arms,  accepting  terms 
such  as  were  stated  at  Cairo.  That  is, 
they  will  evacuate  all  the  territories  they 
have  conquered,  not  only  since  1937  but 
since  they  went  out  for  expansion.  There 
will  be  an  even  better  chance  of  getting  a 
surrender  if  we  do  not  insist  on  formal 
occupation  or  if  we  stipulate  only  a  token 
occupation  of  short  duration  and  limited 
extent  for  the  limited  purpose  of  negotiat- 
ing the  formalities  of  surrender  and  peace. 

This  sort  of  occupation  is  one  thing — 
and  even  this  should  be  avoided,  if  possi- 
ble, in  order  to  save  the  lives  of  our  own 
men — but  to  go  in  with  a  large  force  in 
order  to  take  over  the  country  is  another. 
It  is,  indeed,  fantasy.  To  hear  a  discus- 
sion of  the  application  of  the  principles  of 
an  AMG  to  Japan  on  the  pattern  of  Sicily 
and  Italy  is  like  listening  to  a  dialogue  out 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland. 

As  has  already  been  said,  Japan  is 
ideally  suited  for  defense.  It  is,  in  fact,  a 
guerrilla's  paradise.  Within  an  hour  of 
Tokyo  the  hills  rise,  and  in  the  hills  there 
are  ravines,  gulches,  pockets  in  which 
guerrillas  could  hide  with  security.  They 
could  hide  in  the  day,  and  at  night  make 
sudden  forays  on  small  American  garri- 
sons. Or  in  the  day  they  could  work  as 
peasants  in  their  rice  paddies,  and  after 
sundown  meet  at  an  appointed  rendezvous 
in  some  ravine,  take  the  rifles,  swords,  and 
daggers  hidden  there,  and  swoop  down  on 
the  nearest  American  headquarters.  In 
the  morning  they  would  be  back  in  the 
mud  of  the  rice  paddies  again.  And  how 
would  American  troops,  newly  come  to 
the  East,  still  unable  to  tell  one  Japanese 
from  another,  be  able  to  distinguish — 
even  if  they  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
guerrillas  in  the  dim  light — which  was 
guerrilla  and  which  the  peasant  from 
whom  they  bought  vegetables? 


388 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


In  emergency  the  guerrillas,  a  few  at  a 
time,  could  fold  themselves  imperceptibly 
into  a  village;  they  could  not  be  detected, 
or  if  they  were  suspected,  no  villager  would 
give  them  away.  Positively  or  negatively, 
every  man's  hand  would  be  against  us. 
In  every  town  Japanese  suicide  companies 
would  be  left  behind;  they  would  be  fer- 
reted out  in  time,  but  not  before  they  had 
blown  up  American  munitions  and  supply 
depots  or  American  barracks. 

IN  OTHER  words,  if  we  attempt  to  occupy 
Japan,  our  situation  there  will  be  like 
that  of  the  Japanese  in  China  after  the 
Japanese  invasion,  but  worse;  for  the 
Chinese  are  not  a  warlike  people  and  the 
Japanese  are.  In  China  the  Japanese 
could  hold  the  larger  towns  and  move 
with  freedom  along  the  main  railways  but 
did  not  dare  go  outside  those  zones  except 
in  large  numbers;  so  the  Americans  in 
Japan  will  have  to  fortify  themselves  in 
large  garrisons  and  move  out  of  them 
only  in  force.  And  like  the  Japanese  in 
China,  the  Americans  in  Japan  will  have 
to  be  fighting  continually  against  little 
pin-pricking  attacks — a  punitive  action 
here  and  a  punitive  action  there.  There 
will  be  a  flare-up  in  one  district  which  will 
have  to  be  pacified;  after  it  is  pacified 
there  will  be  another  flare-up  elsewhere. 
And  when  our  troops  move  from  one  dis- 
trict to  the  other,  the  railway  tracks  will 
be  blown  up  between  them  and  two  com- 
panies will  be  ambushed.  /  think  it  is  esti- 
mating conservatively  to  say  that  we  shall  have  to 
keep  half  a  million  troops  in  Japan  for  as  many 
years  as  we  wish  to  remain  in  occupation  at  all. 
And  even  so  the  country  will  never  be- 
come genuinely  pacified;  our  orders  never 
will  be  executed  as  the  process  of  govern- 
ment. What  the  Japanese  could  not  do 
in  China,  what  the  Germans  have  not 
succeeded  in  doing  in  Yugoslavia  and  in 
France  under  easier  circumstances,  we 
shall  not  be  able  to  do  in  Japan.  It  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  the  Germans  had  the 
advantage  that  they  could  put  hostages  to 
death  in  France  and  exterminate  Lidices 
in  Czechoslovakia.  That  advantage  will 
be  denied  us  by  ourselves:  after  the 
passions  of  war  have  eased,  it  is  not  likely 
that  American  opinion  will  sanction 
Lidices  in  Japan. 


Is  IT  psychologically  and  politically  prac- 
tical to  set  up  a  plan  that  will  require 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  American  young 
men  to  remain  thousands  of  miles  away 
from  home  after  a  war  in  which  they 
will  already  have  been  away  from  home 
for  years?  Can  anyone  really  doubt  that 
there  will  be  an  irresistible  outcry  to  bring 
our  boys  home  from  Asia,  to  ofl*er  them 
some  other  opportunity  in  life  than  acting 
as  policemen  for  rebellious  Japanese? 
How  long  could  any  American  administra- 
tion resist  this  pressure?  And  how  long 
ought  it  to  resist  the  pressure? 

It  is  in  recognition  of  these  questions 
that  there  has  been  serious  discussion 
already  of  a  proposal  to  relieve  ourselves 
of  part  of  the  obligation  by  first  conquering 
Japan  and  then  installing  the  Chinese 
army  to  do  our  policing  for  us  under  our 
supervision.  This  proposal  is  too  pre- 
posterous to  be  taken  seriously.  For  if  the 
presence  of  American  invaders  will  be  an 
invitation  to  assassination,  the  presence  of 
Chinese  invaders  will  be  an  invitation  to 
mutual  extermination.  To  suff'er  rule  by 
the  Chinese,  of  whom  they  are  morbidly 
jealous  and  for  whom  they  have  felt  the 
scorn  of  a  modern  people  for  a  "back- 
ward" people,  would  be  such  an  insuf- 
ferable blow  to  the  self-esteem  of  the 
Japanese  that  they  would  fight  to  the 
death  of  the  last  Japanese  or  the  last 
Chinese.  And  if  they  did,  with  what 
would  the  Chinese  fight  unless  we  pro- 
vided arms  and  supplies,  transported  them, 
and  continued  to  train  Chinese  troops? 
In  effect,  we  would  have  to  remain 
there  in  what  would  be  participation 
rather  than  supervision.  And  when  the 
Chinese  had  to  be  stiffened  up,  as  they 
would  have  to  be,  we  should  have  to  send 
more  troops,  and  then  we  would  elect  to 
take  the  whole  job  over.  This  proposal  is 
artificial,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  since  the 
Chinese  have  not  shown  the  slightest  desire 
or  intention  to  undertake  any  such  enter- 
prise. 

Ill 

THUS  far  I  have  been  talking  only  of 
occupation  and  pacification.  When 
it  comes  to  actual  government  and  ad- 
ministration, to  setting  up  an  AMG  to 
function  as  the  mechanism  of  Japanese 


OCCUPY   JAPAN? 


389 


society,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  talk 
seriously.  For  what  is  included  in  this 
conception  is  not  only  running  the  gov- 
ernment but  deciding  what  kind  of  gov- 
ernment there  shall  be  and  setting  it  up. 
It  means  deciding  whether  there  shall  be 
an  emperor  and  what  his  powers  shall  be. 
It  means  deciding  what  kind  of  constitu- 
tion there  shall  be,  drafting  it,  and  im- 
posing it.  It  means  deposing  militarists 
and  instituting  democratic  parliamentary 
government.  It  means  policing  industry 
to  make  sure  that  no  heavy  armament  is 
produced.  It  means  supervising  educa- 
tion to  prevent  the  continued  indoctrina- 
tion of  the  old  militaristic  ideas  and  to 
indoctrinate  democracy  instead.  It  in- 
cludes such  functions  as  conducting  civil 
and  criminal  courts,  collecting  taxes,  run- 
ning public  utilities. 

Manifestly  we  shall  not  have  an  AMG 
large  enough  to  discharge  these  functions 
directly.  Our  only  hope  will  be  to  oper- 
ate through  a  Japanese  administration 
under  puppets  chosen  by  us  and  amenable 
to  our  authority.  But  our  chance  of  get- 
ting Japanese  puppets,  of  high  enough 
rank,  who  will  survive  assassins'  bullets  is 
approximately  nil — unless,  perhaps,  it  is 
on  the  understanding  that  we  shall  evacu- 
ate in  a  few  weeks.  And  anyway,  how 
shall  we  know  whether  our  puppets  in 
high  offices  are  transmitting  our  orders  or 
sabotaging  them?  And  when,  for  exam- 
ple, we  send  a  supervising  judicial  officer 
to  an  inland  county  court  to  inspect  trial 
records,  how  many  United  States  Marines 
will  have  to  go  with  him  to  protect  him 
from  assassination? 

Furthermore,  in  what  language  will  all 
these  functions  be  discharged?  In  Japa- 
nese presumably,  since  the  Japanese,  being 
Japanese,  do  not  speak  English.  But 
there  are  not  twelve  men  in  the  United 
States  who  can  write  a  Japanese  proclama- 
tion in  the  proper  official  style  that  would 
not  make  all  Tokyo  guffaw  because  it  con- 
tained half  a  dozen  Milt  Grossisms.  Only 
the  highly  educated  Japanese  could  do  so, 
for  that  matter.  It  is  true,  as  everybody 
knows,  that  hundreds  of  young  Americans 
are  now  going  through  intensive  courses 
in  the  Japanese  language.  In  most  cases 
they  are  getting  just  enough  of  the  writ- 
ten language  to  read  a  newspaper  article. 


if  It  is  fairly  simply  written,  and  to  get 
the  gist  of  a  page  in  a  not  very  difhcult 
book.  This  is  as  much  as  can  be  expected 
of  them  in  the  time  that  they  have.  As 
for  the  spoken  language,  they  will  get 
enough  to  make  their  wants  known,  to 
engage  in  conversation  about  things  but 
not  about  ideas,  to  give  simple  instructions. 
They  will  not  get  enough  to  understand  a 
Japanese  when  a  Japanese  desires  that 
they  should  not  understand.  Japanese  is 
a  language  of  literary  allusions,  of  expres- 
sion through  connotation  as  much  as 
through  word,  of  indirection  and  ellipsis. 
Anyone  who  has  lived  in  the  Far  East  and 
studied  a  Far  Eastern  language  knows 
how  easily  a  conversation  can  pass  over 
his  head  even  after  he  has  acquired  a 
certain  mastery. 

Take  the  matter  of  schools.  Who  is 
going  to  rewrite  the  Japanese  history  text- 
books? How  are  we  going  to  make  sure 
that  the  textbooks  are  followed  by  the 
teachers?  Suppose  we  do  make  unan- 
nounced inspections:  how  many  inspectors 
will  know  enough  Japanese  to  make  sure 
that  the  teacher  is  not  interpolating  into 
the  Gettysburg  Address  an  oblique  ref- 
erence to  a  Japanese  legend?  Shall  the 
inspectors  stay  in  school  every  day  to  make 
sure  that  in  the  civics  recitation  on  the 
benefits  of  democracy  the  teacher  does  not 
insert  one  reference  to  the  heroic  days  of 
Hirohito  and  the  samurai  who  bled  and 
died  for  the  glory  of  Yamato  Damashii? 

Consider  the  Emperor.  Suppose  we 
decide  to  abolish  the  monarchy  and  intern 
Hirohito  on  Staten  Island  or  any  other 
contemporary  St.  Helena.  Shall  we  stay 
in  Tokyo  for  fifty  years  to  see  that  the 
monarchy  is  not  restored?  What  more 
effective  way  could  there  be  to  endow  the 
dynasty  with  sanctity  than  to  have  it 
abolished  by  an  occupying  enemy?  There 
has  in  truth  been  an  unwarranted  exag- 
geration in  this  country  of  the  power  of  the 
Emperor.  He  does  not  rule;  he  reigns. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  the  acts  of  Japan 
in  recent  years  have  been  on  his  decision; 
there  is  some  basis  even  for  inferring  that 
they  have  not.  In  any  case,  it  can  be 
said  that  the  final  disposition  of  the  Em- 
peror will  not  determine  what  sort  of 
country  Japan  will  be  in  the  future. 

Whether  or  not  there  ever  can  or  will 


390 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


be  a  democratic  system  in  Japan — and 
regardless  of  the  fact  that  a  new  concep- 
tion of  government  and  human  rights  in 
Japan  is  essential  to  harmony  in  the  Far 
East — democracy  cannot  be  inculcated  by 
the  order  of  an  alien  conqueror.  That  is 
a  truism  to  be  drawn  from  a  reading  of 
elementary  history.  The  surest  way  to 
prejudice  any  idea  in  the  consciousness  of 
a  people  is  to  force  it  on  them  by  alien 
bayonets,  or  even  to  associate  it  with 
defeat  by  an  alien.  Suppose,  for  example, 
we  appoint  one  of  the  products  of  our 
teachers'  colleges  as  superintendent  of 
schools  for  Kyoto;  will  he  say  to  the  as- 
sembled high  school  pupils  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  year,  "Now,  boys  and  girls,  we 
are  going  to  study  democracy  and  by  the 
end  of  the  year  you  are  going  to  believe  in 
government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
and  for  the  people  or  we  are  going  to  knock 
your  heads  off,"  and  imagine  that  by  June 
they  will  be  convinced  JefFersonians? 

Still  more,  the  surest  way  to  make  a 
people  idealize  what  has  been,  to  endow 
the  past  with  glamour,  is  to  have  the 
things  associated  with  the  past  outlawed 
by  foreign  fiat  backed  by  force.  To  de- 
port the  Emperor  is  to  make  him  a  martyr, 
symbol  of  a  lost  cause,  a  glorious  cause. 
In  the  same  way,  to  impose  foreign  re- 
straints on  the  military,  to  forbid  Japan  to 
have  an  army  and  navy,  is  to  fortify  the 
power  of  the  military  caste  within  the 
country.  It  will  live  in  Japanese  legend 
as  the  shield  and  buckler  of  the  race  in  its 
time  of  glory,  a  time  that  will  return. 
Militarism  will  come  to  be  associated  with 
a  golden  age,  democracy  with  humilia- 
tion, and  the  resolve  to  restore  the  one 
and  banish  the  other  will  be  the  flame  to 
be  kept  alive  in  the  breast  of  every  Japa- 
nese youth. 


IV 

r  THERE  were  no  other  reason  for  not 
attempting  a  prolonged  occupation  of 
Japan  this  one  would  be  enough.  If  we 
only  let  events  take  their  course  after  a 
thorough  defeat  there  is  a  reasonable 
prospect  that  the  Japanese  military  caste 
will  be  unhorsed  by  its  own  failure.  The 
main  asset  of  the,  military  caste  has  been 
its  prestige,  and  its  prestige  has  derived 


not  only  from  the  feudal  heritage  but 
from  its  success.  It  led  the  country  from 
obscurity  to  seeming  omnipotence  in 
fifty  years.  In  the  last  few  years  before 
Pearl  Harbor  there  had  begun  to  develop 
a  vague  uneasiness  from  the  general  per- 
ception of  the  risks  to  which  the  army 
was  exposing  the  country.  But  repeated 
successes  appeared  to  vindicate  the  army. 
Then  it  cast  everything  on  one  throw  in 
the  attack  on  Pearl  Harbor — and  the  test 
of  strength  with  America  had  come,  the 
test  which  Japanese  with  any  knowledge 
of  the  world  had  always  dreaded.  If  now 
it  is  demonstrated  that  the  recklessness  of 
the  militarists  has  visited  ruin  on  the 
country  they  may  be  discredited.  We 
shall  do  much  to  redeem  their  credit  forj 
them  if  we  try  to  rule  the  country  as  con- 1 
querors.  It  will  be  as  if  we  were  proving] 
to  the  Japanese  people  what  their  army 
and  navy  had  been  trying  to  protect  them* 
from  and  why  they  should  try  to  have  a 
big  army  and  navy  again.  Thereby  we 
shall  be  killing  the  sturdiest  hope  for  a 
change  within  Japan. 

By  every  calculation  of  reason  it  is  the 
part  of  wisdom  for  us  to  defeat  Japan, 
defeat  it  thoroughly,  make  it  acknowledge 
defeat  by  surrender,  and  then  let  well 
enough  alone.  If  we  are  not  willing  to  do 
that,  if  we  think  the  risk  is  too  great,  then 
let  us  have  no  nonsense  about  governing 
Japan  and  bringing  it  up  in  the  way  it 
should  go.  Let  us  instead  have  a  military 
expedition  and  military  occupation  pure 
and  simple,  with  rule  by  command  en- 
forced with  bullet  and  bayonet.  Let  us 
shoot  Japanese  when  disobedient,  not  in- 
culcate social  consciousness  by  moral 
precept.  Let  us  make  them  safe  for  us  by 
keeping  them  down,  put  sergeants  over 
them  and  not  civil  affairs  officers,  no 
matter  how  many  men  that  will  take  and 
for  how  long.  ...  If,  that  is,  we  are 
conscious  of  the  price  that  will  be  exacted 
of  us  and  are  willing  to  pay  it. 

Since,  however,  I  for  one  believe  that 
the  price  is  demonstrably  too  great — too 
great  in  American  boys  killed — and  that 
we  shall  not  be  willing  to  pay  it  and  should 
not  be,  I  propose  that  the  whole  idea  be 
dropped.  Occupation  of  Japan  is  neither 
practicable  nor  feasible.  It  will  defeat  its 
main  purpose.     Forget  it. 


VITO   MARCANTONIO:    MACHINE 
POLITICIAN,    NEW    STYLE 

RICHARD     H.     ROVERE 


N  October  12,  1942,  a  sharp,  brief 
drama  was  acted  out  in  the  House 
of  Representatives.  A  bill  to  abol- 
ish state  poll  taxes,  introduced  shortly  be- 
fore his  death  by  Congressman  Lee  Geyer, 
had  languished  for  months  in  the  Judiciary 
Committee — not  by  accident  but  through 
the  express  desire  of  the  Southern  delega- 
tion. Eugene  Cox  of  Georgia  was  trying 
desperately  to  keep  the  bill  where  it  was. 
Now  there  is  one  sure  way  to  free  a  bill 
that  is  locked  up  like  this.  If  a  majority 
of  the  House  members  sign  a  petition  to 
discharge  the  bill,  out  it  comes.  This  is 
difficult  to  accomplish,  but  it  was  done 
with  Geyer's  bill.  Through  the  long 
months  while  the  petition  lay  on  the 
Speaker's  desk  in  the  well  of  the  House, 
persistent  jockeying  was  going  on  behind 
the  scenes.  Slowly  the  signatures  ac- 
cumulated and  the  man  responsible  for 
getting  most  of  them  was  Vito  Marcan- 
tonio.  Congressman  from  New  York  City. 
At  last  there  were  enough  names  and 
the  bald-headed  Sam  Rayburn,  Speaker 
of  the  House,  signified  that  he  was  ready 
to  entertain  a  motion  to  bring  up  the  bill. 
The  Southern  Democrats,  who  had  been 
riding  high  throughout  the  session,  were 
beaten.  Wrath  welling  in  his  heart,  the 
gentleman  from  Tobacco  Road  rose  in  his 
seat  and  looked  across  the  House  at  the 
gentleman  from  Little  Italy. 


'^Let  me  make  one  statement  ...  to 
.  .  .  the  gentleman,"  Cox  said.  "I  salute 
you,  sir.  I  salute  you  for  having  at  last 
attained  that  burning  ambition  which 
you  carry  in  your  soul  of  becoming  for 
one  moment  of  your  life  the  master  of 
this  House.  You  bring  it  to  you,  sir,  on 
its  knee,  and  again  I  congratulate  you." 

In  point  of  fact,  Marcantonio's  victory, 
although  it  drove  Cox  to  one  of  his  finest 
flights  of  outraged  rhetoric,  was  more 
apparent  than  real.  The  Geyer  Bill 
passed  the  House  only  to  be  filibustered  to 
death  in  the  Senate.  At  the  opening  of 
the  next  session.  Cox  and  his  confederates 
were  still  powerful  enough  to  bar  Marc- 
antonio  from  any  important  House  com- 
mittee. But  the  incident  brought  to- 
gether, on  the  basic  issue  of  suffrage,  two 
of  the  most  ill-assorted  products  of  con- 
stitutional democracy.  Cox,  from  the 
piney  woods  of  Georgia,  with  the  aid 
of  the  poll  tax,  goes  to  Congress  every  two 
years  on  the  vote  of  three  per  cent  of  his 
adult  constituents.  Marcantonio,  from 
the  sidewalks  of  New  York,  is  a  fellow- 
traveler  of  the  Communists  who  has  built 
an  all-party  machine  supported  by  practi- 
cally everyone  but  Jehovah's  Witnesses. 
Cox,  of  course,  is  an  old-style  operator, 
of  a  sort  familiar  ever  since  the  passage  of 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment.  Marcantonio 
is  something  new  in  American  politics. 


392 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


AT  FORTY-TWO,  Marcantonio  is  well 
j[\^  on  his  way  to  becoming  a  first-class 
national  figure,  though  one  of  a  most 
unorthodox  sort.  Heretofore,  his  influ- 
ence in  the  Congress  has  been  that  of  a 
gadfly,  not  a  leader.  Because  he  has  so 
consistently  been  a  mouthpiece  for  the 
Communist  Party,  his  support  of  any 
measure  has  generally  been  more  embar- 
rassing than  helpful.  Lately,  however, 
he  has  shown  real  genius  in  turning  his 
liabilities  into  assets,  in  playing  the  po- 
litical interstices  for  all  they  are  worth. 

For  example,  when  the  Seventy-eighth 
Congress  convened,  seven  new  anti-poll 
tax  bills  were  introduced.  Three  were 
sponsored  by  Republicans,  three  by  Demo- 
crats, and  one  by  Marcantonio,  who, 
although  he  runs  on  both  old-party  tick- 
ets, is  registered  in  the  American  Labor 
Party.  The  seven  bills  were  identical; 
six,  obviously,  had  to  be  withdrawn. 
Since  Marcantonio  is  easily  the  most 
reviled  of  all  his  colleagues,  his  bill,  ac- 
cording to  Congressional  protocol,  should 
have  been  the  leading  candidate  for  the 
scrap  pile.  But  as  it  happened,  his  bill 
survived  and  all  the  others  were  allowed 
to  die  in  committee.  The  strategy  was 
simple.  Marcantonio  and  the  left-wing 
lobbyists  who  were  backing  him  played  on 
party  rivalries.  To  the  Democrats,  all 
Northerners  of  course,  they  argued  that  a 
Republican  bill  would  further  antagonize 
an  already  angry  South;  to  the  Republi- 
cans, they  pointed  out  that  it  would  be 
absurd  to  hand  the  Democrats  the  credit, 
and  the  accruing  Negro  votes,  for  poll- 
tax  repeal.  When  the  legislators  had 
retired  each  other's  bills,  all  but  Marcan- 
tonio's,  his  was  offered  as  a  '^coalition" 
bill,  and  the  other  sponsors  were  magnan- 
imously given  roles  in  pushing  the  bill 
through  the  House.  By  this  stroke,  Marc- 
antonio acquired  the  prestige  associated 
with  leading  the  fight  against  the  poll 
tax;  and  with  the  same  payment,  he  ac- 
quired the  prestige  of  the  other  Congress- 
men, without  whose  respectable  support 
the  bill  might  not  have  passed  the  House 
last  year.  If  it  becomes  law,  in  this  Con- 
gress or  another,  Marcantonio  will  stand 
as  a  kind  of  latter-day  Lincoln  in  the 
affections  of  the  Negro  community.  Al- 
ready he  has  received  what  his  unhappy 


colleagues  must  admit  is  $100,000  worth 
of  free  publicity  in  the  Negro  press. 

The  last  holdout  among  the  six  sponsors 
was  Joseph  Clark  Baldwin,  a  Manhattan 
Republican.  Baldwin  probably  yielded 
to  the  pressure  in  Washington,  but,  had 
that  failed,  another  argument  might  have 
proved  equally  compelling.  If  he  had 
persisted  with  his  bill,  a  Democrat  might 
have  warmed  his  seat  in  the  House  next 
year.  Marcantonio  could  have  attended 
to  this  simply  by  running  a  candidate  of 
the  American  Labor  Party  against  Bald- 
win in  the  coming  election,  thereby  split- 
ting away  enough  of  Baldwin's  vote  to 
elect  a  Democrat. 

Although  he  has  been  read  out  of  the 
American  Labor  Party  by  its  state  offi- 
cials, Marcantonio  remains  as  chairman  of 
the  New  York  County  organization,  out- 
law child  of  the  state  body.  Actually, 
the  county  ALP  is  controlled  by  Com- 
munists. It  has  executed  every  turn  in 
the  Moscow  line  with  as  much  speed  and 
as  little  grace  as  the  Communist  Party 
itself.  The  New  York  Communists  moved 
into  the  ALP  in  1938,  when  their  own 
party  was  thrown  off  the  ballot.  They 
number  no  more  than  ten  thousand,  but 
they  are  a  tight  little  band.  Fire,  flood, 
and  pestilence  could  not  keep  them  from 
the  polls  on  primary  day.  They  can 
elect  no  candidate  of  their  own,  but  by 
entering  one,  and  illicitly  claiming  for 
him  the  prestige  of  the  state  ALP,  they 
can  drain  considerable  support  away  from 
the  more  liberal  of  the  major  contenders. 
Or,  by  giving  their  own  nomination  to 
a  Republican  or  a  Democrat,  an  illegal 
procedure  in  most  states  but  permissible 
in  New  York,  they  can  in  many  districts 
guarantee  election.  As  chairman  of  the 
county  ALP,  therefore,  Marcantonio  is  in 
a  position  not  only  to  obtain  Republican 
and  Democratic  assistance  in  his  own 
district  but  also  to  influence  nominations 
and  elections  throughout  the  city. 

To  prove  his  strength,  Marcantonio 
once  warned  the  Democratic  County 
Committee,  better  known  as  Tammany 
Hall,  that  unless  it  nominated  a  Negro  or 
an  Italian  for  a  vacant  sinecure  in  the 
city  judiciary,  he  would  see  to  it  that 
its  man  was  defeated.  Tammany  ignored 
him  and  put  up  an  Irishman.     The  ALP 


VITO    MARGANTONIO 


393 


nomination  thereupon  went  to  the  Re- 
publican candidate,  a  Negro,  who  won 
by  a  small  but  safe  majority.  Experts 
predict  that  this  year  Marcantonio  will 
tip  the  balance  in  four  or  five  Congres- 
sional elections.  Four  or  five  representa- 
tives will  make  a  lot  of  difference  in  the 
next  Congress.  By  controlling  a  handful 
of  Communists,  Marcantonio  has  become 
a  pivotal  power  in  a  pivotal  state. 

MANY  of  Marcantonio's  Italian  con- 
stituents celebrate  their  Congress- 
man's political  virtuosity  by  referring  to 
him  as  "the  Honorable  Fritto  Misto" — 
Mixed  Fry.  His  personal  attributes  are 
as  manifold  and  as  delusive  as  his  political 
connections.  He  looks  at  least  ten  years 
younger  than  he  is.  He  is  shorter  than 
average  and  wiry  in  build.  His  eyes, 
hair,  and  complexion  are  dark.  His  face 
is  well-molded  and  attractive.  His  most 
noticeable  feature  is  a  pair  of  broad  but 
badly  stooped  shoulders.  Because  of  this 
his  head  is  constantly  tilted  forward. 
The  stooped  shoulders  can  give  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  frail  and  overworked  per- 
son, a  younger  statesman  bowed  early  by 
the  pressing  affairs  of  the  republic.  Horn- 
rimmed glasses,  which  a  nervous  habit 
leads  him  to  adjust  every  few  moments, 
add  to  this  effect.  But  at  other  times, 
when  he  is  bearding  an  adversary  or 
haranguing  a  crowd,  the  forward  thrust 
of  his  head  makes  him  look  tough  and 
belligerent. 

When  he  mingles  with  the  Bohemian 
intellectuals  who  are  his  friends,  he  looks 
like  an  earnest  young  law  student,  wearied 
by  hours  over  Blackstone  but  eager  none- 
theless for  every  word  that  is  said.  In 
ordinary  conversation,  he  talks  in  the 
reasonably  clear  and  precise  accents  of  a 
New  Yorker  who  has  tried  hard  to  culti- 
vate a  good  speaking  voice.  When  he 
speaks  before  his  constituents,  however,  he 
moves  quickly  into  the  vernacular,  mug- 
ging and  shrieking  in  a  manner  not  unlike 
that  of  his  political  mentor,  Fiorello  H. 
La  Guardia.  When  he  discusses  ques- 
tions of  no  great  moment  to  him  as  a 
politician,  his  logic  is  sound,  his  sense  of 
humor  excellent,  and  his  manner  pleasing 
on  the  whole.  But  on  subjects  close  to 
his  heart — the  virtues  of  the  Russian  state, 


for  example — he  grows  harshly  dogmatic 
and  makes  no  pretense  to  reasonableness. 

Marcantonio  denies  that  he  is  a  Com- 
munist. *'Anyone  who  says  that  I  am 
a  Communist,"  he  has  written,  *'is  a  liar 
and  a  scoundrel."  He  always  has  a  lot 
of  protesting  to  do.  Unquestionably,  he 
does  not  belong  to  the  Communist  Party. 
He  would  be  foolish  if  he  did.  It  is  true, 
moreover,  that  he  has  often  made  gestures 
like  a  fascist  and  that  he  once  praised 
Hamilton  Fish  as  "that  fine  liberal  Re- 
publican." But  those  are  the  gestures  of 
an  adroit  politician  whose  constituents  are 
Italian  and  mostly  Republican.  Other- 
wise, his  policies  are  invariably  those  of 
the  Communists,  and  if  this  is,  as  he  says, 
to  be  explained  as  "pure  coincidence," 
then  it  is  a  coincidence  that  passes  all 
understanding. 

The  touchstone  of  Communist  conduct 
is  foreign  policy.  In  his  first  term  in 
Congress,  Marcantonio  was  pacifist  and 
isolationist;  his  chief  concern  was  the 
abolition  of  compulsory  military  training 
in  land-grant  colleges.  In  his  second 
term,  the  party  line  changed,  and  so  did 
his;  he  demanded  that  the  Neutrality 
Act  be  interpreted  to  allow  shipments  of 
arms  to  Loyalist  Spain.  In  the  beginning 
of  his  third  term,  when  the  Russo-German 
pact  was  in  force,  he  was  isolationist 
again;  he  demanded  rigid  interpretation 
and  enforcement  of  the  Neutrality  Act; 
he  was  the  only  Congressman  who  voted 
against  every  measure  not  only  for  aid  to 
Britain  but  also  for  national  defense.  But 
as  soon  as  Hitler  invaded  Russia,  he  wanted 
repeal  of  the  whole  Act;  he  became,  months 
before  Pearl  Harbor,  one  of  the  first  Con- 
gressmen to  call  for  an  open  declaration  of 
war  and  the  immediate  dispatch  of  an  ex- 
peditionary force.  "Hitler  may  soon  be 
within  rowboat  distance  of  our  country," 
he  said,  meaning  that  if  the  Nazis  got  to 
the  Bering  Strait,  small  craft  could  ferry 
them  to  Alaska.  Explaining  himself  to 
the  House,  he  said,  "I  still  believe  that 
.  .  .  up  to  June,  1941,  the  war  was  an 
imperialist  war.  However,  I  maintain 
that  .  .  .  the  invasion  of  the  Soviet  Union 
by  Hitler  transformed  that  war  which 
was  essentially  imperialist  into  a  war 
which  is  now  essentially  one  of  national 
defense." 


394 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


In  the  early  thirties,  the  Communists 
opposed  Roosevelt.  "The  WPA,"  Marc- 
antonio  said,  "is  doing  more  to  destroy 
the  American  standard  of  living  than  any 
group  of  reactionary  industrialists  in  the 
country."  In  1938,  when  the  Commu- 
nists supported  Roosevelt,  he  made  a 
campaign  promise  to  "fight  the  reac- 
tionary movement  to  scuttle  WPA."  At 
about  this  time  he  became  president  of  the 
International  Labor  Defense,  the  Ameri- 
can branch  of  the  Comintern's  Interna- 
tional Red  Aid.  "I  am  not  and  never 
have  been  a  Communist,"  said  Marcan- 
tonio,  a  contributing  editor  to  the  New 
Masses.  "I  say  flatly  that  Red-baiters  are 
the  very  worst  type  of  criminal." 

II 

MARCANTONio  represents  the  Twen- 
tieth Congressional  District,  known 
in  New  York  as  East  Harlem.  East  Har- 
lem is  a  huge  and  verminous  slum  area 
that  runs  from  the  &d^&  of  the  Negro 
district  to  the  wharves  of  the  East  River. 
Its  largest  racial  group  is  Italian.  Next 
come  Puerto  Ricans,  then  small  settle- 
ments of  Negroes  and  Jews.  This  is  the 
district  which,  in  years  gone  by,  Fiorello 
La  Guardia  represented  in  Washington. 
The  present  Congressman  has  been  able 
to  offer  something  to  each  racial  group. 
To  the  Italians  it  was  enough,  for  a  begin- 
ning at  least,  that  his  name  was  Marcan- 
tonio  and  that  he  had  been  blessed  by  the 
Little  Flower.  He  ingratiated  himself 
with  the  Puerto  Ricans,  who  harbor  no 
love  for  Romans,  by  championing  their 
nationalism,  by  flying  to  their  island  to 
defend  some  rebels  beleaguered  by  the 
law,  and  by  writing  a  bill  to  grant  Puerto 
Rico  imm.ediate  independence  with  stag- 
gering indemnities.  Both  the  Italians  and 
the  Puerto  Ricans  are  Roman  Catholic, 
and  Mother  Church  plays  an  important 
part  in  politics.  On  certain  feast  days 
Marcantonio  can  be  seen,  a  lighted  taper 
in  hand,  walking  barefoot  through  the 
district  with  the  pious.  He  seldom  fails 
to  put  in  an  appearance  at  the  annual 
celebration  for  the  Madonna  of  the  Mira- 
cles, Our  Lady  of  Mount  Carmel.  Ne- 
groes and  Jews  in  the  district  were  won 
by  his  spirited  denunciations  of  Jim  Crow 


and  anti-Semitism.  On  his  staff  of  five 
or  six  secretaries,  each  race  is  represented. 
The  Congressman  and  his  district  have 
known  each  other  well  for  many  years. 
He  was  born  there  on  December  10, 
1 902.  His  father  was  a  carpenter  and  the 
family  lived  in  the  heart  of  the  district. 
At  eighteen  Vito  became  a  leader  of  the 
Harlem  Tenants'  League  and  managed 
a  strike  against  the  landlords.  He  ac- 
quired the  first  part  of  his  machine  twenty- 
two  years  ago  when  he  attracted  the  at- 
tention of  La  Guardia,  who  was  then 
trying  to  break  Tammany  control  of  the 
district  and  get  into  Congress  himself. 

Marcantonio  was  still  in  law  school 
at  the  time,  but  La  Guardia  had  been 
impressed  by  his  work  in  the  Tenants' 
League,  and  he  spotted  the  young  man 
as  sound  political  timber.  Marcantonio 
has  enjoyed  La  Guardia's  favor  ever  since. 
The  Mayor  usually  refers  to  his  protege  as 
"Vito,  my  good  son,"  and  when  the 
younger  man  displeases  him,  which  has 
been  often  since  Vito  took  up  with  the 
Communists,  the  Mayor  shrugs  and  speaks 
ruefully  of  "my  erring  son."  Some  gen- 
uine feeling  may  still  lie  beneath  this  pose 
of  the  long-suffering  parent.  But  it  can- 
not fully  explain  why  La  Guardia  never 
bucks  Marcantonio,  while  Marcantonio 
frequently  defies  the  Mayor.  La  Guar- 
dia, like  so  many  other  New  York  poli- 
ticians these  days,  needs  the  support  of  ^ 
the  American  Labor  Party,  which  Marc- 
antonio can  give  or  refuse.  Indeed,  La 
Guardia  is  more  beholden  than  most,  for 
Marcantonio  controls  not  only  the  ALP 
but  the  machine  on  which  La  Guardia 
first  rode  to  power. 

When  La  Guardia  was  in  Congress  him- 
self, his  association  in  Washington  with 
men  like  Smith  Brookhart  and  the  elder 
La  Follette  was  a  source  of  constant  irrita- 
tion to  Republican  leaders  in  New  York. 
He  knew  that  his  party  standing  was 
never  better  than  shaky.  To  build  up 
independent  strength,  he  started  the  F.  H. 
La  Guardia  Political  Club,  an  associa- 
tion of  young  Italian  professional  men  who 
would  follow  him  no  matter  what  the 
party  did.  Marcantonio  was  put  at  its 
head.  For  further  security.  La  Guardia 
organized  a  couple  of  local  parties  of  his 
own  invention.     These  were  to  assure  him 


VITO    MARGANTONIO 


395 


a  place  on  the  ballot  any  time  the  Re- 
publicans failed  to.  Marcantonio  pre- 
sided over  them  also.  The  La  Guardia 
Glub,  known  in  the  district  as  "the  Gi- 
bonis,"  an  affectionate  equivalent  for 
"the  wops,"  became  the  basis  of  the  La 
Guardia  machine.  Now  it  belongs,  as 
do  the  paper  parties,  to  Marcantonio. 
They  are  important  parts  of  his  machine, 
and  he  could,  if  he  wished,  turn  them 
against  La  Guardia  at  any  time.  The 
Mayor  knows  this  and  even  when  Marc- 
antonio was  vehemently  isolationist,  and 
the  Mayor  just  as  vehemently  interven- 
tionist, he  could  always  find  reasons  for 
endorsing  his  wayward  son.  He  has  even 
had  to  support  Marcantonio  at  the  ex- 
pense of  others  of  his  backers.  When,  in 
1 942,  some  members  of  the  city  adminis- 
tration threatened  briefly  to  make  a  fight 
against  Marcantonio,  La  Guardia  told 
the  press  that  if  this  happened,  he  might 
be  forced  to  trim  the  payroll  a  little. 

When  Marcantonio  first  ran  for  Con- 
gress, he  had  only  the  Republican  nomi- 
nation and  the  blessing  of  his  patron  and 
predecessor,  La  Guardia.  In  that  year, 
1932,  Marcantonio  won  by  247  votes. 
In  1942  he  ran  as  the  regular  candidate 
of  the  Republican,  Democratic,  and  Amer- 
ican Labor  Parties.  No  other  candidate's 
name  appeared  beside  his  on  the  ballot. 
He  won  by  19,049  votes.  (The  Board  of 
Elections  reports  one  write-in  vote  against 
him!)  The  machine  that  has  thus  with- 
ered all  opposition  bears  no  resemblance 
to  the  traditional  steam  roller  fueled  by 
patronage  and  party  regularity;  it  is  in- 
stead a  homemade  jalopy,  assembled  from 
parts  he  has  pried  loose  from  other  ma- 
chines. Nevertheless,  it  is  one  of  the 
strongest  machines  in  the  country,  opposed 
by  no  organized  group  of  any  consequence, 
and  it  stands  at  the  service  of  the  Com- 
munist Party,  whose  members  in  the 
district  could  meet  in  the  cloakroom  of 
any  Republican  club.  The  feat  is  prob- 
ably without  parallel  in  American  political 
history. 

Ill 

I  IKE  all  slums,  especially  those  inhabited 
^  by  immigrants  and  their  children, 
East  Harlem  seethes  with  politics.  Party 
feelings  run  high.     On  almost  every  block, 


Republican  and  Democratic  clubs  outdo 
each  other  in  providing  amusement  for 
those  who,  because  of  poverty  and  the 
language  barrier,  cannot  use  the  enter- 
tainment facilities  that  serve  the  city  as  a 
whole.  They  offer  the  people  the  legal 
and  economic  counsel  they  need  for  sur- 
vival in  the  hostile  world  outside.  The 
clubs  compete  with  each  other,  and  the 
churches  compete  with  all.  Recently  the 
trade  unions  have  joined  the  fray.  But 
none  can  compete  with  Marcantonio. 

Every  Saturday  noon,  when  the  House 
recesses,  he  flies  home  to  New  York.  He 
may  make  as  many  as  ten  speeches  over 
the  week  end,  but  Sunday  afternoon  is 
reserved  for  oiling  the  machine.  The 
scene  in  the  La  Guardia  Club  after  one 
o'clock  on  Sunday  looks  like  nothing  so 
much  as  a  busy  day  in  the  clinic  of  a 
great  city  hospital.  Marcantonio  and 
three  or  four  secretaries  sit  at  desks  on  a 
platform  in  the  front  of  the  main  hall. 
Before  them  on  wooden  camp  chairs  are 
about  a  hundred  constituents,  many  of 
them  cradling  infants  in  their  arms,  A 
guard  stands  at  the  door  and  seats  new 
arrivals.  As  many  as  four  hundred  may 
come  and  go  in  an  afternoon.  This  is  the 
Marcantonio  machine  at  work,  gathering 
in  Republicans,  Democrats,  anarchists, 
fascists,  anything. 

One  by  one  the  constituents  shamble 
up  to  their  Congressman's  desk  and  tell 
him  their  troubles.  They  speak  in  Span- 
ish, Italian,  English,  and  various  mixtures 
of  the  three.  Marcantonio  can  always 
answer  in  kind,  throwing  in  a  little  Yiddish 
if  the  need  arises.  Mostly  their  problems 
concern  money  or  jobs.  During  the  de- 
pression, the  majority  were  relief  appli- 
cants; sixty  per  cent  of  Harlem  was  then 
living  on  public  funds  and  at  one  time 
unemployment  rose  to  eight-five  per  cent. 
As  attorney  for  the  Workers'  Alliance,  the 
powerful  union  of  unemployed  and  relief 
workers,  the  Congressman  was  in  an  ex- 
cellent position  to  help.  Today  the  same 
people  are  back  for  Army  dependency 
allotments.  Many  want  government  or 
war-plant  jobs.  Some  need  legal  aid, 
and  Marcantonio  always  keeps  a  good 
lawyer  on  the  payroll. 

Sometimes  the  problems  are  consider- 
ably more  complicated.     Several  months 


396 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ago  a  troubled  couple  came  to  him. 
Their  daughter  had  become  pregnant 
by  a  British  sailor  and  they  wanted 
him  to  marry  the  girl.  They  knew  his 
name  but  not  his  present  location.  Marc- 
antonio  said  that  he  would  see  what  he 
could  do.  With  small  hope  of  success, 
he  wrote  the  British  Embassy  explaining 
the  case  and  asking  the  whereabouts  of  the 
mariner,  provided  this  was  not  a  military 
secret.  A  few  days  later  he  got  a  call  from 
the  British  Embassy.  His  Majesty's  Gov- 
ernment, an  Etonian  voice  said,  wished 
to  apologize  to  the  American  Congress- 
man for  the  damage  done  to  Miss  So-and- 
So  by  a  member  of  the  Royal  Navy. 
While  His  Majesty's  Government,  the 
aide  went  on,  could  not  order  the  young 
man  to  marry  the  girl,  it  was  hoping  that 
the  problem  would  solve  itself  when  the 
seaman  was  given  an  immediate  leave  of 
eight  weeks  in  New  York.  The  problem 
did  solve  itself,  and  on  the  wedding  day 
His  Majesty's  Government  sent  over  a 
complement  of  sailors  in  full  regalia,  who 
formed  a  guard  of  honor  outside  the 
church. 

ALTHOUGH  he  Can  seldom  deliver  so 
J'\.  handsomely,  Marcantonio  sees  per- 
sonally about  thirty  thousand  voters  in 
the  course  of  a  Congressional  term.  So 
large  an  investment  naturally  pays  huge 
dividends.  But  while  grateful  constituents 
can  win  general  elections,  they  cannot 
always  secure  party  backing  for  their 
friends,  nor  can  they  be  counted  on  to 
win  primaries  against  well-organized  regu- 
lars. Marcantonio  began  his  career  with 
the  enmity  of  Tammany  Hall,  which  had 
not  yet  been  brought  to  its  present  low 
estate  by  La  Guardia.  When  he  sought 
re-election  in  1936,  he  lost,  for  the  first 
and  last  time,  to  a  Democrat.  His  own 
party  had  not  really  been  behind  him. 
Never  very  enthusiastic  about  him  in  the 
first  place,  the  Republicans  dropped  him, 
temporarily,  when  they  saw  that  he  was 
voting  with  the  New  Deal  and  consorting 
with  Communists.  One  of  his  principal 
supporters,  Luigi  Antonini,  Italian  leader 
of  the  International  Ladies  Garment 
Workers  Union,  had  been  alienated  by  his 
Communist  proclivities.  Shortly  before 
the   primaries   in    1938,    the   Republican 


county  leaders  read  Marcantonio  out  of 
the  party.  Soon  after  that  the  ALP 
disowned  him,  though  not  before  a  fight 
had  taken  place  in  which  a  clubhouse  was 
wrecked  and  Marcantonio  lost  some  teeth. 
In  such  a  fix  the  average  politician  would 
have  reasoned  that  the  jig  was  up. 

But  not  Marcantonio.  In  1937  he  be- 
gan putting  together  an  entirely  new 
machine.  He  had  retained  the  support  of 
the  Mayor  and  a  good  many  Republican 
district  leaders.  He  was  getting  consid- 
erable financial  help  from  the  left-wing 
CIO  unions,  and  the  Communist  Party 
saw  to  it  that  he  had  a  good  staff  of  ex- 
perienced canvassers.  Organized  virtue, 
in  the  form  of  social  workers  and  settle- 
ment-house directors,  of  which  his  wife, 
Miriam  Sanders  of  Harlem  House,  is 
one,  continued  to  regard  him  as  a  daunt- 
less adversary  of  Tammany  corruption. 
When  he  entered  the  Republican  pri- 
maries in  1938,  he  won  easily  against 
the  machine.  The  ALP  primaries  and 
the  general  election  were  still  easier.  The 
Republican  machine  that  opposed  him 
then  is  now  in  his  hands.  Although  he  m 
still  stands  excommunicated  from  the  Re- 
publican  Party,  no  Republican  leader  in 
the  district  has  mentioned  the  matter  for 
years.  And  he  controls  the  city  ALP, 
lock,  stock,  and  pork  barrel. 

IV 

66^np\AMMANY  HALL,"  Marcantonio  once 
IL  wrote,  before  it  was  supporting  him, 
"has  been  an  enemy  of  the  people  ever 
since  it  was  founded  by  a  traitor,  Aaron 
Burr."  Now  he  lies  in  the  viper's  bosom. 
Tammany  came  around  shortly  after  his 
third  election  in  1940.  In  1938  he  had 
entered  the  Democratic  primaries  and 
walked  off  with  thirty  per  cent  of  the 
vote.  In  1940  he  had  won  the  general 
election  by  his  fattest  margin,  and  Tam- 
many could  see  that  future  opposition 
was  useless.  Besides,  Tammany's  cup- 
board was  getting  very  bare,  and  it  was 
nodding  courteously  to  the  American 
Labor  Party.  He  won  the  1942  Demo- 
cratic primary  by  a  thumping  majority. 
The  primary  election  was  hardly  a  contest. 
A  local  ward-heeler  had  entered  the  race, 
supposedly  with  official  backing,  but  he 


VITO    MARCANTONIO 


397 


somehow  forgot  that  he  was  a  candidate, 
lie  did  not  make  a  single  speech.  When 
one  of  the  Tammany  leaders  was  cruising 
around  the  polls  on  primary  day,  he 
discovered  a  misguided  precinct  captain 
who  was  actually  working  for  the  dummy 
candidate.  He  took  the  man  around  the 
corner  and  gave  him  a  good  cuffing.  No 
precinct  captain  is  likely  to  be  so  thought- 
less again. 

Marcantonio  now  enjoys  the  enthusiastic 
support  of  Clarence  H.  Neal,  Jr.,  perhaps 
the  most  influential  Democratic  leader 
in  Manhattan.  When  Frank  Costello, 
the  numbers  and  slot-machine  operator, 
was  called  into  court  last  year  to  explain 
how  he  had  influenced  the  Aurelio  nomi- 
nation,* he  proudly  boasted  that  he  had 
worked  through  Clarence  Xeal.  Neal  has 
survived  the  infamy,  however.  He  re- 
cently consolidated  his  power  by  leading 
a  successful  palace  revolution  in  which 
Michael  J.  Kennedy  was  removed  as  head 
of  Tammany  Hall  and  Neal's  candidate, 
Edward  V.  Loughlin,  was  elected  as  his 
successor.  One  of  Xeal's  proteges,  James 
Pemberton,  a  young  Negro,  has  become 
the  major-domo  of  the  Marcantonio  ma- 
chine. Pemberton,  a  Tammany  district 
leader,  is  personally  devoted  to  Marcan- 
tonio, and,  since  his  clubhouse  chores  are 
few  these  days,  he  spends  nearly  all  his 
time  working  for  the  Congressman.  On 
week  days,  when  the  House  is  in  session, 
Pemberton  keeps  the  machine  going;  he 
spends  his  week  ends  traveling  with  the 
Congressman  and  conferring  ^with  him  be- 
tween speaking  engagements.  Through 
Pemberton,  Marcantonio  can  always  get 
his  point  of  view  across  in  Tammany 
executive  meetings.  Marcantonio  used 
to  retain  a  former  prizefighter  as  a  body- 
guard, but  since  Pemberton,  a  powerfully 
built  man  who  must  weigh  close  to  three 
hundred  pounds,  has  been  accompanying 
him  everywhere,  his  political  and  physical 
needs  are  ministered  to  at  the  same  time. 

In  his  isolationist  phases,  Marcantonio 
relied  heavily  on  the  argument  that  w^e 
ought  to  clean  up  our  own  backyard  first. 
Captious  critics  might  say  the  same  to 
him.  East  Harlem  is  one  of  the  centers 
of  New  York  vice,  and  racketeering.     In 

*  See  "Aurelio:  the  People's  Choice,"  by  Ferdinand 
Lundberg,  in  Harper's  for  January,  1944. 


prostitution  it  ranks  second  only  to  Negro 
Harlem.  It  is  headquarters  for  the  policy 
racket.  Dutch  Schultz,  Owney  Madden, 
Lucky  Luciano,  and  Arnold  Rothstein 
had  large  holdings  there.  Lepke  Buch- 
alter  used  to  keep  his  Trigger  Mike  Cop- 
pola busy  along  upper  Lexington  Avenue. 
Most  shopkeepers  in  the  neighborhood  are 
victimized  by  protection  rackets;  their 
stores  are  made  to  serve  as  "drops"  for  the 
policy  lotteries.  Those  who  sell  protec- 
tion to  the  businessmen  buy  or  demand  it 
for  themselves  from  the  police  and  politi- 
cians. Gangsters  have  made  East  Harlem 
a  headache  for  the  city  administration  and 
a  paradise  for  venal  officers  of  the  law. 

Marcantonio,  a  hard-riding  Paul  Re- 
vere when  he  sees  "international  gang- 
sterism" on  the  march,  has  had  little  to 
say  about  the  gangsters  who  gouge  East 
Harlem.  Once  in  1933,  when  he  was 
seeking  a  district  leadership  for  himself, 
some  thugs  got  rough  with  several  of  his 
workers,  and  he  complained  to  the  District 
Attorney.  Since  then  he  has  shown  no 
zeal  for  changing  conditions  in  East  Har- 
lem, nor  has  he  ever  spoken  publicly  about 
them.  Floating  crap  games  move  un- 
disturbed from  one  political  club  to  an- 
other, but  the  candidate  of  the  settlement- 
house  workers  does  not  appear  to  be 
outraged.  The  truth  is  that  a  state  of 
neutrality  exists  between  him  and  the  rack- 
eteers. His  machine  could  not  possibly 
operate  in  the  face  of  their  opposition. 
Few  of  the  voters  whom  he  helps  at  his 
Sunday  afternoon  Good  Will  Hour  would 
get  to  the  polls  if  the  gangsters  decided 
that  East  Harlem  needed  another  Con- 
gressman. 

kEFORE  the  war  fascism  was  a  delicate 
issue  among  the  Italians  of  East  Har- 
lem. Few  of  them  were  fascist  by  con- 
viction, and  almost  none  w^as  evangeli- 
cally fascist,  like  the  German  Bundists. 
But  most  were  ardent  Italian  patriots,  and 
fascism  was  the  form  of  their  country's 
government.  An  attack  on  Mussolini  was 
an  attack  on  the  Italian  genius.  Marc- 
antonio, whose  anti-fascist  oratory  en- 
deared him  to  the  Communists,  has  always 
managed  to  avoid  any  mention  of  Mus- 
solini and  the  corporate  state,  at  least  in 
East  Harlem.     Indeed,  he  has  often  been 


398 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


forced  to  pay  tacit  tribute  to  II  Duce  by 
gracing  with  his  presence  the  meetings 
of  the  large  Italian  societies  that  became 
pKDwerful  in  East  Harlem  through  the 
gratuities  of  the  consulate.  One  day  in 
the  middle  thirties  he  was  arrested  in  the 
morning  for  leading  a  Communist  dem- 
onstration that  threatened  to  become  a 
riot;  after  bail  was  provided,  he  went 
uptown  to  a  fascist  banquet,,  where  his 
arrival  was  greeted  by  a  band  playing  the 
"Giovinezza.''  A  group  of  Italian  trade 
unionists  has  published  a  brochure  on 
Marcantonio  replete  with  pictures  of  him 
in  the  company  of  fascist  government  of- 
ficials. The  point  is  not  that  Marcantonio 
was  ever  a  fascist,  but  that  the  fascist  vote 
was  indispensable  to  the  machine.  The 
Roman  of  old  times  came  to  bury  Caesar, 
not  to  praise  him:  his  namesake  has  been 
careful  to  do  neither — in  East  Harlem. 
During  the  Italian  war  in  Ethiopia,  for 
example,  he  was  a  leading  member  of  the 
American  League  Against  War  and  Fas- 
cism. But  in  East  Harlem,  at  the  same 
time,  he  was  addressing  the  local  leagues 
joT  war  and  fascism.  No  word  of  explicit 
approval  for  the  Italian  legions  ever 
passed  his  lips.  But  he  did  talk  about  ''"the 
agents  of  the  racketeering  League  of  Na- 
tions, the  big  salary-grabbers,"  who,  in 
their  anonymity,  might  easily  be  taken 
for  the  anti-fascists  seeking  League  sanc- 
tions against  the  Italian  government. 

NEXT  fall  the  Marcantonio  machine 
will  face  a  difficult  test.  The  t^^•en- 
tieth  Congressional  District  no  longer  ex- 
ists. The  New  York  Legislature,  domi- 
nated by  upstate  Republicans  who  have 
nothing  to  fear  from  Marcantonio,  has 
reapportioned  the  state  and  tried  to  gerry- 
mander Marcantonio  out  of  office.  In 
the  new  Eighteenth  District,  he  will  still 
have  most  of  his  East  Harlem  Spaniards 
and  Italians,  but  life  will  be  complicated 
by  the  addition  of  vast  German  and  Irish 
hordes  from  the  adjoining  Yorkville  area. 
Since  Yorkville  is  almost  wholly  Demo- 
cratic, the  Republican  and  Labor  parts 
of  his  machine  will  remain  intact.  He 
may  have  difficulties  in  the  Democratic 
primaries,  but  Clarence  Neal's  recent  vic- 
tory in  Tammany  Hall  was  Marcantonio's 


victory  also.  Tammany  may  not  dare  t< 
support  him  openly,  but  it  will  probably 
praise  him  \vdth  faint  damns.  His  c« 
paign  for  Democratic  support  began  earb 
in  February,  when  he  handed  the  Laboi 
Party  nomination  to  James  Torrens, 
Tammany  candidate  for  Congress  in 
contiguous  district. 

Even  if  he  should  fail  to  be  re-elected 
for  a  term  or  two,  his  power  will  increase 
rather  than  diminish.  At  this  wTiting  he 
controls  the  ALP  only  in  Manhattan, 
but  by  April  he  should  be  boss  of  the 
entire  state  apparatus.  The  Commimist 
wing  of  the  ALP  last  year  acquired  control 
of  the  Brooklyn  organization,  and  it  will 
try  to  win  a  majority  on  the  state  com- 
mittee in  the  spring  primaries.  Prospects 
look  so  glum  to  the  present  state  leaders 
that  they  have  had  a  hard  time  deciding 
whether  to  resist  the  Communists  or  re- 
sign without  a  fight  and  start  a  new  party. 
They  have  determined  to  make  a  fight, 
but  they  admit  that  they  have  almost  no 
chance  of  winning. 

If  the  Communists  capture  the  state 
ALP,  a  good  many  of  its  supporters  will 
move  into  the  Democratic  Party,  whence 
they  originally  came.  On  occasion  the 
ALP  vote  has  been  as  high  as  500,000. 
Under  Communist  domination,  not  more 
than  half  that  number  will  vote  with 
it.  But  the  right-wing  leaders  of  the 
party  hav^e  never  used  their  500,000  votes 
as  effectively  as  Marcantonio  has  used 
his  10,000  Communists.  They  are  profes- 
sional trade-union  leaders  and,  although 
they  have  never  been  averse  to  what  they 
call  "honorable  reciprocity,''  their  simple 
minds  could  not  conceive  the  kind  of 
elaborate  deals  that  Marcantonio  has 
rigged  in  Manhattan  and  Washington. 
In  his  hands  the  ALP  will  be  considerably 
smaller,  but  its  trading  power  will  be  used 
to  greater  advantage.  Marcantonio's  fu- 
ture is  bright. 

When  Earl  Browder,  the  Communist 
leader,  recently  announced  the  mass  con- 
version of  his  followers  to  the  two-party 
system,  he  probably  had  in  mind  the 
strange  case  of  the  Honorable  Vito  Marc- 
antonio, who  runs  with  the  Republican 
and  Democratic  hounds  but  holds  with 
the  Communist  hare. 


THE    TALL    MAN 

A  Story 


THOMAS     SANCTON 


o 


N  TOP  the  mountain  in  the  clear  twi- 
Hght  the  trees  and  houses  looked 
very  small,  but  clean  and  sharp 
like  miniatures.  I  peered  at  the  crest 
from  the  dusty  window  of  a  day  coach 
speeding  north,  a  thousand  feet  below  in 
the  valley.  The  late  red  sunlight  was  be- 
hind the  mountain.  If  a  man  had  walked 
across  the  skyline  I  think  I  could  have 
seen  him. 

This  was  Lookout  Mountain,  at  Chat- 
tanooga. Eighty  years  ago,  on  a  hazy 
day,  bloody  Chickamauga  had  been  fous^ht 
against  that  crest.  For  years  afterward 
Southerners  called  it  the  Battle  Above  the 
Clouds.  On  that  day  the  people  in  the 
valley  could  see  little.  Only  the  pounding 
of  artillery  had  told  of  the  fighting  that 
raged  on  the  mountain. 

I  looked  from  the  train  window  until  the 
mountain  vanished  in  the  darkness.  The 
lights  of  Chattanooga  were  lost  in  the 
curving  distance.  The  lights  in  the  coach 
came  on.  There  was  a  shuffling  and  rest- 
lessness among  the  passengers.  Many 
who  had  been  riding  all  day  got  up  to 
stretch  their  legs.  Some  drifted  to  the 
water  cooler.  Men  walked  to  the  lava- 
tory room  for  a  smoke  and  a  pull  of  strong, 
cheap  whisky.  Across  the  aisle  a  soldier 
nodded.  His  head  drooped  forward. 
Finally  he  toppled  to  the  shoulder  of  his 
wife  beside  him  and  went  to  sleep.     In  the 


seat  before  me  a  young  blonde  woman  set- 
tled her  two  little  blonde  girls  on  the  long 
end  lounge  and  covered  them  with  flimsy 
overcoats.  The  heat  came  on  with  a  dry 
hiss.  I  could  feel  it  flowing  from  the  vent 
against  my  leg. 

A  Negro  porter  dug  beneath  the  seats 
with  a  broom,  sweeping  an  accumulation 
of  trash  into  the  aisle.  He  pushed  a  pile 
of  litter  down  the  coach — newspapers 
with  dusty  footprints,  newspapers  printed 
in  Chattanooga,  Birmingham,  Memphis. 
The  New  Orleans  newspapers  had  long 
ago  been  swept  aw^ay.  Tomorrow,  be- 
fore the  train  reached  New  York,  the 
coach  would  be  strewn  with  journals  that 
copyreaders  and  typesetters  were  laboring 
over  now  in  Washington  and  Baltimore. 
There  were  crushed  paper  cups,  the  ends 
of  dry,  train-made  sandwiches,  paraffin 
milk  containers,  greasy  cardboard  boxes, 
whisky  bottles,  cigarette  stubs,  orange 
peel,  banana  skins.  The  trash  filled  the 
coach  with  a  sweet,  choking  odor.  A 
Negro  in  a  white  jacket  came  through 
with  a  chromium  tray  full  of  sandwiches 
and  a  steaming  kettle  of  cofTee.  In  the 
past  two  hours  or  so  he  had  made  many 
trips  through  the  car  crying  ^'Last  call  for 
sandwiches!" 

In  the  rear  of  the  coach  a  party  of  sol- 
diers w^as  playing  poker  on  a  suitcase 
turned  endwise.     Two  soldiers  stood  in 


400 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  aisle  talking  to  a  group  of  college  girls. 
Behind  me  two  soldiers  were  drinking. 
Their  heavy  woolen  collars  gaped  open 
beneath  their  flushed  faces. 

The  car  was  almost-^filled.  There  were 
middle-aged  women  with  daughters  who 
resembled  them.  There  were  traveling 
business  men  with  fountain  pens  in  their 
pockets.  Their  suits  were  neat  and  cheap. 
There  were  farmers  and  hillsmen  with 
black  coats  and  starched  buttoned  shirts 
without  ties.  Some  of  the  passengers 
were  talking  and  laughing  in  the  patient 
way  of  travelers.  Some  slept  with  their 
heads  resting  back  on  the  cool  window- 
panes.  The  couplings  rolled  and  jerked 
with  monotonous  rhythm. 

I  bought  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  sandwich 
in  a  crackly  paper  cover.  The  sandwich 
was  made  of  dry,  stiff  bread  with  a  wafer- 
thin  slice  of  ham.  The  coffee  was  weak 
and  very  hot  and  lacking  sugar.  I  was 
hungry.  The  sandwich  and  coffee  made 
a  wonderful  mixture. 

This  was  my  tenth  trip  between  New 
York  and  New  Orleans  in  Southern  Rail- 
way day  coaches;  my  tenth  in  three  years. 
I  had  spent  almost  a  month  of  my  life  trav- 
eling on  these  trains.  The  novelty  was 
gone.  I  was  wishing  I  had  spent  my 
money  on  a  Pullman  fare.  But  I  worked 
in  New  York  for  a  newspaper  salary,  and 
kept  returning  to  the  South  two  or  three 
times  a  year.  To  travel  so  far  and  so 
often  I  could  afford  to  ride  only  in 
coaches. 

During  these  years  I  had  come  to  know 
my  companions  on  the  journey.  Not 
counting  the  soldiers — who  more  than  any 
of  us  had  been  wrenched  from  their  civil- 
ian background — a  good  half  of  these 
passengers  were  being  uprooted.  Some- 
where, in  some  city  or  village  or  on  some 
farm,  a  former  way  of  life  had  come  to  an 
end  for  them;  and  they  were  going  to  some 
other  place  to  start  anew.  We  had  sat  up 
through  long  nights  telling  our  stories. 
Some  were  widowed  parents  who  were  go- 
ing to  join  their  children  in  the  North  or 
South.  Some  were  young  men  with  hope- 
ful faces  who  were  taking  their  families 
from  Alabama  perhaps  to  a  sprawling  in- 
dustrial city  in  New  Jersey;  the  big  promo- 
tion, the  long-awaited,  exciting  transfer 
had  come  at  last.     And  some  of  these 


passengers  were  loyal  and  yet  enchanted 
brides,  who  were  going  to  live  in  the  sham- 
bles of  a  cantonment  village  on  a  hus- 
band's newly  acquired  lieutenant's  pay. 
And  some,  like  the  blonde  woman  in  the 
seat  before  me  who  spent  her  time  making 
nests  of  packages  and  overcoats  for  her  two 
little  girls  to  sleep  in  warmly,  were  going 
to  join  the  soldiers  or  workers  they  had 
mated  with,  and  to  struggle  with  instinc- 
tive courage  to  re-establish  the  mam- 
malian routines  of  their  young,  strong 
years.  There  were  old  farmers,  burned 
by  sun  and  wind,  courteous  and  timid  in 
their  movements,  proud  and  rigid  in  their 
talk;  men  who  were  being  summoned  by 
final  illness,  in  some  instances,  to  the  bed- 
side of  a  brother  or  a  father  they  had  not 
seen  or  written  to  for  thirty  years.  Often 
the  only  barrier  between  them  had  been  a 
journey  across  two  states  and  the  price  of 
a  fifteen-dollar  coach  ticket. 

I  was  thinking  about  these  things  that 
night  in  a  half-asleep,  dreaming  fashion. 
As  I  remembered  the  earlier  trips  they  all 
seemed  to  merge  together.  Towns  and 
farms  and  movie  houses  went  by  like 
scenes  on  an  endless  roll  of  background. 
Sometimes  the  hills  were  covered  with 
trees  in  autumnal  color,  and  red  sumac 
bushes  waved  by  the  railroad  tracks;  and 
sometimes  green  summer  foliage  choked 
the  river  valleys. 

There  is  a  tiresome  interval  for  day- 
coach  riders  after  nightfall.  The  country- 
side vanishes  in  darkness.  Outside  the 
fields  may  lie  hauntingly  beautiful  in 
moonlight,  or  rain  may  beat  through  the 
woods  and  shine  like  fire  in  the  locomotive 
headlight.  The  traveler  sees  nothing. 
The  inside  light  shuts  out  the  darkened 
landscape.  He  settles  back  on  hard 
cushions  to  wait  through  the  hours  till 
midnight.  Passengers  grow  weary  with 
talking.  They  settle  with  their  thoughts 
or  read  listlessly  or  stare  through  force  of 
habit  through  the  darkened  windows. 
One  by  one  they  wrap  in  overcoats  and 
try  to  sleep.  The  coach  grows  quieter. 
Somewhere  the  drinkers  are  still  contend- 
ing, and  their  voices  grow  loud  in  the  still- 
ness. At  last  the  conductor  comes  in  to 
reach  into  the  switch  box  and  turn  on  the 
dim  night  lamps. 

A  few  restless  men  get  up  and  walk 


THE    TALL    MAN 


401 


sliflly  clown  the  swayinp^  coach  to  the  hiva- 
(ory.  They  settle  on  tlie  lonn^^c  to  smoke 
and  talk.  This  is  the  honr  when  stories 
are  told.  A  Iiahing  country  voice  begins 
a  narrative  and  goes  on  and  on,  late  into 
llie  night;  it  is  the  voice  of  a  countryman 
on  a  speeding  train  hurling  through  time 
and  space,  suspended  in  a  timeless  mo- 
ment. Ideas  and  memories  well  up  inside 
him.  An  impulse  makes  him  speak.  He 
is  with  men  he  has  never  seen  before  and 
will  never  see  again.  Together  they  are 
rut  off  from  reality.  Somehow  he  knows 
these  men.  They  are  his  brothers.  He 
gropes  to  tell  them  the  deepest  memories 
and  meanings  of  his  life. 

SOMETIME  after  ten  o'clock  that  night, 
far  out  of  Chattanooga,  I  went  into  the 
lounge  to  smoke.  There  was  a  tall  man 
sitting  there.  We  said  hello.  His  legs 
were  crossed  before  him  and  he  slumped 
against  the  seat  with  an  air  of  weariness. 
He  was  a  man  of  indefinite  age.  His  face 
was  gaunt  and  weathered.  His  hair  and 
eyes  were  shiny  black.  His  frame  was 
sparse,  but  his  hands  and  wrists  were 
bony.  His  teeth  were  sound,  but  two  or 
three  had  been  knocked  out  and  were  re- 
placed by  bridgework.  One  of  the  false 
teeth  had  vanished  from  its  crown.  When 
he  spoke  this  piece  of  empty  metal  sparkled. 
I  could  not  guess  how  long  that  crown  had 
been  empty;  yet  I  thought  it  would  be 
empty  forevermore.  He  had  paid  the 
dentists  about  all  he  intended  to  pay. 
Somehow  I  knew  this  man.. 

His  suit  was  cheap  and  neat  and  black. 
It  fitted  his  gaunt  frame  in  a  way  that  a 
tailored  suit  could  never  fit  a  stout  man. 
Doubtless  he  had  walked  into  a  clothing 
store  one  day,  in  a  little  town  somewhere 
in  the  South;  had  selected  a  suit  from  the 
rack,  put  it  on,  counted  out  eighteen  dol- 
lars to  the  clerk,  and  walked  out. 

We  lighted  our  cigarettes  and  began  to 
talk.  We  talked  at  first  about  the  train 
schedule.  He  seemed  to  know  it  like  a 
railroad  man.  He  thought  the  engineer 
was  going  to  make  up  the  fifty  minutes  he'd 
dropped  before  Chattanooga.  This  was  a 
good  stretch  of  road.  The  weather  had 
been  good  and  the  roadbed  was  hard. 
The  tall  man  was  going  back  home  to  a 
town  in  north  Tennessee.     He  was  tired 


hut  couldn't  sleep  oji  trains.  The  jerking 
kept  him  awake.  ...  I  knew  he  would 
tell  his  story. 

We  talked  of  the  war.  lie  had  two  sons 
in  the  Navy  and  one  in  tlie  Army.  He 
had  another  son  he  hadn't  heard  from 
since  1927.  He  expected  he  was  in  the 
service  somewhere— if  he  was  still  alive. 
Maybe  he  had  children  and  wasn't  in  the 
draft;  he  wondered  about  that.  His  old- 
est son — and  his  son's  two  boys — they 
were  home  helping  him  farm  a  few  acres. 
I  looked  again  at  his  unwrinkled  face,  at 
his  crisp,  thick  black  hair.  His  hair  was 
fine  but  remarkably  thick  and  black.  It 
spoke  of  an  indestructible,  orderly  vitality 
within  him. 

"How  old  are  your  grandsons?"  I  asked. 

"Let's  see.  The  little  boy — he's  about 
twelve.  I  expect  the  other's  fourteen  or 
fifteen.  Before  long  the  Army  will  get 
them  too,  I  reckon." 

A  long  silence  passed. 

"I  thought  you  were  under  forty,"  I 
said. 

"Hell,"  he  said.  He  sat  there  immo- 
bile, slouched  against  the  seat,  thinking. 
"I'm  fifty-five.  I  was  born  the  sixth  day 
of  April  in  1887." 

"You  don't  look  it." 

"Hell,"  he  said  again.  A  puzzling,  bit- 
ter smile  came  into  his  face.  "I  haven't 
got  but  another  fifteen  years  to  live. 

"No,  sir,"  he  said  at  last,  "I  run  into  a 
piece  of  hard  luck.  I  expect  I  could  have 
lived  to  be  about  ninety-five  like  my 
daddy.  But  I  can't  do  it  now.  I  got 
busted  up  on  a  water  tower,  right  up  here 
at  a  little  town  we'll  pass  soon.  This  here 
train  is  the  one  that  done  it.  Number 
Seventeen. 

"Yes,  sir.  Everything's  busted  through 
here."  He  laid  his  arm  across  his  ab- 
domen. "Bones  and  belly.  It'll  take  me 
five  minutes  to  get  on  my  feet  when  we 
come  to  my  stop.  I'll  have  to  get  on  my 
legs  and  work  the  pain  out  miles  this  side 
of  town."  And  then  he  began  to  tell  me 
of  his  life. 

In  his  early  years  he  had  been  a  farmer 
in  a  barren,  hilly  county  in  northern-Ten- 
nessee. But  when  his  oldest  children 
were  grown  he  had  moved,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  to  the  outskirts  of  a  town  to 
work  as  carpenter.     He  continued  to  farm 


402 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


a  few  acres  and  sometimes  he  did  ordinary 
day  labor.  He  worked  occasionally  for 
the  railroad,  painting  and  repairing  water 
towers  and  tool  sheds.  He  had  traveled 
up  and  down  this  hundred  miles  of  track, 
but  had  never  been  out  of  Tennessee. 
But  his  story  was  not  about  these  things. 
It  was  really  the  story  of  an  injury. 

"Last  spring,"  he  said,  "at  this  little 
town  of  Ooltewah,  is  where  it  happened. 
We  were  painting  this  water  tower,  me 
and  a  pardner.  I  reckon  we  were  thirty 
feet  high  in  the  air.  I  always  have  been 
careful  about  my  scaffold,  and  this  here 
scaffold  was  fixed  good.  I  don't  work 
any  other  way.  I  check  them  ropes  and 
pulleys  every  day  before  we  begin  at  work. 
If  I  see  a  raveled  piece  of  rope  or  a  loose 
bolt  I  don't  do  nothing  more  until  I  fix  it. 
Some  fellows  don't  bother  much,  just  rig 
up  any  kind  of  outfit  and  start  in  painting; 
jump  around,  walk  up  and  down  on  a 
sorry  rig,  and  then  they  wonder  why  it  is 
they  get  hurt.  I  don't  work  that  way. 
We  had  this  good  three-quarter  rope,  al- 
most new,  and  a  good  scaffold  under  us. 
We  were  working  there  safe  as  if  we  were 
working  in  a  field. 

"Well,  it's  a  funny  thing,"  he  said. 
"Just  let  a  fellow  figure  he's  got  every- 
thing taken  care  of,  and  that's  when  some- 
thing has  got  to  happen.  Damned  if  I 
know  why  it  is.  I've  seen  it  happen 
a  hundred  times.  Take  a  man  who's 
worked  a  lifetime  to  get  out  of  debt,  why 
just  when  he's  done  fine  and  paid  ofT  a 
mortgage  and  made  a  good  crop — why, 
he'll  go  hunting  and  trip  on  a  root  or 
something  and  blow  his  head  off.  Let  a 
man  build  a  new  barn  and  fill  it  with  feed 
and  livestock,  and  like  as  not  some  plain 
mean  devil  he  never  even  saw  before  will 
come  along  and  burn  it  down.  That's  the 
way  it  was  with  the  scaffold.  We  fixed 
it  sound  as  you  can  fix  a  scaffold.  The 
ropes  was  good,  the  pulleys  was  good,  the 
hooks  was  good.  But  something  was 
meant  to  happen.  Damned  if  it  wasn't. 
You  see,  we  had  this  long  lead-rope  from 
the  pulley,  and  it  reached  all  the  way  to 
the  ground.  When  we  was  thirty  feet  up 
in  the  air  we  don't  want  no  rope  hanging 
on  the  ground.  Matter  of  fact,  it  reached 
farther  than  the  ground;  the  higher  we 
pulled   the  scaffold   the  longer  the  rope 


was.     So  we  drew  it  up  and  coiled  it  and 
rested  it  on  the  end  of  the  scaffold. 

"Well,  my  pardner,  he  walked  down  to 
the  end  to  pour  some  paint.  And  I  was 
standing  in  the  middle  working.  He 
reached  down  for  the  bucket  and  shoved 
the  coil  of  rope  away  not  to  get  paint  on  it, 
and  accidentally  the  rope  fell  over  the  side. 
And  there's  where  he  made  his  mistake. 
He  should  have  pulled  the  rope  up  and 
coiled  it  first  thing,  and  got  it  out  the  way. 
But  he  leaves  the  rope  down  and  goes  on 
a-pouring  paint. 

"Well  now,  wouldn't  you  know  this 
damned  train  would  have  to  be  coming 
down  the  track  just  then?  It's  the  same 
train  as  this  one,  but  running  through  in 
the  morning  instead  of  at  night — twelve 
hours'  difference.  I  told  you  Number 
Seventeen  done  it  but  what  I  meant  was 
Number  Nineteen.  It's  the  same  train 
but  twelve  hours'  difference.  And  not 
only  that  but  the  mail  hook  had  to  be 
sticking  out.  The  hook  should  have  been 
pulled  in  before  he  left  the  town.  Them 
hooks  are  supposed  to  be  pulled  in  as  soon 
as  the  mail  bags  are  picked  up.  Ought 
and  is  is  two  different  animals.  And 
here's  this  hook  sticking  out,  and  here's 
Number  Nineteen  picking  up  speed  out 
of  Ooltewah,  and  here's  this  rope  been 
dropped  from  the  scaffold — just  that  min- 
ute, I  tell  you;  just  like  that! 

"My  pardner  was  standing  on  a  line 
with  the  train  and  he  seen  the  hook  about 
to  grab  into  the  rope  and  he  could  see 
what's  about  to  happen.  So  he  yelled  a 
warning  to  hold  on,  and  jumped  on  the 
scaffold  ropes  and  locked  his  arms  and 
legs  around  them  before  the  jerk  came. 
That  saved  him. 

"Well,  the  hook  hit  the  rope  and  jerks 
the  scaffold  clean  from  under  me.  Gives 
it  one  big  jerk  and  slammed  it  way  out  in 
the  air,  like  a  swing.  The  paint  bucket 
splashed  in  my  face  and  I'm  sprawling  all 
which-way  in  the  air.  Can't  see  a  thing 
any  more.  I  figured  the  train  was  going 
to  cut  me  up.  But  I  hit  the  ground  on 
my  spine — and  side.  Right  here."  His 
arm  fell  across  his  abdomen  again.  "My 
bones  busted  like  eggshells.  That's  the 
damnedest  feeling  there  is.  You  just  can't 
believe  what  I'm  telUng  you.  You  hear 
your  bones  break  and  your  belly  bust  wide 


THE    TALL    MAN 


403 


open  on  the  inside.  And  there  I  was  with 
paint  in  my  face,  couldiTt  see  a  blessed 
thing,  and  knowing  I  was  all  stove  in 
through  here.  I  could  feel  the  blood 
bleeding  on  the  inside  of  me.  Could  feel 
my  belly  filling  up.  And  pain — good 
God!  It  was  like  someone  took  an  anvil 
and  mashed  me  with  it.  I  done  kicked 
many  a  rat  in  a  barn  and  heard  them  kind 
of  squeak  and  crunch.  That's  about  how 
it  felt  to  be  lying  on  the  railroad  track." 

He  looked  at  me  and  the  bitter  smile 
came  across  his  mouth.  It  was  merciless 
and  utterly  lacking  in  self-pity.  There 
was  a  trace  of  amusement  in  it.  In  his 
ruddy  face  the  silver  of  the  empty  den- 
tal bridgework  sparkled.  His  black  eyes 
were  not  unfriendly;  yet  they  gazed  into 
mine  with  a  cold  inner  fierceness,  with 
something  of  the  fierceness  they  must  have 
held  that  day. 

"How  would  you  like  that?"  he  asked, 
reluctant  to  let  the  cruel  image  fade. 
"Legs  broken,  pelvis  broken,  guts  busted 
open,  paint  in  your  mouth  and  eyes? 
How  would  you  like  it?" 

"Were  you  conscious?"  I  said. 

"Just  like  I  am  now."  The  tempo  of 
his  speech  quickened  as  he  remembered 
the  excitement  of  his  agony.  "Conscious 
as  I  ever  was  in  my  life.  I  lay  there  on 
the  ground  and  I  give  a  moan;  it  just  come 
out  of  me.  I  knew  this  here  railroad  track 
was  my  deathbed.  I  knew  the  rope  fell, 
that  all  those  things  happened  to  kill  me. 
It  was  just  meant  for  me  to  die.  When  I 
give  that  moan  the  pain  w^s  hurting  so 
much  I  was  hoping  to  die. 

"And  then,"  he  said,  and  his  eyes  were 
shining,  "something  all  of  a  sudden  came 
over  me.  I  said  to  myself:  'They  can't  kill 
me.  I  just  won't  die.'  I  knew  I  was  sup- 
posed to  die,  see.  But  I  was  supposed  to 
have  died  under  them  train  wheels.  That's 
the  way  it  was  meant  to  happen.  But 
something  had  made  a  mistake.  That's 
the  only  way  they  could  kill  me  and 
damned  if  something  hadn't  slipped  up. 
I  had  hit  on  the  embankment  instead  of 
under  the  train  wheels.  Sometimes  it 
happens  like  that — you  get  a  run  for  your 
money.  And  it  happened  to  me  that 
way.     I  was  lucky." 

He  bore  no  personal  feeling  against  his 
partner  and  the  train  crew;  but  in  another 


part  of  his  mind  he  considered  them  the 
agents  of  his  fate. 

"The  pain  began  to  make  me  dizzy. 
But  over  and  over  I  kept  thinking:  'I'll  live 
in  spite  of  hell!  By  God,  I  wouldn't  give 
them  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  me  die  if 
my  head  was  cut  off!  I'll  pick  my  own 
time  to  die  and  ain't  a  man  will  pick  it  for 
me  and  least  of  all  this  damned  old  engi- 
neer. I  don't  care  if  I  bleed  ever'  drop 
of  blood  I  got  in  my  body.  I  don't  care  if 
my  back  is  broke.  The  man  don't  live 
that  can  kill  me!'  And  I  kept  thinking 
that,  over  and  over.  And  I  ain't  stopped 
thinking  it  yet.  Then  my  head  started  to 
whirling  and  I  got  sick  to  my  stomach.  I 
threw  up  blood  all  over  the  embankment." 

As  HE  talked  we  smoked  our  cigarettes 
^  and  shifted  wearily  on  the  seat.  A 
heavy-eyed  man  with  a  stubble  of  blond 
whiskers  came  through  the  green  curtain, 
paused  for  a  moment,  swaying  with  the 
train,  and  went  into  the  small  toilet  com- 
partment. Then  he  washed  his  hands 
and  turned  to  us  to  listen,  without  inter- 
est. He  smoked  a  cigarette  and  lurched 
back  through  the  curtain.  The  tall  man 
went  on  with  the  story. 

"My  pardner,"  he  said,  "he  had  got  the 
hell  scared  out  of  him.  But  he  wasn't 
hurt.  The  scaffold  swung  back  against 
the  tower  and  sprung  his  ankle,  but  that 
was  all.  So  he  come  down  to  me — down 
the  rope.  He  wiped  the  paint  out  of  my 
eyes  and  I  could  see  a  little.  I  was  lying 
on  the  embankment;  half  of  me  was  on  the 
tie  ends  and  half  on  the  slope.  I  was 
twisted  up  like  a  scarecrow.  And  he  says, 
'Good  God,  you  busted  right  in  two!' 

"He  reached  down  and  took  hold  of  me 
and  made  like  to  straighten  me  out.  I 
said,  *Get  your  hands  off  me.  You'll  kill 
me  sure.'  I  said,  'If  you  want  to  help  me, 
go  get  a  doctor  damned  quick  in  the 
town.'  He  says,  'I  can't  just  leave  you 
lying  here  busted  up  on  the  track.'  I  told 
him  to  quit  talking  and  to  go  get  the  doc- 
tor. And  he  run  off  and  in  a  little  while 
brought  me  a  doctor  and  some  men  from 
the  town.  The  doctor  put  me  on  the 
stretcher  and  they  lifted  me  up. 

"Well,  they  take  me  to  this  little  hos- 
pital— hell,  it  ain't  but  ten  beds  in  it. 
And  they  wire  the  railroad  office  to  rush  a 


404 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


specialist  from  Chattanooga;  This  Chat- 
tanooga doctor  comes  and  looks  at  my 
legs  and  belly.  They  was  swollen  like  a 
balloon.  And  he  takes  me  in  the  operat- 
ing room.  I  was  going  unconscious.  My 
head  was  spinning — Lord,  the  room  was 
going  round.  But  1  could  hear  this  doc- 
tor talking.  He  told  the  other  one  I  was 
a  goner. 

"This  Chattanooga  doctor  come  to  me 
and  says,  'Listen,  can  you  hear  me?'  I  said 
sure.  He  says,  'Then  listen  to  what  I'm 
telling  you.  We  sent  a  man  in  an  auto- 
mobile to  fetch  your  family.  If  you've 
got  anything  to  say  to  them  you'd  better 
say  it  when  they  get  here.  You  ain't 
going  to  be  here  tomorrow.' 

"I  says,  'You  think  so?' 

"He  says,  'I  know  so.' 

"I  says,  'Hell,  doctor,  I'll  be  walking  in 
six  weeks.' 

"...  I  says,  'Hell,  doctor,  I'll  be  walk- 
ing in  six  weeks,'  and  I  was.  In  just  two 
days  longer  than  six  weeks  I  got  out  the 
bed  and  walked.  And  in  eight  weeks  I 
walked  out  the  hospital." 

He  told  me  of  his  days  in  the  hospital. 
He  had  survived  a  grave  operation  and 
once,  as  his  wife  leaned  over  his  bed,  he 
had  said:  "Listen,  I'm  in  a  sinking  spell 
and  about  to  die.  Don't  do  a  thing  now, 
don't  tell  me  a  word,  just  run  tell  the 
doctor  if  he  don't  pump  blood  in  my 
veins  damned  quick  I'm  a  dead  man." 
The  doctor  came  running.  The  tall  man 
could  feel  life  pouring  in  his  veins  as  the 
transfusion  was  begun. 

"A  few  days  after  the  operation  when  I 
begun  to  heal  a  little  and  it  looked  like  I 
wasn't  going  to  die  right  offhand,  this 
doctor  comes  to  me  and  sets  a  bowl  of 
plaster  on  a  table  and  begins  to  mix  it.  I 
says,  'Hell,  you're  not  mixing  that  stuff  to 
put  on  me,  are  you?'  He  said  sure,  I  had 
to  wear  it,  I  was  a  dead  man  without  a 
cast.  I  said  I  may  be  one  without  it  but 
I  sure  was  one  with  it.  'If  you  try  to  put 
that  plaster  on  me,  in  this  pain,  I'll  roll 
out  of  this  bed.'  I  said,  'Look,  doctor,  I 
want  to  live.  Just  tell  me  what  to  do. 
But  no  plaster.  If  you  want  me  to  lie 
still  here  a  month  without  moving,  I  know 
I  got  to  do  it.     Just  tell  me.' 

"  'By  God,'  he  says,  'I  think  you're 
stubborn  enough.' 


"  'Just  tell  me.' 

"He  says,  'You  got  to  lay  flat  and  not 
move  for  twenty-one  days.  One  move 
will  bust  you  wide  open.' 

"I  says,  'Nothing's  going  to  bust  me 
open.     I'll  lie  here  twenty-one  days.' 

"And  I  laid  there  twenty-one  days  with- 
out a  move.  They  put  me  on  a  bed  that 
cranked  open  down  the  middle.  And  I 
laid  there  twenty-one  days.  The  hot 
weather  come.  Sometimes  I  wished  I  had 
gone  under  them  wheels.  But  I  hadn't. 
I  never  thought  of  quitting.  It  got  to  be 
a  joke  with  me,  living  in  spite  of  hell.  My 
muscles  cramped  up  and  my  belly  swole 
out  like  this.  I  said  to  myself:  'I'll  lie 
here  and  put  up  with  it.  I  done  told  that 
hard-headed  doctor  I  ain't  going  to  move.' 
And  I  laid  there  my  twenty-one  days." 

"It  must  have  been  agony,"  I  said. 

He  gazed  into  the  distance  and  the  cruel 
smile  came  into  his  face. 

"It  was  a  pill,"  he  said. 

"I  ain't  going  to  live  very  old,"  he  went 
on  finally.  "I  got  about  fifteen  years  left. 
That  will  put  me  about  seventy.  My 
daddy  was  plowing  when  he  was  eighty- 
four.  My  mother  lived  near  as  long  as  he 
did.  They  was  happy  in  their  old  age  too. 
I  could  have  had  me  a  long  life.  But  this 
accident  done  me  in.  I  just  wore  myself 
out  in  that  hospital.  But  I  picked  my 
bones  off  this  railroad  track,  and  in  six 
weeks  I  stood  and  walked,  just  like  I  said  I 
would  do.  And  the  thought  of  it  will 
give  me  satisfaction  till  I  die." 

He  had  said  what  he  wanted  to  say. 
There  was  little  more  to  talk  about.  We 
sat  back  in  the  seat  dozing,  swaying  with 
the  jolts  of  the  coach.  An  hour  or  so 
later,  in  northern  Tennessee,  we  arrived 
at  his  town.  He  had  been  striding  back 
and  forth  across  the  washroom  for  a  little 
while,  trying  to  work  the  stiffness  from  his 
hips.  When  the  train  stopped  he  turned 
to  me  and  said,  "Well  ..."  and  picked 
up  his  cardboard  suitcase  and  was  gone. 
I  went  to  the  steps  and  saw  him  walk 
away,  down  the  small  darkened  platform. 
Only  the  faint  light  of  a  single  electric 
globe  lighted  the  station.  I  could  see  a 
macadam  street,  a  movie  house,  a  block  of 
small  stores,  and  I  knew  that  beyond  the 
town,  stretching  into  the  night,  were  the 
farms  and  woods,  and  at  last  the  foothills. 


INFORMATION,  PLEASE,   ABOUT 

RUSSIA 

WILLIAM    HENRY    CHAMBERLIN 


IT  WAS  once  said  that  the  worst  imagi- 
nable torment  for  Lord  Macaulay 
in  hell  would  have  been  to  force  him 
to  listen  to  friends  misstating  historical 
facts  without  being  able  to  correct  them. 
Educated  Russians  in  this  country  and 
Americans  acquainted  with  Russian  his- 
tory and  the  conditions  of  Russian  life 
before  and  after  the  Revolution  are  often 
subjected  to  this  kind  of  punishment. 
They  encounter  one  demonstrable  factual 
inaccuracy  after  another  in  books,  maga- 
zine articles,  newspaper  articles,  and 
allegedly  historical  films,  without  being 
able  to  offer  adequate  rebuttal  and  con- 
tradiction. 

A  list  of  such  mistakes  which  have  ap- 
peared in  print,  with  the  source  and  the 
corrective  facts,  forms  the  subject  matter 
of  this  article.  It  is  deliberately  limited 
in  scope.  Expressions  of  judgment  and 
opinion,  however  extravagant  and  ill- 
founded  these  may  seem  to  be,  are  not 
discussed.  Nothing  is  cited  from  the 
writings  of  avowed  Communists,  or  from 
Communist  publications,  which  by  their 
nature  would  provide  a  quantity  of  dog- 
matic and  controversial  assertions  about 
Russia. 

The  errors  which  are  cited  have  been 
turned  up  by  my  own  initiative,  with  a 
little  volunteer  aid  from  a  few  friends.  A 
research  institution,  able  to  cover  thor- 


oughly the  entire  field  of  publications 
about  Russia,  could  easily  fill  a  book, 
perhaps  an  encyclopedia  with  similar 
material.  However,  the  sampling  that 
follows  will,  I  think,  prove  the  point  that 
there  is  a  regrettable  lack  of  precise  fac- 
tual knowledge  of  Russia,  past  and  pres- 
ent, on  the  part  of  some  people  who  pro- 
fess to  write  and  speak  with  authority  on 
the  subject.  In  fact  I  doubt  whether 
such  a  mass  of  sheer  misinformation,  on 
such  a  plane  of  authorship,  could  be  com- 
piled about  any  country  of  comparable 
political  importance. 

HERE  is  Dorothy  Thompson,  for  in- 
stance, writing  about  Stalin  in  her 
syndicated  column  of  November  24,  1943: 

He  was  born  in  a  tribal  society  in  the  remote 
Caucasian  Mountains.  .  .  .  His  tribe  was  ruled 
by  feudal  princes.  .  ;  .  In  his  childhood  the 
masses  of  the  people  of  Greater  Russia  were  serfs 
who  could  be  beaten  by  their  masters  and  even 
sold  from  one  landowner  to  another. 

Now  Stalin  was  born,  not  in  some  re- 
mote Caucasian  mountain  fastness  where 
the  tribal  organization  of  life  persisted, 
but  in  the  town  of  Gori,  which  is  located 
in  the  southern  foothills  of  the  Caucasus 
in  the  center  of  a  corn-  and  wine-produc- 
ing country.  By  no  stretch  of  the  imagi- 
nation could  it  have  been  regarded,  at  the 
time  of  Stalin's  birth,   as  the  seat  of  a 


406 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"tribal  society."  Nor  is  there  the  slight- 
est evidence,  in  any  biography  of  Stalin, 
that  he  ever  owed  allegiance  to  any  tribal 
prince.  And  the  full  impact  of  the  howl- 
er in  the  third  senteitce  can  only  be 
gauged  if  one  can  imap^ine  a  foreign  com- 
mentator writing  of  President  Roosevelt, 
"His  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  under- 
privileged dates  from  the  time  when  he 
saw  men  and  women,  in  his  childhood, 
being  sold  as  slaves."  For  serfdom  was 
abolished  in  Russia  in  1861.  Stalin  was 
born  in  1879. 

Passing  to  a  misstatement  of  a  different 
type,  one  finds  Emil  Ludwig,  in  his  Stalin, 
p.  81,  misquoting  Lenin's  political  testa- 
ment as  follows: 

Comrade  Stalin,  having  become  General  Sec- 
retary, has  concentrated  an  enormous  power  in 
his  hands,  and  I  am  sure  that  he  always  knows 
how  to  use  that  power  with  sufficient  caution. 

The  correct  version  of  this  sentence  in 
the  testament,  which  may  be  found  in 
Boris  Souvarine's  Stalin,  p.  305,  reads  as 
follows: 

Comrade  Stalin,  having  become  General  Sec- 
retary, has  concentrated  an  enormous  power  in 
his  hands,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  he  always  knows 
how  to  use  that  power  with  sufficient  caution. 

The  omission  of  the  word  "not,"  in  this 
case,  is  pretty  important,  and  destroys  the 
historical  and  psychological  significance  of 
the  testament,  which  reflects  suspicion  on 
Lenin's  part  that  Stalin  was  building  up  a 
personal  dictatorship.  Neither  the  authen- 
ticity nor  the  text  of  the  testament  is  sub- 
ject to  question.  Stalin  himself  admitted 
by  implication  the  validity  of  this  docu- 
ment, in  which  he  is  characterized  as 
"rough"  or  "rude"  (the  Russian  word  is 
grubi),  when  he  declared  at  a  subsequent 
party  meeting  that  he  was  indeed  "rough 
toward  those  who  treacherously  break 
their  word,  who  split  and  destroy  the 
Party." 

Every  realistic  observer  and  student 
knows  that  there  was  much  poverty  and 
social  injustice  in  Tsarist  Russia.  But 
this  does  not  excuse  such  a  fantastically 
exaggerated  caricature  of  prewar  Russian 
agrarian  conditions  as  one  finds  in  Emil 
Ludwig's  Stalin  (pp.  144-146): 

Even  if  he  [the  Russian  peasant]  had  been  a 
slave  under  the  Tsars — without  privileges,  with- 
out culture,  without  hope — yet  he  had  owned 


his  shack  and  his  cow,  together  with  a  small  piece 
of  land.  And,  though  he  was  not  allowed  to  sell 
it,  move  away,  or  marry  without  his  landlord's 
permission,  the  few  square  miles  were  his  home. 
.  .  .  The  Russian  peasant  did  not  even  notice 
any  more  that  he  was  a  slave.  One  half  of  all 
arable  land — some  people  estimated  it  at  70% 
— belonged  to  a  few  hundred  great  lords,  the 
Tsar,  and  the  Church;  the  rest  was  divided 
among  sixteen  million  peasant  families,  owning 
an  average  of  six  to  eight  acres. 

Mistakes  here  are  as  thick  as  black- 
berries in  a  summer  briar  patch.  To 
begin  with,  serfdom  and  restrictions  on  the 
peasants'  freedom  to  move  and  marry 
without  permission  of  their  landlords  were 
abolished  in  1861.  Under  the  agrarian 
legislation  of  Prime  Minister  Stolypin  in 
1907  the  peasant  was  free  to  withdraw 
from  the  village  communal  organization 
and  to  set  himself  up  as  an  individual 
proprietor.  The  non-peasant  landown- 
ing class  in  Russia  before  the  Revolution 
consisted  of  some  two  hundred  thousand 
country  gentry,  not  of  "a  few  hundred 
great  lords."  The  average  size  of  the 
peasant's  holding  in  1905  was  twenty- 
eight  acres.  (See  Thomas  G.  Masaryk, 
The  Spirit  of  Russia,  Vol.  I,  p.  163.)  The 
nobility  as  a  class  in  1914  owned  less  than 
a  quarter  of  the  amount  of  land  in  peasant 
possession,  and  the  proportion  was  stead- 
ily changing  in  favor  of  the  peasants.  (See 
the  tables  in  the  scholarly  work  of  Profes- 
sor Geroid  T.  Robinson,  Rural  Russia 
Under  the  Old  Regime,  pp.  268-270.)  The 
proportion  of  the  arable  land  in  pre- 
revolutionary  Russia  owned  by  the  Crown 
and  the  Church  was  negligible.  Much 
the  greatest  part  of  the  Crown  holdings 
consisted  of  undeveloped  forest  tracts. 

WHEN  a  film  is  produced  dealing  with 
recent  historical  events,  with  the 
active  participation  of  a  former  American 
Ambassador,  and  President  Roosevelt  is 
introduced  as  one  of  the  figures,  one  is  en- 
titled to  expect  that  reasonable  standards 
of  accuracy  will  be  met.  This  was  unfor- 
tunately and  emphatically  not  the  case 
with  the  widely  shown  film,  "Mission  to 
Moscow." 

American  moving-picture  audiences 
were  shown  Marshal  M.  N.  Tukhachevsky 
confessing  guilt  in  open  court,  which  he 
never  did,  because  his  fate  was  decided 


INFORMATION,    PLEASE,    ABOUT    RUSSIA 


407 


behind  closed  doors.  The  German  For- 
eign Minister,  Von  Ribbcntrop,  was  de- 
picted as  publicly  visiting  Moscow  and 
meeting  Soviet  oflicials  and  foreign  diplo- 
mats before  the  last  big  treason  and 
sabotage  trials,  in  March,  1 938.  But  Von 
Ribbentrop  in  actual  life  paid  only  two 
visits  to  Moscow,  to  sign  the  German- 
Soviet  non-aggression  pact  in  August, 
1939,  and  to  sign  supplementary  political 
and  economic  agreements  in  September 
of  the  same  year. 

The  film  showed  Chinese  wounded  be- 
ing cared  for  in  Moscow  hospitals — a  most 
unlikely  scene  which  has  no  factual  con- 
firmation. Mr.  Davies  is  represented  as 
conferring  with  the  Polish  musician,  Ig- 
nace  Paderewski,  who  is  supposedly  hold- 
ing high  office  in  the  Polish  government. 
Paderewski  resigned  as  Prime  Minister  of 
Poland  in  November,  1919,  and  spent 
most  of  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life 
outside  of  Poland. 

Such  anachronisms,  of  which  only  a  few 
have  been  cited,  might  be  permissible  in 
an  avowedly  fictitious  Hollywood  produc- 
tion. They  were  unpardonable  in  a  film 
put  out  under  high  official  auspices,  pur- 
porting to  give  a  serious  picture  of  actual 
recent  diplomatic  developments. 

BRENDAN  Bracken,  British  Minister  of 
I  Information,  in  a  press  interview  in 
New  York  after  the  Quebec  Conference 
in  August,  1943,  declared  that  "Soviet 
Russia  has  never  broken  its  word."  Dor- 
othy Thompson  promptly  endorsed  this 
statement  in  her  syndicated  column. 

The  facts,  unfortunately,  speak  a  differ- 
ent language.  For  the  Soviet  govern- 
ment, as  Mr.  Bracken  and  Miss  Thomp- 
son could  have  ascertained  by  referring  to 
any  competent  diplomatic  history  or  col- 
lection of  treaties,  concluded  five  treaties 
of  non-aggression,  pledging  respect  for  ex- 
isting frontiers,  with  its  western  neighbors, 
Poland,  Finland,  Estonia,  Latvia,  Lithu- 
ania. The  treaty  with  Poland  was  con- 
cluded on  July  25,  1932,  and  extended  for 
ten  years  on  May  5,  1934.  The  treaty 
with  Latvia  was  concluded  on  February  5, 
1932,  and  extended  for  ten  years  on  April 
4,  1934.  The  treaty  with  Estonia  was 
signed  on  May  4,  1932,  and  extended  for 
ten  years  on  April  4,  1934.     The  treaty 


with  Finland  was  signed  on  January  21, 
1932,  and  extended  for  ten  years  on  April 
7,  1934.  The  treaty  with  Lithuania  was 
concluded  on  September  28,  1926,  and  was 
twice  renewed.  Tlic  second  renewal — 
April  4,  1934 — was  for  ten  years.  All 
these  treaties,  it  should  be  noted,  were 
signed  at  the  initiative  of  the  Soviet 
government. 

Moreover,  the  Soviet  Union  proposed  a 
convention  defining  aggression  and  signed 
this  with  Estonia,  Latvia,  Iran,  Poland, 
Turkey,  and  Rumania  on  July  3,  1933, 
with  Lithuania  on  July  5,  with  Finland  on 
July  23.  This  definition  of  aggression  in- 
cluded the  following  points: 

(2)  Invasion  by  armed  forces,  even  without 
declaration  of  war; 

(3)  An  attack  by  any  type  of  armed  forces, 
even  without  declaration  of  war. 

It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  Soviet 
armed  forces  crossed  the  frontier  of  Po- 
land, against  the  protest  of  the  Polish 
government,  on  September  17,  1939.  So- 
viet armed  forces  crossed  the  frontier  of 
Finland  on  November  29th  and  bombed 
Helsinki  on  November  30th  as  the  prelude 
to  a  war  that  lasted  for  three  and  a  half 
months.  Soviet  armed  forces  moved  into 
Lithuania  on  June  15,  1940,  into  Latvia 
and  Estonia  on  June  17th,  and  into  Ru- 
mania, occupying  Bessarabia  and  north- 
ern Bukovina,  on  June  28th. 

Whether  changing  political  conditions 
justified  this  violation  of  treaty  obligations 
is  a  matter  of  opinion.  But  the  technical 
inaccuracy  of  stating  that  "Soviet  Russia 
has  never  broken  its  word"  is  certainly 
clear.  And  the  effect  of  this  inaccuracy  is 
likely  to  be  harmful  in  conditioning  the 
American  mind  to  expect  from  Stalin  a 
higher  standard  in  keeping  inconvenient 
obligations  than  we  have  much  right  to 
expect. 

II 

So  FAR  I  have  analyzed  in  some  detail 
sweeping  misstatements  of  fact  about 
Russia,  past  and  present,  which  are  likely 
to  confuse  and  mislead  public  opinion.  I 
now  offer,  in  rapid-fire  order,  twenty 
pieces  of  assorted  misinformation  which 
lend  themselves  to  more  summary  correc- 
tion. The  first  few  deal  with  Russian  his- 
tory: 


408 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Misinformation  {Item  1) 

".  :  :  Alexander  Suvorov,  who  de- 
feated Charles  XII  of  Sweden  at  Pol- 
tava .  .  ." — Leland  Stowe,  "The  Evolu- 
tion  of  the  Red  Army,"  published  in 
Foreign  Affairs  for  Oct  jber,  1 943. 

The  Facts 

The  Battle  of  Poltava,  one  of  the  decisive 
battles  of  east  European  history,  in  which 
Peter  the  Great  defeated  Charles  XII  of 
Sweden,  was  fought  in  1709.  Alexander 
Suvorov,  famous  Russian  general  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  was  born  in  Moscow 
on  November  24,  1729. 

Misinformation  {Item  2) 

''Marjorie  told  me  of  a  most  interesting 
talk  she  had  with  Mme.  Krestinsky  the 
other  day.  In  response  to  Marjorie's  in- 
quiry she  [Mme.  Krestinsky]  said:  'The 
Government  is  not  against  religion  as  such. 
Our  people  simply  had  to  take  steps  to 
prevent  the  abuses  of  religion  from  de- 
stroying our  people.  .  .  .  Finally  it  be- 
came so  bad  that  in  the  "Duma,"  the 
legislative  body  created  by  one  of  the 
Alexanders,  almost  a  third  of  its  members 
were  priests  and  ecclesiastics.'  " — Joseph 
E.  Davies,  Mission  to  Moscow,  p.  115. 

The  Facts 

The  Duma  was  established  after  the 
proclamation  of  a  constitution  by  Nicholas 
II  on  October  30,  1905.  The  largest 
number  of  priests  elected  to  membership 
in  any  of  the  four  Dumas  which  met  before 
the  Revolution  was  46  (out  of  a  member- 
ship of  422)  in  the  Fourth  Duma. 

Misinformation  {Item  3) 

"Evil  genius  was  Tsarina's  friend,  the 
malevolent  priest  Rasputin." — Soviet  issue 
of  Life,  March  29,  1943,  caption  51,  p.  97. 

The  Facts 
Rasputin  was  never  ordained  as  a  priest. 

Misinformation  {Item  4) 

"Pushkin,  poet-aristocrat,  joined  offi- 
cers' conspiracy  against  the  Tsar,  was  ex- 
iled to  the  Caucasus,  killed  in  a  duel." — 
Soviet  issue  of  Life,  caption  27,  p.  94. 


The  Facts 

There  is  no  definite  proof  that  Pushkin, 
Russia's  most  famous  poet,  was  involved 
in  the  conspiracy  of  the  Decabristi,  the 
group  of  liberal  officers  who  led  an  abor- 
tive revolt  in  1825.  Pushkin  was  never 
exiled  to  the  Caucasus,  though  he  visited 
there  during  his  exile.  The  duel  in  which 
he  lost  his  life  was  fought  near  St.  Peters- 
burg. Probably  there  is  some  confusion 
with  the  experience  of  Russia's  other  great 
lyric  poet,  Lermontov,  who  was  banished 
to  the  Caucasus  and  killed  there  in  a  duel. 

Misinformation  {Item  5) 

"The  Government  at  St.  Petersburg 
(now  Leningrad)  sent  many  of  its  convicts 
and  political  prisoners  to  Yakutsk.  Al- 
exander Pushkin  was  exiled  there." — 
Wendell  L.  Willkie,  One  World,  p.  37. 

The  Facts 

Pushkin  was  never  within  three  thou- 
sand miles  of  Yakutsk.  The  places  to 
which  he  was  sent  to  reside  under  police 
surveillance  were  all  in  European  Russia. 

Misinformation  {Item  6) 

"Reviewing  briefly  the  history  of  Russia 
from  the  time  of  the  last  war.  Sir  Bernard 
pointed  to  'the  filthy,  sexual  beast  Rasputin' 
as  the  reason  for  the  revolutionary  move- 
ment against  the  church  in  Russia.  The 
movement  was  against  a  church  headed 
by  such  a  person  as  Rasputin,  'it  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  Christianity,'  he  said." — 
Excerpt  from  an  account  of  a  speech  by 
Sir  Bernard  Pares  before  the  Women's 
Canadian  Club  of  Montreal  in  the  Mon- 
treal Gazette  of  December  8,  1943. 

The  Facts  ^ 

Inasmuch  as  Rasputin  was  murdered 
before  the  Soviet  regime  came  into  power 
his  sins  of  the  flesh  are  a  rather  brittle  peg 
on  which  to  hang  the  anti-religious  poli- 
cies of  the  Soviet  government.  As  he  was 
not  even  an  ordained  priest,  or  a  member 
of  any  recognized  monastic  order  (he 
was  married),  he  could  not  and  did  not 
"head"  the  Orthodox  Church.  Karl 
Marx's  phrase,  "religion  is  opium  for  the 
people,"  was  uttered  decades  before  Ras- 
putin was  heard  of  and  finds  an  echo  in 


INFORMATION,    PLEASE,    ABOUT    RUSSIA 


409 


many  statements  of  Lenin,  of  which  the 
lullowing  is  typical: 

"All  contemporary  religions  and  church- 
es, all  and  every  kind  of  religious  organiza- 
tion, Marxism  has  always  viewed  as  instru- 
ments of  bourgeois  reaction,  serving  as  a 
defense  of  exploitation  and  the  doping  of 
the  working  class."  ("Leninon  Religion," 
cited  by  N.  S.  Timasheff,  Religion  in  Soviet 
Russia,  p.  13.) 

Misinformation  {Item  7) 
"Alexander  III   .   .   .  died  of  terror." — 
Caption  38  on  p.  95  of  Soviet  issue  oi  Life. 

The  Facts 

Tsar  Alexander  III  died  as  a  result  of  a 
much  more  familiar  and  medically  recog- 
nizable malady  than  "terror,"  namely 
kidney  trouble. 

Misinformation  {Item  8) 

"Tsar  Nicholas,  like  his  cousin,  George 
V  of  England,  came  to  the  throne  through 
the  untimely  death  of  his  elder  brother." 
— Walter  Duranty  in  the  New  Tork  Times 
of  March  14,  1937. 

The  Facts 

Nicholas  II  had  no  elder  brother.  He 
succeeded  to  the  throne  on  the  death  of  his 
father,  Alexander  III,  in  1894. 

WE  come  now  to  some  errors  on  the 
subject  of  pre-revolutionary  condi- 
tions: 

Misinformation  {Item  9) 

"The  last  statistics  published  under  the 
Tsars  have  shown  that  19%  oi  the  popu- 
lation was  illiterate.  In  1937  this  figure 
had  dropped  to  10%." — Emil  Ludwig, 
Stalin,  p.  138. 

The  Facts 
Izvestia,  official  organ  of  the  Soviet  gov- 
ernment, in  its  issue  of  January  3,  1936, 
stated  the  proportion  of  literacy  in  Russia 
on  the  eve  of  the  Revolution  as  33  per  cent 
and  asserted  that  25  per  cent  of  the  Rus- 
sian people  were  literate  in  1897.  Some 
non-Soviet  sources  estimate  literacy  in 
1914  as  high  as  40  or  even  45  per  cent  and 
recall  plans  of  the  Ministry  of  Education 
which,   if  realized,   would   have   largely 


eliminated  illiteracy  in  the  thirties.  The 
latest  Soviet  census,  of  1939,  showed  that 
81.2  per  cent  of  the  population  was  literate 
at  that  time,  the  figures  being  89.5  per 
cent  for  the  cities,  76.8  per  cent  for  the 
country  districts.  (Cited  in  the  Soviet 
publication  Planovoye  Kho^aistvo,  No.  5, 
for  1940.) 

Misinformation  {Item  70) 

^'Eighty  per  cent  of  the  soldiers  in  the 
armies  of  the  Tsars  were  illiterate.  .  .  . 
The  ragamuffin  army  of  the  Tsars  .  .  ." — 
Wallace  Carroll,  We're  in  This  with  Russia^ 
pp.  109,  135. 

The  Facts 

"From  1902  on,  in  the  infantry  and  field 
artillery,  obligatory  literacy  schools  for 
recruits  were  made  the  order  of  the  day. 
This  was  no  mean  task:  in  1905  there  still 
were  59%  of  illiterates  among  them  as 
against  95%  in  1865."  (D.  FedotofT- 
White,  The  Growth  of  the  Red  Army,  p.  258, 
citing  as  source  of  information  an  authori- 
tative work  on  the  old  Russian  army  by 
General  A.  I.  Denikin.) 

A  "ragamuffin  army"  could  never  have 
made  as  good  a  showing,  relatively  speak- 
ing, as  the  old  Russian  army  made  against 
the  German  and  Austrian  forces. 


w 


III 

E  proceed  with  some  errors  about 
Stalin: 


Misinformation  {Item  77) 

*yoseph  Ilarionovich  Stalin  was  host  to 
a  hundred  or  more  diplomats,  soldiers  and 
sailors  from  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain.  .  .  .  Stalin  .  .  .  frequently  lapses 
into  Biblical  or  religious  phraseology." — 
Wallace  Carroll,  We're  in  This  with  Russia, 
pp.  140-142. 

The  Facts 

Stalin's  patronymic  is  Vissarionovich. 
A  careful  study  of  his  speeches  and  writings 
reveals  no  traces  of  Biblical  or  religious 
phraseology. 

Misinformation  {Item  12) 

"His  [Stalin's]  integration  with  his 
countrymen  is  the  result  equally  of  cir- 


410 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


cumstances  and  of  art — of  circumstances 
because  he  is  one  of  them,  a  Russian  work- 
ingman." — Arthur  Upham  Pope,  Litvi- 
nqff,  p.  268. 

•••A 

The  Facts 

Stalin's  only  trade  or  occupation  before 
the  Revolution  was  that  of  a  professional 
revolutionary.  And  strictly  speaking  he  is 
not  Russian,  being  a  Georgian  by  origin. 

And  now  some  errors  on  the  subject  of 
jr\,  Soviet  policies,  institutions,  and  con- 
ditions: 

Misinformation  (Item  13) 

"The  total  revenue  (profits)  from  indus- 
try in  1934  was  approximately  thirty  bil- 
lion rubles;  in  1935  this  had  increased  to 
approximately  fifty-one  billion  rubles,  and 
in  1936  to  sixty-two  billion  rubles." — 
Joseph  E.  Davies,  Mission  to  Moscow,  p. 
184. 

The  Facts 

The  contribution  to  the  national  budget 
from  the  profits  of  industries  (all  state- 
owned  in  the  Soviet  Union)  was  1.7  billion 
rubles  in  1935,  3.2  billion  rubles  in  1936. 
Mr.  Davies  apparently  confused  two  very 
different  figures:  the  gross  value  of  indus- 
trial production  and  the  revenue  from 
the  profits  of  the  nationalized  industries. 
(See  statement  of  Professor  Michael  T. 
Florinsky  in  The  Russian  Review  for  April, 
1942,  pp.  105-106.) 

Misinformation  {Item  14) 

"It  [the  Soviet  Union]  consists  of  six  feder- 
ated Republics." — Dorothy  Thompson  in 
her  syndicated  column  of  January  12, 
1944. 

The  Facts 

The  number  of  Union  Republics  (the 
highest  administrative  units  in  the  Soviet 
federative  system)  in  1939  was  eleven,  as 
follows:  Russia,  Ukraina,  White  Russia, 
Georgia,  Armenia,  Azerbaijan,  Kazakh- 
stan, Uzbekistan,  Turkmenistan,  Tadjiki- 
stan, Kirghizia.  Since  that  time  the 
Soviet  government  has  proclaimed  the 
existence  of  five  more  such  republics:  the 
Karelo-Finnish,  the  Latvian,  Lithuanian, 
Estonian,  and  Moldavian. 


ii 


Misinformation  {Item  75) 

*' Bolshevism  is  a  form  of  society  under 
which  everyone  is  working  seven  hours  a 
day,  reduced  to  six  in  the  case  of  danger- 
ous occupations.  For  80%  of  the  workers 
every  sixth  day  is  free,  for  the  other  20% 
every  fifth." — Emil  Ludwig,  Stalin,  p.  196. 

The  Facts 

The  publication  date  of  Stalin  is  1942. 
The    eight-hour    working    day    and    the  \ 
seven-day  working  week  were  made  the 
rule  in  Soviet  industrial  establishments  by 
government  decree  in  June,  1 940. 

IV 

Soviet-Polish  relations   offer   a   wide- 
open  field  for  inaccuracies: 

Misinformation  {Item  16) 

"Perhaps  with  some  reason  they  [the 
Poles]  feared  that  if  Soviet  armies  entered 
Poland,  even  for  its  defense,  the  eastern  J 
part  of  Poland  might  be  lost  for  good.  ^ 
The  population  of  the  region  was  pre- 
dominantly Russian,   and  Lord   Curzon,  , 
acting  in  behalf  of  the  Supreme  Allied  < 
Council,  had  prudently  assigned  that  sec- 
tion of  the  country  to  the  Russians." — 
Arthur  Upham  Pope,  Litvinoff,  pp.  448- 
449. 

The  Facts 

While  there  is  no  reason  to  question  the 
accuracy  of  the  first  of  these  sentences,  the 
second  is  a  medley  of  inaccuracies.  In 
the  first  place,  if  the  term  "Russian"  is 
used  exactly,  it  is  evident  that  there  are 
very  few  Russians  in  eastern  Poland,  and 
that  by  any  method  of  computation  the 
Poles  form  a  large  proportion  of  the  popu- 
lation. The  latest  census  figures  for  the 
area  occupied  by  the  Soviet  Union  after 
the  German-Soviet  pact  are  as  follows: 
Poles,  5,250,000;  Ukrainians,  4,500,000; 
White  Russians  (in  the  racial,  not  political 
sense),  1,100,000;  Jews,  1,100,000;  Rus- 
sians, 130,000;  miscellaneous  groups,  500,- 
000. 

Furthermore  neither  Lord  Curzon  nor 
the  Supreme  Allied  Council  ever  assigned 
the  territory  east  of  the  so-called  Curzon 
Line   (with  the  drawing  of  which  Lord 


INFORMATION,    PLEASE,    ABOUT    RUSSIA 


411 


Curzon  had  little  to  do)  definitely  to 
Russia.  1 1  was  considered  a  minimum,  not 
a  maximum  eastern  frontier  of  Poland. 

Misinjormation  {Item  17) 

"Britain,  by  the  Treaty  of  1939,  is  com- 
mitted to  restore  an  independent  Poland 
with  its  pre-war  western  frontiers.  When 
the  Treaty  was  made  the  British  govern- 
ment was  trying  to  make  an  alliance  with 
Russia,  and  did  not  dream  of  encouraging 
Russia's  suspicions,  already  aroused  by 
Munich,  that  Poland  might  become  part  of 
the  anti-Soviet  bloc." — Dorothy  Thomp- 
son, in  her  syndicated  column  of  January 
11,  1944. 

The  Facts 

No  distinction  between  Poland's  west- 
ern and  eastern  boundaries  is  recognized 
in  the  text  of  the  Anglo-Polish  Treaty  of 
August  25,  1939,  pledging  each  party  to 
give  the  other  "all  the  support  and  assist- 
ance in  its  power"  in  the  event  of  either 
"becoming  engaged  in  hostilities  with  a 
European  power  in  consequence  of  ag- 
gression by  the  latter  against  that  Con- 
tracting Party."  (Art.  I.)  Inasmuch  as 
the  Soviet-German  pact  of  non-aggression 
had  been  signed  two  days  earlier,  on 
August  23rd,  the  British  government  could 
have  cherished  little  hope,  just  at  that 
time,  of  "making  Russia  an  ally." 

Misinformation  {Item  18) 

"The  Russian  position  with  regard  to 
eastern  Poland  rests  on  three, main  argu- 
ments: 

"(1)  The  inhabitants  of  the  disputed 
territories  are  racially  identical  with  those 
of  the  White  Russian  and  Ukrainian  So- 
viet Republics;  (2)  the  inclusion  of  these 
lands  in  Poland  was  accomplished  by 
force  majeure,  when  the  Western  powers, 
ganging  up  on  the  struggling  Soviet 
Union,  compelled  it  to  sign  the  Treaty  of 
Riga  in  1920.  .  .  . 

"The  first  and  second  of  these  proposi- 
tions are  indubitably  true." — The  Nation^ 
January  15,  1944. 

The  Facts 
Far  from  being  indubitably  true,  both 
these  propositions  are  demonstrably  false. 
For  the  facts  about  the  very  mixed  racial 


composition  of  the  territory  in  Poland 
seized  by  the  Soviet  Union  in  1939  the 
reader  may  refer  to  Item  16.  As  for  the 
second  proposition,  the  Treaty  of  Riga,  in 
its  final  form,  was  signed  not  in  1920,  but 
on  March  18,  1921.  (See  Taracouzio, 
War  and  Peace  in  Soviet  Diplomacy,  p.  317;  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica  article  on  Poland; 
or  any  standard  collection  of  diplomatic 
documents.)  Nor  is  there  any  evidence 
from  Soviet  or  other  sources  that  the  West- 
ern powers  interfered  with  the  Polish- 
Soviet  negotiations  that  led  up  to  the 
signature  of  the  Treaty  of  Riga. 


K 


ND  now  let  us  look  at  a  couple  of  mis- 
cellaneous items: 


Misinformation  {Item  19) 

"The  Treason  Trials  which  took  place 
in  the  thirties,  not  only  of  old  Bolshevik 
comrades  of  Lenin  and  opponents  of 
Stalin's  subsequent  policy,  but  also  of  the 
best  known  commanding  officers  of  the 
Red  Army,  many  of  whom  had  been 
Tsarist  Generals  .  .  ." — Beatrice  and  Sid- 
ney Webb,  The  Truth  About  Soviet  Russia^ 
pp.  67-68. 

The  Facts 

Eight  men  were  put  to  death  after  the 
only  reported  military  treason  trial,  in 
1937,  which  was  held  behind  closed  doors. 
They  were  Marshal  M.  N.  Tukhachevsky, 
and  Generals  I.  E.  Yakir,  I.  P.  Uborevich, 
A.  I.  Kork,  V.  M.  Primakov,  B.  M.  Feld- 
man,  G.  K.  Putna,  and  R.  P.  Eideman. 
Not  one  of  these  men  had  held  the  rank  of 
general  in  the  Tsarist  army.  Some,  like 
Tukhachevsky,  had  been  officers  in  the 
army  before  the  Revolution,  but  with  rank 
lower  than  that  of  general.  Others,  like 
Primakov,  were  revolutionaries  who  de- 
veloped military  talent  during  the  Civil 
War.  All  emerged  into  national  promi- 
nence as  leaders  of  the  Red  Army,  not  of 
the  Tsarist  army. 

Misinformation  {Item  20) 

*'We  searched  in  vain  for  Kuibyshev  on 
our  maps.  Finally  we  decided  it  must  be 
the  Volga  city  once  called  Samarra.  All 
that  I  knew  of  Samarra  was  its  use  as  a 
part  of  the  title  of  the  book.  Appointment  in 
Samarra.^^ — Larry  Lesueur,  Twelve  Months 
That  Changed  the  World,  p.  18. 


412 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


■ 


The  Facts 

Samara,  the  Volga  town  which  has 
been  renamed  Kuibyshev,  is  in  the  Soviet 
Union.     Samarra  is  iii  Iraq. 


YJERE,  then,  are  a  number  of  demon- 
JlI  strable  misstatements  of  fact  about 
Russia  that  have  appeared  in  print  in 
America  over  a  comparatively  brief  range 
of  time.  If  time  and  place  permitted,  the 
list  could  easily  be  expanded  tenfold  or 
even  a  hundredfold.  But  the  examples 
that  have  been  cited  certainly  drive  home 
the  point  that  the  uninformed  American 
reader  is  often  not  getting  a  square  deal  in 
this  important  matter  of  factual  informa- 
tion about  Russia,  past  and  present. 

The  character  of  the  misstatements 
varies  from  slips  on  names,  dates,  and 
identities  to  sweeping  misrepresentations 
of  historical  facts  and  social  and  economic 
conditions.  But  I  do  not  think  it  can 
fairly  be  regarded  as  quibbling  to  point 
out  what  might  seem  to  be  minor  blun- 
ders. Very  often  these  reveal  and  reflect 
a  depressing  lack  of  thorough  background 
knowledge  of  the  subject.  We  would  cer- 
tainly, and  justly,  be  disposed  to  question 
the  credentials  of  a  foreign  writer  on 
America  who  would  place  General  Grant 
in  command  at  the  Battle  of  New  Orleans, 
or  describe  the  Union  as  consisting  of 
twenty-eight  states,  or  mix  up  important 
facts  about  the  lives  of  two  of  our  leading 
poets,  such  as  Whitman  and  Poe. 

Most  of  the  howlers  that  crop  up  with 
such  disconcerting  frequency  in  our  refer- 
ences to  Russia  can  be  set  down  to  our 
national  vice  of  writing  too  much  too  fast, 
combined  with  our  general  unfamiliarity 


with  Russian  history  and  institutions, 
Tsarist  and  Soviet.  Two  conscious  or  un- 
conscious propaganda  patterns  can  also 
be  discerned  in  some  of  the  blunders  which 
have  been  listed.  There  is  sometimes  an 
effort  to  build  up  synthetic  goodwill  to- 
ward the  Soviet  Union  by  misrepresenting 
historically  indisputable  facts,  even  of  very 
recent  occurrence.  And  some  writers  get 
into  the  habit  of  trying  to  exalt  the  Soviet 
regime  by  indulging  in  exaggerated  and 
undiscriminating  disparagement  of  Russia 
before  the  Revolution. 

Neither  of  these  techniques  seems  to  me 
admirable  in  itself  or  likely  to  serve  any 
good  purpose.  The  case  for  amicable 
future  relations  between  the  United  States 
and  the  Soviet  Union  is  so  firmly  rooted  ii 
the  interests  of  the  two  peoples  that  it 
needs  no  support  from  false  testimonyj 
And  false  testimony,  especially  in  a  coun- 
try where  there  is  freedom  of  speech  an< 
of  the  press,  is  likely  to  backfire. 

Just  now,  when  the  Soviet  Union  is  be- 
coming more  nationalistic,  more  conscious 
of  its  debt  to  the  Russian  past,  edu- 
cated Soviet  Russians  would  probably  feel 
amused  or  even  offended,  rather  than 
flattered,  by  exaggerated  blackening  of 
their  country's  condition  before  the  Revo- 
lution. Ignorance  is  seldom,  if  ever,  a 
source  of  effective  goodwill. 

Perhaps  we  may  hope  that  a  postwar 
period  of  closer  contact  with  Russia,  of 
wider  American  study  of  Russian  lan- 
guage, history,  and  literature,  will  produce 
the  wholesome  effect  of  purging  our  writ- 
ing about  Russia  of  the  crude  factual  er- 
rors that  are  still  so  numerous.  Mean- 
while, it  seems  clear  that  the  watchword 
for  the  independent  seeker  for  truth  about 
Russia  should  be:  "On  Guard!" 


THE    SOVIET   WOOING   OF 
PALESTINE 

Russian- British  Competition  in  the  Middle  East 


ELIAHU     BEN-HORIN 


IT  IS  likely  that  from  now  on  Americans 
will  be  more  sharply  observant  of 
Soviet  foreign  policy  than  they  have 
been  in  the  past.  For  twenty  years  prac- 
tically all  discussion  about  the  Soviet 
Union  in  the  United  States  was  devoted  to 
the  question  of  whether  or  not  the  Soviet 
"experiment"  was  the  hope  of  mankind  or 
a  conspiracy  of  devils. 

It  is  different  now.  The  Soviet  Union 
has  ceased  to  be  an  experiment.  Russia 
will  emerge  from  the  conflict  the  largest 
nation  in  the  western  world,  the  most 
spectaculai'ly  victorious  and  aggressive, 
and  presumably  the  most  expansionist  in 
its  foreign  policy.  From  now  on  that  for- 
eign policy  will  be  the  concern  of  every 
American  interested  in  the  fate  of  the 
world — a  world  in  which  America  finds 
itself  constantly  included. 

By  now  Russia's  intentions  in  respect  to 
the  Baltic  states  and  Poland  are  tolerably 
clear.  Russia's  postwar  predominance  in 
the  Balkans  is  accepted  as  a  fact.  But 
Russian  plans  about  the  Middle  East  are 
not  clear  at  all.  It  is  in  this  area  that  the 
aspirations  of  Russia  and  Great  Britain 
conflict.  Britain  is  satisfied  if  somehow 
the  balance  of  power  can  be  maintained  on 
the  Continent.  There  she  will  concede, 
compromise,  or  do  whatever  seems  best. 


But  in  the  Middle  East  she  has  no  choice. 

That  strategically  placed  area,  linking 
three  continents,  dominating  waterways 
and  land  routes  alike,  and  controlling 
world  communications  and  trade,  has  be- 
come the  most  important  single  area  in  the 
structure  of  the  British  Empire.  As  the 
London  Times  put  it  recently,  "No  single 
factor  is  more  vital  to  Britain's  status  as  a 
great  power  than  her  power  and  prestige 
in  the  Middle  East.   .   .   ." 

Britain  is  not  likely  to  become  involved 
in  a  major  conflict  with  Russia  over  Poland 
or  Yugoslavia  or  any  other  Continental 
country.  If  these  two  powers  do  clash  in 
the  future,  the  Middle  East  will  be  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  the  bone  of  contention. 
Back  in  1892,  when  old  Russia  wanted  to 
stake  a  claim  in  the  Middle  East,  Lord 
Curzon  spoke  out  in  unmistakable  lan- 
guage: "It  can  only  be  prosecuted  in  the 
teeth  of  international  morality,  in  defiance 
of  civilized  opinion,  and  with  the  ultimate 
certainty  of  a  war  with  this  country  that 
would  ring  from  pole  to  pole."  Today,  as 
in  1892,  without  the  Middle  East  there  is 
no  British  Empire. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  recent 
rapprochement  between  Russia  and  Pales- 
tine merits  more  than  casual  notice,  es- 
pecially in  view  of  the  steady  deterioration 


414 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


in  British-Zionist  relations.  The  Pales- 
tine policy  of  Great  Britain,  set  forth  in  the 
White  Paper  of  1939,  cancels  past  pledges 
and  calls  for  a  stoppage  of  Jewish  immigra- 
tion into  Palestine.  Furthermore,  it  se- 
verely restricts  Jewish  land  purchase  in 
ninety-five  per  cen  of  western  Palestine. 
As  a  result,  the  Zionists  and  the  Zionist 
supporters  are  up  in  arms  against  Britain's 
colonial  policy,  and  the  way  is  open  to  the 
Russians. 

II 

FOR  years  Zionism  was  taboo  in  Soviet 
Russia.  All  through  the  Bolshevist 
revolution,  the  Red  terror,  and  after- 
wards, Zionism  was  persecuted  more 
severely  than  any  other  national  move- 
ment. The  beloved  epithet  of  the  Soviet 
official  literature  and  propaganda  for  the 
designation  of  Zionists  was  "the  lackeys  of 
British  imperialism."  Zionist  leaders  were 
sent  to  prison  and  Siberia,  or  driven  out  of 
the  country.  Furthermore,  the  Hebrew 
language  held  the  distinction  of  being  the 
only  language  considered  by  the  Bolshe- 
viks as  counter-revolutionary  per  se.  He- 
brew, the  language  of  the  Bible,  had  been 
revived  in  Palestine  and  formed  one  of  the 
main  spiritual  ingredients  of  Jewish  na- 
tional renaissance  as  sponsored  by  the 
Zionist  movement.  For  this  reason  the 
Soviet  regime,  among  the  many  lan- 
guages spoken  and  studied  by  the  peoples 
of  Russia,  officially  outlawed  Hebrew. 
In  1 920  the  Commissariat  for  Public  Edu- 
cation issued  an  order  prohibiting  the 
teaching  of  Hebrew  in  all  schools.  Of- 
fenders were  subject  to  imprisonment  and 
exile.  Needless  to  say,  the  Jewish  religion 
was  as  relentlessly  persecuted  as  other 
religions. 

The  reasons  for  the  special  attention 
paid  by  the  Bolsheviks  to  the  Jewish  na- 
tional movement  were  clear.  From  the 
Bolshevist  viewpoint  the  Zionist  enterprise 
in  Palestine  represented  a  deal  between 
Jewish  nationalism  and  British  imperial- 
ism. There  was  no  denying  the  fact  that 
Zionism  was  to  function  under  the  aegis  of 
Great  Britain  and  in  harmony  with  British 
imperial  interests.  Soviet  Russia,  on  the 
other  hand,  laid  much  emphasis  in  those 
years  on  revolutionary  propaganda  among 
the  backward    masses   of  the    East.     In 


fact,  for  a  number  of  years,  the  main 
efforts  of  the  Comintern  were  directed 
toward  the  East,  and  this  was  the  chief 
source  of  irritation  in  British-Soviet  rela- 
tions. Britain  could  not  forgive  the  Mos- 
cow revolutionaries  their  attempts  to 
undermine  the  established  order  and  Brit- 
ish prestige  in  Persia,  India,  Afghanistan, 
and  other  lands  of  the  East  and  the  Middle 
East. 

With  the  liquidation  of  all  internal  anti- 
Bolshevist  forces  in  Russia,  Zionism  had 
become  the  only  movement  with  external 
connections  officially  maintaining  a  kind  of 
an  alliance  with  Great  Britain.  This  in 
itself  would  suffice  to  prejudice  the  Soviet 
regime  badly  against  Zionism.  But  there 
were  also  other  factors  at  play.  In  Febru- 
ary, 1917,  after  the  democratic  revolution 
in  Russia,  there  was  a  burst  of  pro-Zionist 
sentiment  among  the  millions  of  Russia's 
Jews.  With  the  Bolshevist  revolution  the 
halfway  ideologies  and  political  parties 
lost  all  ground  with  Russian  Jewry.  Only 
two  forces  remained,  competing  for  the 
souls  of  the  Jews:  Zionism  and  Bolshevism. 
Given  an  equal  chance,  Zionism  would 
probably  have  won  the  day,  both  nu- 
merically and  spiritually.  But  very  soon 
Bolshevism  had  all  the  power,  and  Zionism 
was  driven  underground.  The  Com- 
munist Party,  and  particularly  its  "Jewish 
Section,"  entrusted  with  the  management 
of  Jewish  affairs,  never  forgot  nor  forgave 
the  Zionists  their  past  competition. 

In  addition,  the  Soviet  regime  encoun- 
tered considerable  difficulty  in  applying 
the  Bolshevist  doctrine  to  Jewish  realities 
in  Russia.  The  three  million  Jews  in 
Soviet  Russia  had  no  territory  of  their 
own.  Accordingly,  they  could  not  be 
treated  as  a  separate  national  group.  On 
the  other  hand,  however,  they  undoubt- 
edly formed  a  very  distinct  group  not 
easily  assimilable  among  the  Ukrainians, 
White  Russians,  Great  Russians,  and  the 
other  numerous  peoples  of  the  Soviet 
Union,  among  whom  they  lived  as  minori- 
ties. Traders  and  middle-class  people  in 
overwhelming  majority,  the  Jews,  given 
full  equality  of  rights  and  economic  oppor- 
tunity by  the  new  regime,  soon  flocked 
into  the  factories,  free  professions,  govern- 
ment employment,  the  schools  and  uni- 
versities.    Anti-Semitism  was  outlawed  by 


"iHE    SOVIET    WOOIxNG    OF    PALESTINE 


415 


the  Soviet  government,  but  there  was 
little  doubt  that  an  increasingly  dispropor- 
tionate participation  of  the  Jews  in  the 
government  machinery  and  in  free  pro- 
fessions would  lead  to  a  new  upsurge  of 
anti-Jewish  feelings.  The  Soviet  govern- 
ment then  decided  to  revise  its  Jewish 
policy,  and  embarked  on  an  experiment 
which  had  all  the  earmarks  of  an  imitation 
Zionism.  They  tried  to  establish  autono- 
mous Jewish  settlements,  first  in  the  Cri- 
mea, then  in  Biro-Bidjan,  which,  if  success- 
ful, would  have  brought  about  a  territorial 
concentration  of  the  Jews.  The  Crimean 
and  Biro-Bidjan  ventures  failed,  while  at 
the  same  time  the  Zionist  colonization  in 
Palestine  was  flourishing.  This  added 
fuel  to  the  flame  of  anti-Zionist  feelings. 

In  line  wdth  this  definite  anti-Zionism  of 
the  Soviet  government  and  Russia's  nat- 
ural objection  to  British  predominance  in 
the  Middle  East,  Soviet  Russia  backed  the 
Palestinian  Arabs  against  the  Jews.  Com- 
intern funds  were  lavishly  spent  to  foster 
anti-Zionist  and  anti-British  intrigues  and 
revolts  in  Palestine.  Acts  of  hooliganism 
and  murder  performed  by  Arab  bands 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Jerusalem  ex- 
mufti  were  welcomed  in  official  Bolshevist 
publications  as  legitimate  deeds  of  "the 
vanguard  of  the  Arab  liberation  movement 
fighting  against  British-Zionist  capitalistic 
exploitation.   .   .   ." 

It  seemed  as  if  no  bridge  could  ever  be 
built  over  the  abyss  dividing  Soviet  Russia 
from  Zionism. 

Ill 

ris  a  long  way  from  Bolshevist  political 
comment  of  this  character  to  the  re- 
marks made  in  1943  by  a  leading  Soviet 
diplomat  to  a  Jewish  delegation.  "Back 
in  the  twenties,"  he  is  reported  to  have 
said,  "we  could  not  but  consider  Zionism 
as  an  agency  of  British  imperialism.  And 
we  were  bound  to  treat  you  accordingly. 
Now,  however,"  the  Soviet  diplomat  con- 
tinued, "the  whole  situation  has  changed. 
Not  only  Britain  and  Zionism  seem  to  be 
at  a  constant  variance,  but  our  outlook, 
too,  has  undergone  a  serious  evolution. 
Should  Soviet  Russia  be  interested  in  the 
future  in  the  Middle  East,  it  would  be 
obvious  that  the  advanced  and  progressive 
Jews  of  Palestine  hold  out  much  more 


promise  for  us  than  the  backward  Arabs 
controlled  by  feudal  cliques  of  kings  and 
effendis." 

This  was  a  very  important  pronounce- 
ment, and  was  soon  followed  by  several 
other  indications  of  Soviet  Russia's  chang- 
ing interest  in  Palestine  and  Zionism. 
Early  in  October,  1943,  Ivan  Maisky,  the 
former  Soviet  Ambassador  to  the  Court  of 
St.  James's  and  now  Vice-Commissar  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  visited  Palestine,  a  signifi- 
cant event  in  itself.  It  was  the  first  time  a 
Soviet  dignitary  had  paid  a  visit  to  what 
the  Russians  had  formerly  called  the  land 
of  "Zionist-British  capitalistic  exploita- 
tion." And  it  was  not  a  purely  formal 
visit.  Mr.  Maisky  toured  the  Jewish 
colonies,  settlements,  and  industries,  and 
discussed  with  Zionist  leaders  the  problem 
of  Palestine's  absorptive  capacity  and  the 
postwar  solution  of  the  Jewish  problem. 
There  is  little  doubt  that,  upon  his  return 
to  Moscow,  he  submitted  a  comprehensive 
report  both  on  Jewish  achievements  in  the 
Holy  Land  and  on  Palestine's  potentiali- 
ties. It  is  also  worth  mentioning  that 
according  to  rumor  Stalin  raised  the 
Palestinian  question  at  the  Teheran  Con- 
ference, thus  serving  notice  on  Churchill 
that  henceforth  Soviet  Russia  is  no  longer 
disinterested  in  the  future  disposition  of 
Palestine  and  the  Middle  East. 

A  series  of  earlier  developments  had 
helped  to  break  the  ice  in  Soviet-Zionist 
relations.  With  the  German  invasion  of 
Russia  and  the  marked  changes  of  the 
spirit  of  the  Soviet  regime,  Russian  Jewry 
had  been  allowed — for  the  first  time  since 
the  Bolshevist  revolution — to  acknowledge 
and  openly  proclaim  the  ties  linking  the 
Jews  of  Russia  to  world  Jewry.  If  it 
were  not  for  the  fact  that  the  progress  of 
the  war  absorbed  so  great  a  share  of  pop- 
ular interest,  this  revolutionary  change 
in  the  Jewish  policy  of  the  Soviet  regime 
would  have,  no  doubt,  attracted  consider- 
able excited  attention.  Appeals  of  Rus- 
sian Jewry  to  world  Jewry  were  published 
and  given  much  prominence.  Later,  in 
June,  1 943,  a  special  Soviet  Jewish  dele- 
gation was  dispatched  to  America  and 
England.  Even  if  their  primary  aim  was 
to  mobilize  help  for  the  Soviet  Union, 
there  remained  the  significant  fact  that 
they  spoke  "in  behalf  of  the  Jews  of  the 


416 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Soviet  Union  to  their  American  brothers." 
In  their  numerous  statements  and  speeches, 
in  the  United  States  and  in  England,  the 
Soviet  Jewish  delegates  spoke  of  that 
brotherhood  as  of  §n  undeniable  fact. 
One  had  to  live  through  the  revolution  in 
Russia  and  closely  follow  the  developments 
there  since,  as  I  did,  to  appreciate  fully  the 
significance  of  this  change.  Soviet  dele- 
gates, whether  Jewish  or  otherwise,  do  not 
indulge  in  impromptu  pronouncements. 
What  Professor  Solomon  Michoels  and 
Colonel  Itzik  Feffer,  the  Soviet  Jewish 
delegates,  declared  in  New  York  had  been 
previously  approved  by  Moscow. 

The  Michoels-FefFer  delegation  was  not 
the  only  expression  of  this  radical  change 
of  attitude.  The  Soviet  government  has 
given  numerous  other  signs  of  its  mounting 
interest  in  Palestine.  Late  in  1943  it  was 
announced  that  a  special  Soviet  Jewish 
delegation  may  soon  visit  Palestine.  Early 
in  January,  1944,  an  exhibition  showing 
the  progress  of  Jewish  colonization  in 
Palestine  was  admitted  into  Russia.  This 
in  itself  was  an  extraordinary  concession  to 
Zionism,  as  the  Soviet  government  had 
not  previously  allowed  any  demonstration 
of  Zionist  achievements.  The  courtesy 
of  the  Soviet  authorities  went  so  far  as  to 
have  the  Palestinian  exhibits  flown  in  a 
Russian  plane  to  Moscow.  A  few  days 
later,  Moscow  announced  the  establish- 
ment of  a  special  Bureau  for  Jewish  Re- 
ligious Affairs.  Another  small  news  item 
may  be  even  more  indicative  of  Russia's 
revived  interest  in  the  Middle  East.  Late 
in  January,  1944,  the  Soviet  govern- 
ment opened  negotiations  with  the  Egyp- 
tian government  with  regard  to  the  status 
of  eight  hundred  Russian  Jews  living  in 
Egypt.  If  we  bear  in  mind  that  these 
eight  hundred  Jews  have  been  living  in 
Egypt  many  years,  the  timing  of  the  nego- 
tiations is  not  without  interest. 

IV 

AN  OUTLET  to  the  warm  seas  is  one  of  the 
J\^  main  traditional  objectives  of  Russia's 
foreign  policy,  both  in  Europe  and  in 
Asia,  where  the  policy  dictated  the  acqui- 
sition of  Port  Arthur.  No  state  of  Russia's 
size  and  interests  can  agree  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  another  power  in  such  a  vital 


matter  as  free  admission  to  the  waterways 
of  the  world.  This,  however,  is  the  situa- 
tion in  which  Russia  finds  itself  in  southern 
Europe:  the  Bosporus,  the  only  opening  in 
the  Black  Sea,  leading  through  the  Sea  of 
Marmora,  the  Dardanelles,  and  the  Aegean 
to  the  Mediterranean,  is  controlled  by 
Turkey.  Hence  the  traditional  and  per- 
sistent scheming  and  fighting  of  Russia  for 
the  possession  of  the  Straits,  and  Turkey's 
fear  of  Russia  more  than  of  any  other 
power  under  the  sun. 

In  the  general  postwar  settlement, 
Russia  may  get  a  certain  preferential 
position  in  the  Straits  that  will  safeguard 
the  freedom  of  Russian  navigation  in  war 
and  peace,  and  secure  the  shores  of  the 
Black  Sea.  Soviet  Russia  may  also  suc- 
ceed in  obtaining  free  access  to  the  Medi- 
terranean via  the  Adriatic.  If  one  as- 
sumes that  Yugoslavia  may  be  granted  her 
demand  for  the  annexation  of  Trieste  and 
Fiume,  and  that  postwar  Yugoslavia  will 
be  both  Pan-Slavic  and  pro-Soviet,  Russia 
may  be  able  to  use  the  Yugoslav  harbors 
almost  as  her  own.  Yet  even  under  these 
very  favorable  circumstances  Russia  will 
still  lack  a  foothold  or  a  sphere  of  influence 
anywhere  along  the  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Russia  has  no  standing  whatso- 
ever either  in  Africa  or  in  the  Middle  East. 

As  it  is  today,  the  Mediterranean  is 
likely  to  be  after  this  war,  more  than  ever 
before,  a  "mare  nostrum"  of  Britain. 
With  the  collapse  of  Mussolini's  empire, 
Britain  took  full  possession  of  all  ex-Italian 
colonies  in  Northern  Africa,  including 
Abyssinia.  AMG  administration,  based 
on  an  American-British  partnership  and 
envisaging  a  wider  co-operation  of  all 
Allied  powers,  was  introduced  in  Sicily 
and  Italy,  namely  in  liberated  Europe, 
not  in  Africa.  There  the  administration 
is  exclusively  British.  Abyssinia,  by  the 
terms  of  her  treaty  with  Great  Britain,  was 
made  practically  a  British  protectorate. 

A  look  at  the  map  will  make  clear  the 
unbroken  line  of  Britain's  complete  pre- 
dominance in  the  Mediterranean  up  to 
the  Red  Sea  and  the  Persian  Gulf.  From 
Tunisia  all  along  the  African  coast  to  the 
Suez  Canal,  then  along  the  Canal  and  the 
Red  Sea  to  the  Arabian  Sea,  the  whole 
area  will  be  under  British  control.  The 
same  applies  to  the  strategically  placed 


THE    SOVIET    WOOING    OF    PALESTINE 


417 


ALGERIA 


■/■  .-K    .  RUMANIA     .  . 

:v.-y^:-.vV:?;:^V::fc'- 

r<Jk;'.  ./BULGARI/V 

l^.v-  :~-i.^-  •  •  •  •    .  ■ 


SOCIALIST;. 


RCPUDLICS: 


NIGERIA 

^/lv*^^•••)^7■•■•■//•;'/:^*/^V '•'•'•  ■•'ANGLO-' ^   /  '  '.•i-^iKv^lSv 

•: •••••:••:;>•  •:Ai:^.^v^••^•^•  •.*•'••*••  '••••  ■■•.••  '•■.•  •  ■•  *.  "vl  i^J7\?i 

■.'.*•:•••/•■.:•*.•/■••..•  .■•v/. •.■.•••'•  •.-.■.■•.•EGYPTIAN.'.  •  .•  •  --i-^   1^/    :■: 
.•.'^/.•.•V.'.''\;\-.7.-  .".•        •••;.■.  :"^^  SUDAN'-:  -.'••'■■/•.V-^  /       h 

^•V;'  •  v'^''^^*<<y.-  ;.'•'•':  •.  '•  ■'.'.*.*  .*-4'-*  •  •*. '.'  •'■'■■(' '  .ETHIOPIA  /  "•  .'.^vi;.: 

l••VJ.^:^::•■^•/^^:••-•■•^v^■■:■■V;^::/^^•^••■•:l:•^ 

:r- V-.  •:;^/^/.v^^;;  ••::•  •^^>>S:•^•  •  :•^••i••\^^•••:•^■/ 


ARABIA 


Tnf 


ARABtAN     SEA 


Palestine:  Collision  Point  of  Empire 


islands  in  the  Mediterranean  and  to 
Palestine.  Furthermore  Syria  and  Leb- 
anon, with  the  weakening  of  French  pres- 
tige and  influence,  are  bound  to  depend 
on  Britain  and  fall  under  her  influence. 
The  map  also  shows  that  in  the  general 
Middle  Eastern  picture,  Palestine  occupies 
a  position  of  singular  strategic  importance. 
Palestine,  small  as  it  is  in  size,  is  the  virtual 
link  between  the  three  continents;  it  not 
only  lies  on  the  Mediterranean  but  is  close 
to  the  Suez  Canal;  it  serves  as  an  outlet  for 
Arabian  oil  and  is  the  natural  harbor  for 
all  the  outgoing  and  incoming  trade. 

It  is  obvious  that  any  demand  by  Russia 
for  a  share  in  the  African  continent  would 
encounter  great  opposition  on  the  part  of 
Britain  and  the  other  powers  dominating 


Africa.  This  opposition  would  be  strength- 
ened by  the  fact  that  Russia  never  had  any 
interests  in  Africa  and  has  no  direct  mari- 
time access  to  Africa.  One  may  assume 
that  Russia  will  not  raise  such  demands  at 
present. 

The  situation  is  totally  different  as 
far  as  the  Middle  East  is  concerned. 
The  Middle  East  offers  to  Russia  all  she 
wants — a  foothold  on  the  Mediterranean, 
a  central  place  in  world  trade  and  com- 
munications, and  an  enviable  strategic 
position.  The  southeastern  possessions  of 
Russia  extend  to  the  borders  of  the  Middle 
East.  Russia  is  the  only  great  power 
situated  so  close  to  the  Middle  East. 
Furthermore  Russia  has  always  been  very 
active  in  Persia,  where  she  has  had  con- 


418 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


siderable  political  and  economic  interests. 
As  to  Palestine,  prior  to  the  revolution 
Russia  was  very  diligent  in  building  re- 
ligious institutions  there.  The  number  of 
Russian  pilgrims  to  the  Holy  Places  was 
very  large  in  pre-Bolshevist  days. 

Certain  other  objective  conditions  may 
favor  a  Russian  penetration  via  Palestine 
into  the  Middle  East.  One  of  them  is  the 
social  structure  of  the  Jewish  colonization 
in  Palestine;  another  is  a  matter  of  lan- 
guage and  culture. 

The  Jewish  colonization  in  Palestine 
was  predominantly  socialistic  in  character. 
Many  agricultural  settlements  are  built 
either  on  communal  or  co-operative  prin- 
ciples. In  fact,  Palestine  can  boast  of 
better  achievements  in  the  field  of  eco- 
nomic communism  than  Soviet  Russia. 
Certainly  the  "Kwutzah"  settlements  in 
Palestine,  based  on  absolute  comity  of 
property  and  income,  were  a  more  perfect 
performance  than  the  "Kolkhoz"  in  Soviet 
Russia.  In  industry,  transport,  banking, 
and  trade,  co-operative  methods  also  were 
widely  applied.  The  labor  movement  is 
strong  in  Palestine,  and  the  Labor  Party  is 
predominant  in  world  Zionism.  If  Pales- 
tine were  independently  Jewish  today,  she 
would  have,  like  Australia  and  New  Zea- 
land, a  Labor  government. 

The  second  consideration,  language  and 
cultural  heritage,  is  also  of  importance. 
Of  the  550,000  Jews  in  Palestine,  those 
born  in  Russia  or  in  countries  of  Russian 
culture  form  probably  the  largest  group 
among  the  foreign  born.  Russian  is  still 
widely  spoken  and  read  in  Palestine.  A 
Paris  Russian  newspaper — the  Posledniya 
Novostiy  edited  by  the  late  Paul  Miliukov — 


before  the  war  had  a  daily  circulation  of 

about  8,000  in  Palestine,  which  approxi- 
mately equaled  the  average  circulation  of 
a  Hebrew  daily  in  Palestine.  The  Zionist 
leaders  of  distinction,  almost  without  ex- 
ception, have  been  Russian  born.  In  the 
past  there  were  Vladimir  Jabotinsky, 
Nahum  Sokolov,  Leo  Motzkin,  and  Mena- 
hem  Ussishkin — all  Russian  Jews,  as  are 
Chaim  Weitzmann,  David  Ben-Gurion, 
and  most  of  the  other  contemporary  lead- 
ers of  Palestinian  Jewry.  If  language  and 
culture  have  had  a  share  in  America's 
alliance  with  Great  Britain  in  this  war, 
they  may  yet  play  a  part  in  Russian- 
Jewish  rapprochement  over  Palestine. 

In  conclusion,  one  more  factor,  and  not 
the  least  important,  should  be  mentioned. 
Unfortunately,  British  imperialistic  policy 
has  been  disposed  to  align  itself  with  the 
most  reactionary  and  backward  elements; 
in  the  colonial  world.  In  the  Middle 
East,  British  conservatives  have  preferred 
an  alliance  with  the  feudalistic  cliques  of 
Arab  notables  to  an  alliance  with  the 
European  colonizer,  the  Jew.  These  cir- 
cumstances may  push  Soviet  Russia  into 
an  active  alliance  with  Palestinian  Jewry, 
giving  unconditional  support  for  a  Jewish 
Palestine.  By  pursuing  such  a  policy, 
Soviet  Russia  might  not  only  gain  the  ever- 
lasting gratitude  of  many  Jewish  groups 
throughout  the  world  and  the  approval  of 
the  various  nations  in  Europe  interested  in 
the  emigration  of  the  Jews  living  in  their 
countries,  but  would  also  create  for  itself 
an  excellent  position  in  the  Middle  East. 

The  latter  argument  would  probably 
count  most  in  the  calculations  of  the 
Soviet  statesmen. 


THE    ARMY    QUITS    THE    COLLEGES 


ROBERT    G.    HAW LEY 


N  THE  1 8th  of  February  the  War  De- 
partment abruptly  announced  that 
the  Army  SpeciaHzed  Training 
Program  would  be  slashed;  110,000  of 
the  140,000  soldiers  who  were  attending 
classes  at  222  colleges  and  universities  as 
guests  of  the  United  States  Army  were  to 
be  shifted  back  to  line  duty. 

The  outcry  from  educators  and  colleges 
was  instant,  loud,  and  bitter,  even  though 
35,000  men  taking  advanced  courses  in 
medicine,  dentistry,  and  engineering  would 
be  left  behind  along  with  some  5,000  pre- 
induction  students.  At  Niagara  Univer- 
sity it  was  said  that  the  Army's  step  'Vill 
clean  us  out."  Rutgers  University,  where 
Army  trainees  formed  three-fourths  of  the 
student  body,  foresaw  the  dropping  of  in- 
structors. New  England  colleges  were 
going  to  lose  5,425  students  at  one  swoop. 
Chancellor  Harry  Woodburn  Chase  of 
New  York  University  recalled  that  many 
colleges  had  made  contracts  for  faculty, 
housing,  and  feeding  arrangements  on  the 
basis  of  earlier  Army  promises  and  that 
"the  moral  obligation  to  the  colleges  which 
now  rests  upon  the  War  Department  is 
definite  and  clear."  It  was  clear  enough 
that  the  anguish  and  pain  in  many  a  bur- 
sar's office  was  going  to  be  acute.  Al- 
though the  Army  said  that  it  would  reim- 
burse the  colleges  for  the  unexpired  parts 
of  contracts  covering  the  students  who 
would  be  withdrawn,  Dr.  George  F.  Zook, 
president   of  the   American    Council   on 


Education,  sorrowfully  noted  that  the  con- 
tracts generally  were  for  only  ninety  days. 

If,  last  year,  you  had  asked  a  trainee 
why  he  was  in  college,  he  was  likely  to 
crack:  '*Oh,  we're  sent  here  to  keep  the 
colleges  from  folding  up."  The  accuracy 
of  the  crack  might  be  judged  from  the  con- 
sternation of  the  educators  when  the  cut 
was  announced. 

Still,  it  appeared  as  though  that  was  not 
the  whole  story.  The  War  Department 
said  that  the  move  was  caused  by  "impera- 
tive military  necessity,"  since,  among 
other  things,  the  draft  had  left  the  Army 
short  200,000  of  the  goal  of  7,700,000  set 
for  the  close  of  1943  and  the  college  train- 
ees were  needed  to  fill  the  gap.  This 
raised  the  question  as  to  whether  the  tech- 
nical training  judged  to  be  so  badly  needed 
in  the  Army  was  not  of  greater  importance 
than  the  problem  of  draft  stopgaps:  110,- 
000  men  are  not  so  many  in  an  army  of 
more  than  seven  million  engaged  in  fight- 
ing a  mechanical  war.  Further  examina- 
tion of  the  statements  issued  both  by  the 
Army  and  by  the  schools  provoked  still 
another  question:  Has  the  program  been  a 
failure? 

WHEN  the  draft  age  was  lowered  to 
eighteen,  back  in  1942,  the  colleges 
became  acutely  worried  about  their  future 
for  the  duration — and  well  they  might,  for 
except  for  a  few  4F's  and  the  girls  there 
wouldn't  be  anybody  left  to  go  to  college. 


420 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


A  group  of  high-powered  educators  took 
their  problem  to  Washington  and  debated 
it  with  the  miUtary  authorities. 

The  educators  argued  that  it  would  be 
short-sighted  of  the  Arpjy  not  to  keep  re- 
plenishing its  supply  of  future  medical 
officers,  engineering  officers,  technically 
trained  men.  They  cited  the  example  of 
England,  which  was  keeping  in  college 
the  brilliant  students  in  various  technical 
subjects.  They  argued  furthermore  that 
these  young  men  would  be  better  officer 
material,  and  also  more  valuable  to  the 
country  after  the  war,  if  they  received, 
along  with  their  specialized  instruction, 
at  least  some  general  education. 

The  military  authorities  replied,  in  ef- 
fect, that  there  was  a  war  on,  that  the 
prime  need  of  the  moment  was  to  give 
military  training  to  every  available  young 
man,  and  that  it  didn't  propose  to  aban- 
don its  system  of  taking  these  men  via 
Selective  Service  and  putting  them  all 
through  Basic  Training.  This  would  in- 
sure that  they  would  all  be  of  some  military 
value  if  there  developed  a  desperate  short- 
age of  military  personnel,  and  incidentally 
would  protect  the  men  themselves  against 
all  imputations  of  favoritism.  Clearly  the 
Army  wanted  the  disposition  of  the  men 
under  its  own  complete  control.  But  the 
Army  also  realized  that  it  needed  the  edu- 
cational facilities  that  the  colleges  could 
offer — and  realized  what  a  desperate  fu- 
ture many  colleges  faced  without  its  aid — 
and  accordingly  worked  out  a  compro- 
mise. It  would  let  all  the  boys  be  drafted, 
would  put  them  all  through  Basic  Train- 
ing, and  later  would  send  carefully  selected 
contingents  of  them  back  to  the  colleges 
for  special  work. 

Practically  all  the  educators  were  skep- 
tical of  this  solution.  They  wondered 
whether  a  boy  who  had  spent  thirteen 
weeks  transforming  himself  from  a  civilian 
into  a  soldier  would  relish  going  back  to 
college.  Wouldn't  he  be  pretty  well  con- 
ditioned against  scholarship?  They  won- 
dered whether  the  right  men  would  be 
picked;  it  was  easy  to  imagine  the  unwill- 
ingness of  Army  commanders  to  let  go  of 
their  best  soldier  material,  to  imagine  a 
hard-boiled  sergeant  saying,  "All  panty- 
waists  who'd  like  to  go  back  to  college 
raise  their  hands."     They  thought  it  would 


be  better  if  the  Army  decided  what  boys 
should  continue  their  technical  training 
and  permitted  them  to  continue  it  unin- 
terruptedly where  they  were,  perhaps  in 
uniform. 

But  the  Army  insisted  on  its  compro- 
mise, the  colleges  were  grateful  for  small 
favors  received,  and  the  result  was  that  on 
December  18,  1942,  the  Army  Specialized 
Training  Division  was  set  up  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  Lieutenant  General  Brehon 
H.  Somervell,  the  Commanding  General 
of  the  Army  Service  Forces.  Staff  super- 
vision was  assigned  to  Brigadier  General 
Joe  N.  Dalton,  Director  of  Personnel, 
Army  Service  Forces,  and  actual  direction 
of  the  Division  was  given  to  Colonel  Her- 
man Beukema,  former  professor  of  history 
and  government  at  West  Point. 

This  seemed  a  happy  solution  to  two 
problems:  keeping  the  colleges  and  univer- 
sities afloat  during  wartime,  and  providing 
facilities  for  certain  types  of  training 
needed  by  the  Army  for  which  it  had 
neither  adequate  instructional  staffs  nor 
physical  equipment.  General  Marshall, 
the  Chief  of  Staff,  explained  the  objective 
as  follows: 

The  Army  has  been  increasingly  handi- 
capped by  a  shortage  of  men  possessing  desirable 
combinations  of  intelligence,  aptitude,  education, 
and  training  in  fields  such  as  medicine,  engineer- 
ing, languages,  science,  mathematics,  and  psy- 
chology, who  are  qualified  for  service  as  officers  of 
the  Army.  With  the  establishment  of  the  mini- 
mum Selective  Service  age  of  eighteen,  the  Army 
was  compelled  to  assure  itself  that  there  would  be 
no  interruption  in  the  flow  of  professionally  and 
technically  trained  men  who  have  hitherto  been 
provided  in  regular  increments  by  American 
colleges  and  universities. 

Arthur  L.  H.  Rubin,  a  civilian  who  had 
served  as  Director  of  the  Institute  of  Mili- 
tary Studies  at  the  University  of  Chicago, 
was  appointed  Curriculum  Coordinator; 
and  the  Army  Specialized  Training  Divi- 
sion began  work  to  set  up  the  curricula, 
with  the  hope  of  getting  the  first  units 
started  by  the  middle  of  March,   1943. 

II 

FOUR  main  divisions  of  training  were 
projected:  Engineering;  Area  and  Lan- 
guage Study;  Pre-medical  and  other  Pre- 
professional  Training;  and  Personnel  Psy- 


THE    ARMY    QUITS    THE    COLLEGES 


421 


chology.  Of  these  Engineering  accounted 
for  by  far  the  largest  group-  eighty  per 
cent  or  more  of  the  total  number  of  train- 
ees. Personnel  Psychology  was  aban- 
doned after  the  last  groups  finished  in 
December,  probably  because  the  peak 
need  for  these  men  to  assist  in  Army 
testing  and  classification  had  passed.  The 
Pre-medical  and  Pre-dental  programs 
were  delayed  for  various  reasons  and  did 
not  begin  in  any  considerable  numbers 
until  the  end  of  1943.  The  Area  and 
Language  Study  program  trained  some 
12,000  men — picked  for  their  background 
and  aptitude  in  languages — in  the  lan- 
guage, customs,  history,  and  geography  of 
certain  areas  in  Europe  and  the  Far  East 
where  the  Allied  Armies  ^re  expected  to 
operate;  most  of  these  men  had  had  a  year 
or  more  of  college  work. 

Because  the  so-called  Engineering  Train- 
ing was  the  predominant  part  of  the  whole 
program  it  is  interesting  to  examine  it  in 
some  detail.  This  program  was  originally 
divided  into  two  phases,  Basic  Engineering 
and  Advanced  Engineering.  (The  Basic 
Phase  was  the  chief  casualty  of  the  Army's 
announcement  of  February  18th.  The 
Advanced  Phase  will  be  continued.)  Each 
phase  consisted  of  three  twelve-week  terms, 
with  the  exception  that  in  the  Advanced 
Phase  of  Electrical  and  Sanitary  Engineer- 
ing a  fourth  term  of  twelve  weeks  was 
added.  The  Basic  Phase,  for  the  great 
majority  of  men,  embraced  seven  courses: 
English  (reading,  writing,  and  speaking), 
American  history,  geography,  mathemat- 
ics, physics,  chemistry,  and  engineering 
drawing  (in  the  third  term  only). 

You  will  notice  at  once  the  striking 
thing  about  this  Basic  Phase:  that  for  most 
men  it  wasn't — except  for  the  inclusion  of 
engineering  drawing — a  technical  curric- 
ulum at  all,  but  a  general  college  curric- 
ulum preparatory  to  engineering  study. 
The  natural  assumiption  at  the  outset  was 
that  those  men  who  successfully  completed 
the  Basic  Phase  would  move  on  into  the 
Advanced  Phase,  which  consists  of  three 
terms  of  civil  engineering,  three  terms 
of  mechanical  engineering,  four  terms  of 
electrical  engineering,  or  four  terms  of 
sanitary  engineering.  The  courses  in  these 
Advanced  fields  are  theoretical  and  com- 
pare, in  subject  matter  at  least,  with  the 


courses  offered  in  engineering  schools. 
But  as  the  first  units  approached  comple- 
tion of  the  nine  months'  Basic  Phase  it 
became  more  uncertain  how  many  would 
be  allowed  to  continue  beyond  it. 

In  a  new  directive  sent  to  the  colleges  in 
Januaiy,  1944,  it  was  apparent  that  the 
AS'l^D  had  reversed  its  original  plan. 
"Currently,"  said  the  directive,  "only  a 
relatively  small  number"  will  go  on  to  the 
Advanced  Phase.  "For  the  majority  of 
trainees  .  .  .  the  training  of  the  Basic 
Phase  is  terminal.  The  first  two  terms  of 
the  Basic  Phase  must  be  viewed,  therefore, 
as  furnishing  pre-medical  or  pre-engineer- 
ing  training  for  one  group  of  trainees  and 
as  supplying  part  of  the  'general'  or  'back- 
ground' training  for  a  larger  group."  In 
other  words,  most  of  the  soldiers — after 
having  been  removed  from  active  service 
to  engage  in  a  rather  hurried  academic 
freshman  year — would  be  through. 

What  then?  Well,  that  was  the  catch 
to  it. 

In  spite  of  the  thousands  of  words  both 
written  and  spoken  that  have  come  out  of 
the  Army  about  the  AST  Program,  the 
objectives  have  never  been  clear.  At 
least,  the  students  didn't  know  what  they 
were  headed  for,  the  instructors  in  the 
colleges  didn't  know  what  specifically  they 
were  training  them  for,  and  a  general  con- 
fusion of  purpose  resulted. 

It  is  obvious  that  even  the  men  who 
finish  the  Advanced  Phase  are  not  going  to 
be  engineers.  At  best  they  may  have, 
with  many  reservations,  sophomore  stand- 
ing in  an  engineering  school;  nor  will 
they  qualify  as  skilled  technicians,  because 
there  is  little  or  no  practical  application  in 
the  work.  They  will  be  cut  off  in  the 
middle  of  a  theoretical  engineering  edu- 
cation, the  four-year  college  counterpart 
of  which  itself  has  often  been  under 
attack  by  many  students  and  educators 
because  of  its  lack  in  practical  application. 
Those  men  who  were  not  "promoted"  to 
the  Advanced  Phase — unless  they  were 
among  the  small  groups  taking  terminal 
courses  in  surveying,  communications,  etc. 
— are  even  further  away  from  a  practical 
use  of  their  training  in  the  Army.  The  only 
real  engineering  course  they  have  had  is 
engineering  drawing. 

Where,  then,  will  this  training  be  used? 


422 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Nobody,  not  even  the  Army,  seemed  to 
know  definitely  at  the  time  of  the  February 
slash.  In  general  it  was  understood,  at 
least  among  the  college  faculties,  that  the 
men  would  be  technicians,  technical  cor- 
porals and  sergeants,  but  if  this  was  the 
real  objective  many  college  engineering 
instructors  felt,  and  still  feel,  that  the 
curriculum  was  unsuitable.  The  men 
were  naturally  somewhat  confused.  Many 
were  dissatisfied  because  they  had  thought 
this  training  would  lead  to  a  commission, 
which  in  most  cases  it  will  not,  as  the  Army 
Specialized  Training  Division  indicated 
that  only  about  five  per  cent  would  be 
admitted  to  Officer's  Candidate  School, 
and  graduates  of  the  program  must  com- 
pete with  all  the  other  enlisted  men  for 
selection  to  fill  the  limited  quotas  in  the 
OGS.  Many,  after  they  got  into  the 
program,  wanted  to  get  out  and  do  some 
fighting,  and  many  didn't  want  to  get  in 
in  the  first  place.  All  this  confusion  didn't 
make  for  very  good  morale. 

Ill 

PART  of  the  trouble  was  undoubtedly 
brought  on  by  the  college  pressure 
group  itself  in  steering  the  curricula  into 
the  channels  of  regular  college  work. 
Whether  the  Army,  if  the  pressure  to  keep 
the  colleges  alive  had  not  been  exerted, 
would  have  used  these  institutions  for 
more  practical  training  purposes  is  a  ques- 
tion nobody  except  the  official  circle  can 
answer.  Certainly  there  was  at  the  out- 
set some  dissension  as  to  the  value  of  the 
program  to  the  Army.  At  the  start, 
pressure  had  to  be  brought  to  bear  by  the 
General  Staff*,  in  some  cases,  to  get  the 
Service  Commands  to  send  their  qualified 
men  up  for  this  training. 

Most  of  the  planning  was  done  by  col- 
lege rather  than  military  authorities.  Ar- 
thur L.  H.  Rubin  of  the  University  of 
Chicago  was  an  early  and  continuing 
driving  force.  At  Chicago  he  had  been 
in  charge  of  a  pre-induction  program 
designed  for  men  who  would  shortly  be 
called  into  the  Army.  He  wanted  the 
Chicago  program  adopted  by  the  Army 
as  a  complete  and  workable  setup. 
Though  this  did  not  go  through  he  did 
become  Chief  of  the  Curricula  and  Stand- 


ards Branch  of  the  ASTP  and  as  such  had 
a  principal  voice.  There  was  an  Ad- 
visory Committee  of  nine  college  presi- 
dents and  a  historian:  Wilbur  of  Stanford, 
Bowman  of  Johns  Hopkins,  Doherty  of 
Carnegie  Tech,  Dykstra  of  Wisconsin,  Gan- 
non of  Fordham,  Hetzel  of  Penn  State, 
Morley  of  Haverford,  Tigert  of  Florida, 
Compton  of  M.I.T.,  and  Guy  Stanton 
Ford,  Secretary  of  the  American  Historical 
Association. 

When  the  main  lines  of  the  curricula 
had  been  blocked  out  the  Army  Special- 
ized Training  Division  asked  the  American 
Council  on  Education  to  suggest  college 
professors,  qualified  in  the  various  fields 
to  be  covered,  to  serve  on  panels  or  com- 
mittees for  the  drafting  of  the  courses. 
These  panels  were  quickly  and  intelli- 
gently filled  and  the  men  on  them  worked 
hard,  under  a  good  deal  of  pressure  be- 
cause the  time  was  short  and  there  were 
many  problems  to  solve.  The  courses, 
when  written,  were  submitted  to  the  Ad- 
visory Committee  for  approval,  and  there 
some  changes  were  made. 

Some  of  the  improvements  were  doubt- 
ful, at  least  for  their  intended  purpose. 
A  case  in  point  was  the  English  course, 
which  was  originally  planned  by  its  au- 
thors as  a  simple  course  in  direct  com- 
munication, and  later  emerged  as  a  much 
broader  and  more  loosely  knit  course, 
subject  to  widely  varied  interpretation. 
This  course  rapidly  got  out  of  hand,  with 
some  colleges  teaching  English  literature, 
some  American  literature,  and  some  both, 
and  with  powerful  speech  departments  in 
some  universities  demanding  half  of  the 
course  time  to  teach  public  speaking. 

As  for  the  geography  course,  it  was 
in  a  state  of  mysterious  confusion  from  the 
beginning.  Each  change  in  the  directive 
— and  there  were  several — seemed  to 
deepen  the  mystery  of  what  the  Army 
really  wanted  done.  The  trouble  was 
chiefly  with  the  third  term,  which  the 
Army  insisted  should  deal  with  geopolitics. 
This  is  a  subject  that  few  understand 
thoroughly  and  fewer  are  equipped  to 
teach,  especially  on  an  elementary  level 
and  in  one  term  of  twelve  weeks.  There 
were  no  suitable  textbooks  available  and 
though  the  Army  promised  one  of  its  own, 
it  still  hasn't  appeared.     (An  atlas  was 


THE    ARMY    QUITS    THE    COLLEGES 


423 


finally  published  and  was  distributed   to 
the  units  in  January.) 

A  LL  this  planning,  in  its  early  stages,  was 
/\  carried  on  in  an  atmosphere  of  great 
hush-hush  and  military  secrecy,  which  was 
a  constant  irritation  to  many  of  the  college 
instructors  and  administrators  who  were 
not  in  the  official  circle  and  would  shortly 
be  called  upon  to  do  this  work  without 
knowing  what  was  expected  of  them. 
Rumors  flew  thick  and  fast,  many  of  them 
contradictory.  In  the  meantime  a  Joint 
Committee  of  the  War  Manpower  Com- 
mission, the  Army,  and  the  Navy  was  ap- 
pointed to  select  the  colleges  which  would 
receive  units  of  the  Army  Specialized 
Training  Program,  the  Navy  V-12  College 
Training  Program,  and  the  Army  Air 
Forces  College  Training  Program.  (The 
War  Manpower  Commission  played  an 
important  part  because  it  had  assumed 
jurisdiction  of  the  whole  matter  of  man- 
power for  the  Army  and  Navy  when  en- 
listments were  stopped.)  On  February  7, 
1 943,  this  Committee  released  to  the  press 
a  list  of  several  hundred  colleges  and  uni- 
versities which  had  been  approved  for  con- 
sideration of  contracts  as  units  in  these 
three  programs.  This  approval  was  based 
on  questionnaires  which  had  been  sent 
to  the  colleges,  and  the  fact  that  a  college's 
name  appeared  on  the  list  did  not  mean 
that  it  would  necessarily  get  a  contract;  the 
colleges  had  to  be  physically  inspected 
first  and  formally  approved  as  to  housing 
and  dining  facilities,  classroom  space,  etc. 
But  at  least  it  served  notice  on  these  insti- 
tutions that  they  might  be  chosen. 

The  announcement  came  to  many  col- 
leges as  a  bolt  from  the  blue — and  the 
start  of  the  program  was  only  a  few  weeks 
away !  Naturally  there  was  a  mad  scram- 
ble to  Washington  for  information.  What 
would  the  courses  be?  How  many  men 
would  be  sent?  They  found  that  the  cur- 
ricula were  not  yet  ready.  Instructors 
still  didn't  know  what  courses  they  would 
be  called  on  to  teach  and  hence  couldn't 
prepare  for  them;  administrators  still 
didn't  know  how  many  men  they  would  be 
expected  to  house,  feed,  etc.;  and  textbook 
publishers  with  stocks  low  because  of  paper 
curtailment  still  didn't  know  what  type 
of  books  would  be  needed. 


The  Army  Specialized  Training  Divi- 
sion expected  the  Advanced  Piiase  of 
Engineering  to  get  started  on  a  fairly  large 
scale  first,  because  it  was  assumed  that 
there  was  a  large  number  of  men  in  the 
Army  with  a  year  or  more  of  college 
training  who  could  skip  the  Basic  Phase 
and  move  directly  into  the  Advanced 
Phase.  Eleven  engineering  colleges  were 
finally  selected  to  begin  this  training  about 
March  15,  1943,  some  with  quotas  of  500 
men.  In  most  cases  these  colleges  had 
been  in  possession  of  the  curricula  only  a 
few  days  before  the  men  were  expected  to 
arrive.  There  had  been  frantic  attempts 
to  adjust  schedules,  assign  classrooms  and 
teachers.  In  some  cases  textbooks  had 
had  to  be  selected  within  twenty-four 
hours.  Fortunately  most  of  the  work  in 
the  Advanced  Phase  was  to  be  handled  by 
experienced  instructors,  for  they  had  been 
forced  to  plan  their  courses  on  a  few  days' 
or,  in  some  cases,  a  few  hours'  notice. 

When  the  men  finally  arrived  on  these 
campuses  they  were  unexpectedly  few  in 
number;  in  most  cases  the  quotas  were  not 
half  filled.  And  they  turned  out  to  be  an 
odd  and  ill-assorted  lot.  They  ranged  all 
the  way  from  Ph.D.'s  to  men  who  had 
never  graduated  from  high  school.  Many 
were  over  forty  years  old  and  hadn't  been 
to  school  for  fifteen  or  twenty  years. 
They  had  been  selected  in  the  camps  on 
the  basis  of  Army  tests  which  apparently 
were  in  no  way  suited  for  this  particular 
purpose.  The  colleges  that  received  them 
tried  to  classify  the  men  themselves  and 
in  some  cases  found  that  as  many  as  three- 
quarters  of  them  were  unable  to  do  the 
work  in  the  Advanced  Phase.  These  men 
had  to  be  put  in  a  refresher  term  before 
they  could  go  on  with  the  work.  Others 
defied  any  classification  and  the  colleges 
didn't  know  what  to  do  with  them. 

After  this  first  comparatively  small  group 
had  been  sent  out  it  was  found  that  there 
weren't  any  more  available  for  the  Ad- 
vanced Phase.  Many  of  the  college- 
trained  boys  in  the  Army  camps  preferred 
to  aim  directly  at  Officer's  Candidate 
School.  Boys  who  had  already  made  non- 
com  ratings  were  at  first  required  to  give 
them  up  on  entering  the  program,  with 
the  resulting  loss  in  pay  (these  ranks  were 
later  restored,  when  the  protggiJbificanie 


424 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


too  loud),  and  this  fact  added  to  the  un- 
popularity of  the  program  in  the  camps. 
As  had  been  anticipated  by  some  of  the 
educators,  many  officers  were  reluctant  to 
give  up  the  best  men  in  their  outfits.  So 
it  appeared  that  there  m  Duld  be  few  if  any 
more  men  available  for  the  Advanced 
Phase  until  the  Basic  began  to  feed  it. 

THE  first  unit  of  the  Basic  Phase  opened 
at  Princeton  about  the  middle  of 
April,  1943.  By  this  time  a  number  of 
colleges  had  been  offered  contracts,  though 
none  knew  when  they  would  actually  re- 
ceive the  men  or  how  many  there  would 
be.  Some  colleges  received  telephone 
calls  from  their  local  Service  Commands 
asking  if  they  could  accommodate  300  or 
500  or  600  men  in  the  next  week  or  two. 
In  most  cases  answers  were  demanded  in 
twenty-four  hours.  Administrators  made 
frantic  arrangements,  in  some  cases  ousting 
their  regular  students  from  their  dormi- 
tories and  contracting  for  space  elsewhere, 
only  to  find  that  when  the  time  came,  the 
men  didn't  arrive — and  sometimes  they 
didn't  show  up  for  months  afterward. 

All  this,  of  course,  didn't  help  to  endear 
the  program  to  the  college  faculties. 
Many  were  frankly  disgusted  with  the 
whole  procedure,  especially  when  they 
saw  their  regular  students  still  in  college 
(in  the  Enlisted  Reserve  Corps)  being 
called  up  without  being  allowed  to  finish, 
though  some  were  within  a  few  months  of 
graduation.  College  presidents  and  deans, 
except  for  the  few  on  the  Advisory  Com- 
mittee, were  as  much  at  sea  as  their  facul- 
ties, as  rumors  were  about  their  only  source 
of  information  at  this  stage.  It  is  doubt- 
ful if  even  the  Advisory  Committee  knew 
more,  as  the  assignment  of  men  to  the 
colleges  was  at  this  point  the  Army's  job — 
and  one  which  it  was  almost  impossible 
to  discharge  efficiently  in  the  time  allowed. 

The  obvious  inadequacy  of  the  Army 
classification  procedure  for  this  purpose 
led  to  the  establishment  in  June  of  the 
STAR  (Specialized  Training  Assignment 
and  Reclassification)  units  in  each  Service 
Command.  Here  the  men  were  sent 
from  the  camps  for  a  period  of  from  one  to 
thirty  days  to  be  tested  and  classified  and 
then  sent  on  to  the  college  units  for  in- 
struction.    The  Army  still  controlled  the 


classifying  but  it  was  done  in  collaboration 
with  psychologists  and  others  on  the  col- 
lege faculties,  and  after  this  system  was 
put  into  effect  there  were  fewer  misfits 
than  before.  Men  selected  for  the  Basic 
Phase  had  to  be  between  the  ages  of 
eighteen  and  twenty-two  years  and  must 
have  graduated  from  high  school — a  re- 
quirement which  the  colleges  naturally 
welcomed. 

IV 

THE  Basic  program  was  running  much 
more  smoothly  by  February,  1944, 
than  at  the  start.  The  Area  and  Lan- 
guage group  had  been  better  selected,  had 
had  less  curriculum  trouble,  and  had  done 
the  colleges  a  service  by  introducing  them 
to  new  and  in  some  cases  very  effective 
methods  of  language  study.  But  there 
were  still  some  major  problems  which  re- 
mained unsettled.  One  of  these  was  the 
matter  of  standards,  and  it  continues  to  be 
vexing  even  now  that  most  of  the  soldier- 
students  are  leaving. 

The  Advisory  Committee  at  its  Novem- 
ber meeting  passed  the  following  resolu- 
tion: "It  is  recommended  that  all  students 
of  the  ASTP,  while  in  residence,  be  regis- 
tered in  the  institution  as  regular  students 
and  be  given  academic  credit  in  accord- 
ance with  the  rules  and  standards  adopted 
by  the  institution,  with  the  understanding 
that  these  standards  be  those  of  the  vari- 
ous recognized  accrediting  agencies."  This 
is  a  point  of  concern  to  many  educators. 

The  colleges  were  told  that  the  matter  of 
grades  was  an  academic  one  and  that  each 
institution  should  adhere  to  its  own  stand- 
ards in  the  matter  of  passing  or  failing  the 
men  in  these  courses.  If  a  man  failed  in 
only  one  course  he  was  dropped  and  re- 
turned to  the  troops.  But  the  work  in 
many  respects  has  not  been  on  the  level  of 
regular  college  work.  The  men  were 
allowed  only  one  hour  of  study  for  each 
class  hour  of  work,  and  the  English  and 
history  courses  seldom  got  that  much, 
as  the  men  naturally  spent  the  most 
time  in  preparation  for  the  more  ex- 
acting courses  in  mathematics,  physics, 
and  chemistry.  There  was  little  or  no  lei- 
sure time  for  contemplation  or  library 
reading,  as  the  men  were  on  a  rigorous 
schedule  beginning  at  6:30  a.m.  and  end- 


THE    ARMY    QUITS    THE    COLLEGES 


425 


ing  in  the  late  afternoon:  And  some 
courses  were  taken  concurrently  which 
normally  would  be  prerequisite  one  for  an- 
other^ such  as  mathematics  for  physics 
and  chemistry. 

If  the  normal  college  standards  were  ap- 
plied under  these  circumstances  it  was  only 
natural  that  large  numbers  would  fail. 
Some  colleges  compromised,  realizing  it 
would  defeat  the  purpose  altogether  to  fail 
a  majority  of  the  men,  and  yet  they  had 
nothing  to  go  on  because  the  Army  estab- 
lished no  norm  for  the  program.  It  will 
be  difficult  to  adjust  credits  on  this  basis 
after  the  war,  and  the  colleges  know  it. 

That  there  has  been  much  that  is  worth 
while  in  this  program,  especially  from  the 
students'  standpoint,  is  undeniable.  Many 
boys  got  a  portion  of  a  college  educa- 
tion who  might  otherwise  never  have 
had  a  chance  at  it.  Many  turned  out 
to  be  excellent  students,  and  undoubtedly 
many  will  return  after  the  war  is  over  with 
a  great  desire  to  go  back  to  college  and 
finish.  That  a  grateful  government  will 
help  them  to  do  this  through  some  kind  of 
subsidy  is  an  already  accepted  fact. 

But  whether  either  the  continuing  pro- 
gram for  those  retained  or  the  completed 
program  of  those  now  returned  to  active 
service  has  been  satisfactory,  from  the 
Army's  standpoint,  is  questionable.  Cer- 
tainly there  has  been  a  need  for  trained 
technicians  in  a  mechanized  army  such  as 
we  have  today,  but  it  is  conceivable  that  a 
more  direct  and  practical  program  with 
more  clearly  defined  objectives  might  have 
filled  this  need  more  quickly  and  more 
efficiently  than  the  truncated  college  en- 
gineering program  adopted. 

The  dean  of  a  Midwestern  university 
recently  told  me  that  he  felt  now  that  he 
had  given  his  students  bad  advice.  After 
Pearl  Harbor,  when  a  majority  of  his  boys 
wanted  to  drop  out  of  college  and  enlist  in 
the  Army,  he  urged  them  to  stay  as  long  as 
they  could  because  the  country  expected 
the  colleges  to  provide  the  upper  ten  per 
cent  in  leadership  and  ability  so  much 
needed  in  officers.  His  plea  was  echoed 
also  by  the  Army  and  Navy  and  the  Presi- 
dent. Those  who  didn't  take  his  advice 
are  lieutenants  and  captains  now,  while 
many  of  those  who  did  were  put  in  the 
Army  Specialized  Training  Program.    Their 


chance  to  become  officers  Is  very  slim  and 
many  have  been  trained  as  technicians 
who  would  undoubtedly  be  belter  soldiers 
in  other  capacities. 

The  colleges  and  universities  in  this 
program  took — and  still  take — their  re- 
sponsibilities seriously  and  have  done  their 
utmost  to  make  it  a  success.  It  has  not 
been  an  easy  job.  With  the  teaching 
staffs  of  most  institutions  badly  depleted 
by  the  war  this  heavy  load  has  fallen  on 
those  who  remain,  many  of  them  older 
men  and  women.  Many  have  been 
teaching  twice  their  usual  number  of  hours 
and  many  have  had  no  vacation  or  rest  for 
a  long  time.  There  have  been  many  cou- 
rageous teachers,  for  whose  special  fields 
there  was  no  demand  during  the  war,  who 
took  refresher  courses  themselves  to  enable 
them  to  help  with  the  peak  loads  in 
mathematics  and  physics. 

Much  wear  and  tear  could  have  been 
saved  these  people  if  there  had  been  less 
confusion  all  around  and  if  the  directives 
sent  them  by  the  Army  had  been  less 
vague.  Most  of  them  accepted  these  dif- 
ficulties in  good  spirit,  realizing  that  they 
were  inevitable  in  any  task  as  huge  as 
building  an  army  of  8,000,000  men  prac- 
tically from  scratch.  But  they  had  to 
spend  inordinate  amounts  of  time  trying  to 
decide  what  the  Army  wanted  them  to  do; 
they  groaned  over  the  difficulty  of  teach- 
ing groups  of  men  who  manifestly  didn't 
belong  in  the  same  classroom;  some  of 
of  them  wondered  whether  the  whole  pro- 
gram wasn't  misbegotten  at  the  outset. 

Now  that  the  major  portion  of  the  ASTP 
has  been  abolished,  the  colleges  in- 
volved in  it  will  be  right  back  where  they 
were  a  year  and  a  half  ago,  with  their  own 
destiny  for  the  duration  to  work  out. 
Something  may  be  done  for  them  by  the 
government  but  just  exactly  what  is  now 
uncertain.  Whatever  their  future  relations 
with  the  government  may  be,  at  any  rate 
college  administrators  and  professors  will 
be  virtually  unanimous  in  the  hope  that, 
when  the  war  ends,  whatever  provision  is 
made  for  government  aid  to  soldiers  who 
want  to  go  to  college  will  be  based  on  a 
clear  and  workable  plan,  developed  well 
in  advance,  and  adapted  to  educational 
realities.     Once  bitten,  twice  shy. 


TH 


E  Easy  Chair  'Bernard  T)^(/Id 


YOU  may  remember  the  Lost  Gener- 
ation. It  was  primarily  a  literary 
phenomenon,  an  invention  of  novel- 
ists. It  was  a  myth  cultivated  because  it 
gave  fine  effects  in  prose.  The  Lost 
Generation  was  supposed  to  consist  of 
men  whose  souls  had  been  so  maimed  by 
the  ugliness  of  war  that  they  saw  quite 
through  life's  hollow  shams,  and  of  women 
who  caught  the  contagion  from  them,  pre- 
sumably as  the  supreme  benignity  of  love. 
The  phrase  itself  was  an  invention  of  Miss 
Gertrude  Stein,  whose  art  had  no  connec- 
tion whatever  with  life  or  death,  love  or 
hate,  rejoicing  or  grief,  success  or  failure, 
belief  or  doubt,  any  other  emotion  of  man- 
kind, any  experience  of  anyone,  or  any  of 
the  values  that  enable  people  to  live  to- 
gether— an  art  which  floated  freely  in  a 
medium  of  pure  caprice  sustained  by 
nothing  except  its  awareness  of  its  own 
inner  wondrousness.  The  literary  de- 
velopment of  the  phrase  was  almost  ex- 
clusively American,  and  its  first,  perhaps 
its  greatest  prophet  was  Mr.  Ernest  Hem- 
ingway, who  has  lived  to  recant.  Mr. 
Hemingway  epitomized"  the  entire  mean- 
ing of  his  time  in  symbols  of  sexual  impo- 
tence. He  believed  with  a  full  heart  that 
the  symbols  were  altogether  tragic,  though 
a  sounder  judgment  would  be  that  they 
expressed  a  first-rate  literary  criticism. 

The  idea  of  the  Lost  Generation  was 
sickly  and  unclean.  No  one  has  ever 
known  how  many  soldiers  of  the  last  war, 
or  how  many  contemporaries  of  theirs  who 
had  not  known  war  at  first  hand,  identi- 
fied themselves  with  it.  I  do  not  think 
that  many  did.  In  the  variety,  vigor,  and 
optimism  of  the  American  people  follow- 
ing the  last  war  there  is  no  evidence  that 


any  considerable  number  thought  of 
themselves  as  lost,  and  literature  is  far 
less  able  to  persuade  people  to  imitate  it 
than  writers  like  to  believe.  It  may  be, 
however,  that  literary  praise  of  a  moral 
depletion  said  to  have  been  induced  by 
the  ugliness  of  war  persuaded  some  people 
to  act  on  it.  If  so,  I  suggest  that  we  may 
include  among  the  problems  of  reconver- 
sion a  study  of  therapeutic  and  even  pre- 
ventive measures.  If  it  is  possible  it  is 
certainly  desirable  to  dispense  with  a  Lost 
Generation  altogether  this  time,  both  in 
literature  and  in  the  populace  at  large. 

MILITARY  physicians  and  psychiatrists 
have  lately  issued  to  the  general 
public  some  suggestions  concerning  atti- 
tudes toward  crippled  veterans.  We  are 
advised — wholly  for  the  sake  of  the  crip- 
pled— to  avoid  expressing  excessive  sym- 
pathy. We  are  told  to  ignore  their  handi- 
caps, to  make  as  little  fuss  as  possible, 
to  treat  them  as  a  matter  of  course  so 
far  as  we  can.  In  this  way,  the  Medical 
Corps  says,  we  shall  be  helping  them  to 
acquire  a  sense  of  reality  and,  by  helping 
them  to  be  casual  toward  themselves, 
shall  be  helping  them  to  triumph  over 
their  handicaps.  If  that  is  good  thera- 
peutics for  the  wounded,  it  is  also  an 
excellent  attitude  to  adopt  toward  veter- 
ans who  have  not  been  crippled.  Cer- 
tainly it  is  an  excellent  attitude  for  them 
to  adopt  toward  themselves. 

What  I  say  implies  no  failure  to  under- 
stand that  the  debt  which  the  United 
States  owes  its  defenders,  crippled  or 
whole,  is  beyond  payment.  Even  the 
hastiest  reader  will  understand  that  I  am 
not  proposing  any  skimping  of  our  obliga- 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


427 


tions  to  those  who  have  been  physically 
or  mentally  wounded  in  the  service  of  the 
country.  For  the  incapacitated  cvery- 
tliing  possible  must  be  done.  For  the 
wounded  everything  must  be  done  that 
can  heal  their  wounds,  help  them  to  over- 
come their  handicaps,  and  so  far  as  pos- 
sible make  up  to  them  for  the  satisfactions 
and  achievements  which  their  wounds 
may  have  denied  them.  And  those  who 
emerge  whole  will  have  an  imperative 
claim  on  the  nation  for  whatever  educa- 
tion, training,  or  guidance  can  enable 
them  to  resume  life  in  the  commonwealth 
on  the  most  favorable  terms.  No  com- 
pensation could  be  enough  for  the  strain, 
hardship,  and  sufTering  undergone,  the 
time  lost,  the  dreams  and  ambitions  for- 
feited, the  sacrifice  made  in  our  service. 

Nevertheless,  if  a  tough-minded  realism 
is  essential  to  the  soldier  in  war,  it  is 
equally  essential  to  the  ex-soldier  in  peace. 
The  hard  decree  of  nature  is  that  he  has 
got  to  live  his  life  out  to  the  end.  Either 
he  is  going  to  make  as  much  as  he  can  of 
that  life  or  something  is  going  to  frustrate 
him,  and  the  easiest  possible  frustration 
is  a  paralysis  of  will  engendered  by  self- 
pity.  Certainly  it  is  too  bad  that  he  was 
not  permitted  to  make  what  he  could  of 
his  personality  and  capacities,  as  the  years 
of  peace  promised  he  would  be  able  to. 
Certainly  it  is  too  bad  that  the  years  of  his 
youth  were  spent  in  a  war  he  never  asked 
for,  that  the  fulfillment  of  his  promise  has 
been  delayed  or  quite  forbidden,  that  he 
has  had  to  experience  horror  and  brutal- 
ity and  filth.  But  in  peace  as  well  as  in 
war,  time  and  chance  happeneth  to  them 
all,  the  conditions  of  life  are  not  what  any 
of  us  would  choose.  It  is  too  bad  that  we 
grow  old,  too  bad  that  we  prove  less  ad- 
mirable than  we  thought,  too  bad  that 
love  fails,  ambition  peters  out,  friends  die, 
dreams  come  to  nothing.  Given  only  om- 
nipotence, any  of  us  could  create  a  world 
more  kindly  than  the  one  we  have  to  live 
in,  but  man  must  live  in  the  world  that  is. 
He  has  always  had  to  live  in  it,  and  he 
will  have  to  live  in  it  henceforth  whether 
or  not  he  has  gone  to  war.  He  will  live 
in  it  more  successfully  if  he  will  understand 
that  he  has  no  claim  on  its  tenderness,  that 
none  of  its  rigors  will  be  relaxed  for  him 
because  he  has  been  a  soldier. 


I  say  nothing  about  the  compensations 
which  are  any  soldier's.  They  certainly 
exist — self-mastery,  the  knowledge  that 
one  has  met  and  passed  the  ultimate  test, 
the  knowledge  of  dedication  and  sacrifice, 
the  fellowship  of  men  fighting  in  contempt 
of  death — and  in  every  war  there  have 
been  some  who  counted  them  worth  more 
than  all  the  rest.  But,  disregarding  them, 
there  is  no  realistic  philosophy  for  the  ex- 
soldier  except  a  recognition  that  fortune 
turned  out  the  way  it  did.  On  him  hap- 
pened to  fall  the  sternest  obligation  of 
citizenship  as  it  fell  on  other  Americans 
in  three  major  and  three  minor  wars. 
That  turn  of  the  wheel  may  have  been,  if 
you  will,  hard  luck.  It  was  hard  luck 
that  war  prevented  him  from  being  the 
garage  mechanic,  radio  announcer,  or 
physician  that  he  designed  to  be.  It  was 
hard  luck  that  he  had  to  serve  a  term  in 
hell.  It  remains  hard  luck  that  memories 
of  unspeakable  horror  will  abide  with 
him,  that  he  has  lost  more  than  he  can 
regain,  that  part  of  his  life  has  been,  in 
private  terms,  wasted.  But  it  is  hard 
luck  in  the  peacetime  world  that  we  ac- 
complish less  than  we  hoped  to,  that  a 
wife  or  a  child  dies,  that  our  personalities 
erode,  that  we  deal  less  than  magnificently 
with  the  assigned  task.  Like  the  civilian, 
the  soldier  and  the  ex-soldier  have  had 
hard  luck — and  that  is  that.  The  waste 
or  failure  of  any  individual  does  not  mean 
that  God  had  it  in  for  him,  and  no  private 
pain  in  the  bowels  proves  that  the  world 
is  evil. 

THE  Lost  Generation  mistake  was  to 
generalize  individual  failure  into  a 
law  of  God  and  to  suppose  that  a  private 
pain  in  the  bowels  revealed  the  nature  of 
reality.  Every  soldier  has  to  learn  a 
personal  discipline  of  courage  for  war. 
The  ex-soldier  has  got  to  learn  an  identical 
discipline  for  peace,  since  the  inexorable 
condition  is  that  the  world's  work  will  go 
on.  Either  he  will  take  such  a  part  in  it 
as  he  best  can  or  he  will  get  in  its  way  and 
be  run  over.  Either  war  is  an  interrup- 
tion of  it  or  else  we  are  all  fools — and  no 
fool  greater  than  the  soldier.  War  was 
not  gentle  with  him;  peace  will  not  try 
to  be. 

Literature  would  do  well  to  clarify  its 


428 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


understanding.     Following   the   last   war 
it  gave  us,  and  gave  us  worshipfully,  the 
image  of  a  hero  crying  into  his  gin  because 
he  had  seen  more  than  he  could  bear.     A 
hero  sneering  at  fools  who  tried  to  make 
something  of  their  lives  because  he  had 
come  to  understand  thai  there  is  no  use  in 
effort,  the  mourners  go  about  the  streets, 
and  desire  must  fail.     It  gave  us,  that  is, 
the  image  of  a  hero  who  was  either  a 
craven  fool  or  a  desperately  sick  soul.     It 
gave  us  this  image,  either  base  or  diseased, 
and  bade  us  not  pity  but  admire.     Well, 
one  thinks  of  the  returning  doughboy  of 
1919  who  had  no  time  for  tears  because  he 
was  too  busy  trying  to  get  his  job  back  and 
pick  up  where  he  had  left  off.     One  thinks 
of  an  earlier  war  that  had  more  victims 
than  Mr.  Hemingway's,  a  war  much  more 
comparable  to  this  one.     Of  a  man  mak- 
ing his  way  homeward  from  Appomattox 
in  ragged  and  stinking  shoddy  and  without 
shoes,  to  get  the  field  plowed,   the  kids 
fed,  and  the  shattered  South  rebuilt.     Or 
making  his  way  homeward  to  Vermont  or 
Iowa   with   the   best   years   of  his   youth 
devoured  by  war,  no  fine  thing  done,  no 
fine  thing  possible  in  the  time  remaining. 
Both    had    known    lice    and    the    fire    of 
dysentery    in    the    bowels,    hunger    and 
panic,  the  private  filth  and  public  fecu- 
lence   of   war.     Both    had    seen    friends 
blown    to    bloody    shreds    beside    them. 
Both  were  items  of  helplessness,  victims 
of  the  evil  fate  which  twists  the  lives  of 
men   quite   irresponsibly.     War   had   left 
neither    of   them    any    intelligent   choice 
except  to  recognize  that  they  were  lost, 
to  renounce  effort,  and  to  rise  superior  to 
the  illusions  of  labor  and  free  will.     So 
they  went  out  and  sowed  the  crops,  re- 
paired the  barn,   begot  children,  served 
on  the  school  board,  and  sat  with  their 
shoes  off  at  the  end  of  a  hard  day.     They 
broke   the   prairies,   dug   the   mines,    oc- 
cupied   the    West,    built    the    railroads, 
manned    the   industry   that   remade   the 
world,   tugged  the  United   States  to  the 
forefront  of  civilization,  and  laid  up  the 
wealth  that  was  later  to  support  literature 
while   it    found   all    this    an   illusion.     A 
defect  in  them  was  that  they  offered  prose 
too    little    chance    for    exquisite    effects. 
That  was  also  a  defect  in  their  grandsons 
who   came   back   from    Chateau-Thierry 


and  the  Argonne  with  a  feeling  that  they 
had  done  an  unpleasant  job  rather  cred- 
itably, and  straightway  got  to  work  as 
near  as  possible  to  the  place  where  they 
had  left  off.  Coarseness  of  soul,  economic 
Puritanism,  or  mere  vitality  prevented 
them  from  understanding  that  they  were 
lost. 

The  Lost  Generation,   that  is,   was  a 
cliche,  one  of  the  formulas,  superstitions, 
or    stereotypes    which    the    pressure    of 
literary   fashion   is   apt   to   substitute  for 
ideas.     This  time  it  would   be  wise  for 
writers  to  avoid  thinking  of  the  returning 
soldier  as  lost.     And  there  are  other  com- 
ponents of  that  old  cliche  which  it  will  be 
desirable  not  to  repeat.     As,  for  instance, 
thinking   of  the    returning   soldier    as    a 
dupe.     We  went  to  war  in  1917  to  defeat 
a    threat   to    our    national    existence — to 
crush    institutions,    even    conceptions    of 
mankind,  that  were  a  mortal  danger  to 
our  own.     But  after  the  war  was  won  it 
became  strangely  fashionable  to  believe 
that  we  had  gone  to  war  to  secure  the 
principal  of  Mr.  Morgan's  loans  to  Great 
Britain  or  (this  with  no  apparent  sense  of 
incongruity)  to  earn  profits  for  the  death 
merchants,  the  makers  of  armament  who 
were    above    nationality.     If    that    were 
true,  then  the  returning  soldiers  had  in- 
deed been  dupes.     The  logic  was  unim- 
peachable— only  the  premise  was  wrong. 
At  the  present  moment  it  seems  impos- 
sible that  anyone  outside  the  fools'  para- 
dise of  Peace  Now  will  ever  be  able  to 
persuade  anyone  that  we  went  to  war  in 
1941  for  anyone's  bonds  or  anyone's  prof- 
its.    Too  many,  one  thinks,  will  remem- 
ber the  years  we  lived  through  on  the 
way  to  war.     Too  many  will  remember 
the   rising   of  the   flood,    the   onrush   of 
Nazism,  the  ghastly  summer  of  1940,  the 
stunned    hours   following   Pearl   Harbor. 
But  though  quite  as  many  could  remem- 
ber the  autumn  of  1914  and  the  early 
spring  of  1917,  the  cliche  of  stupidity  and 
betrayal  formed  nevertheless.     This  time 
we  ought  to  do  what  we  can  to  prevent 
its  forming.     We  are  supposed  to  learn 
from  experience. 


I 


ARE    supposed,     I    repeat,    to 
learn    from    experience.     In    the 
literature  of  the  Lost  Generation  it  was 


WTe 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


429 


orthodox  to  deride  such  attributes  as 
patriolism,  courage,  loyalty,  self-sacrifice, 
and  the  resolution  to  die  in  defense  of 
values  greater  than  oneself.  Such  vir- 
tues were  sternly  shown  to  be  snares, 
traps,  or  tricks  of  illusion  by  which  un- 
scrupulous, clever  persons  were  able  to 
manipulate  the  stupid  to  their  private 
gain.  John  Doe  was  an  uncritical  fool 
whom  an  international  banker  or  a  mer- 
chant of  death  could  delude  into  dying 
gallantly  for  his  profit  balance.  As 
time  went  on  this  exalted  understanding 
changed  somewhat  and  it  became  evi- 
dent that  John  Doe  lacked  gallantry 
altogether.  Back  in  the  world's  lost 
springtime  there  had  perhaps  been  such 
virtues  as  courage  and  self-sacrifice,  but 
clearly  they  did  not  exist  now,  not  at  least 
in  the  brutish  citizen  of  everyday  life. 
The  modern  world  had  brutalized  John 
Doe,  coarsened  his  soul,  softened  his 
nature;  he  was  scum  and  a  menace,  in- 
capable of  greatness.  Only  a  little  while 
ago,  so  recently  that  every  bystander 
remembers  it,  the  manipulators  of  these 
cliches  woke  with  a  shock  that  verged  on 
panic  to  the  dilemma  which  the  outbreak 
of  war  horribly  unmasked.  The  virtues 
of  patriotism,  courage,  and  self-sacrifice, 
which  had  lately  seemed  fetishes  proper 
to  inferior  people  only,  were  essential  to 
the  survival  even  of  the  literary  cliche, 
and  there  was  no  possible  place  where 
they  could  be  sought  except  among  the 
people  who  had  lately  been  proved  to 
have  no  capacity  for  them- at  all. 

Read  your  morning  newspaper.  The 
chronicle  of  patriotism,  courage,  fortitude, 
loyalty,  self-sacrifice,  and  willingness  to 
die  for  matters  greater  than  oneself — the 
chronicle  of  ordinary,  unpretentious  hero- 
ism has  no  end.     Apparently  such  vir- 


tues are  the  ordinary  endowment  of 
people  everywhere,  apparently  they  are 
attributes  of  the  human  race,  and  we  may 
assume  that  they  cannot  be  inspired  by 
literature  or  even  implanted  by  a  crisis. 
John  Doe  has  always  had  them.  He  is  a 
different  person  from  the  literary  por- 
trayal of  him  in  the  Lost  Generation, 
and  he  always  was.  For  the  time  being 
literary  thinking  is  admitting  as  much. 
It  describes  him  with  a  nauseous  phrase, 
a  phrase  that  reeks  of  condescension,  the 
Common  Man.  But,  reading  its  morn- 
ing newspaper,  it  is  willing  to  concede 
that  the  Common  Man  is  endowed  by 
nature  with  heroic  virtues. 

Precisely  that  amendment  of  opinion 
must  be  remembered  in  the  period  of 
reconversion.  The  day  will  come  when 
the  graveyard  shift  can  check  out  for  the 
last  time,  writers  can  retool,  and  literature 
turn  to  examine  an  ended  war.  Hopeful 
new  ideas  will  bud  and  glistening  new 
cliches  begin  to  form.  So,  if  there  should 
be  another  impulse  to  portray  the  ex- 
soldier  as  a  fool  duped  by  cleverer  men, 
if  it  begins  to  appear  once  more  that  the 
run-of-the-mill  citizen  is  a  boor  and  a 
craven  enemy  of  all  good  things — let  us 
remember  that  literature  formally  de- 
cided otherwise  while  the  heat  was  on. 
We  may  be  able  to  forestall  or  discredit 
another  literature  of  the  Lost  Generation. 

John  Doe  can  remember  too,  when  as 
an  ex-soldier  he  takes  up  citizenship 
again.  He  has  had  the  empirical  proof 
When  the  heat  went  on  he  found  that  he 
possessed  courage,  fortitude,  loyalty,  self- 
sacrifice,  and  all  the  rest.  He  found  that 
they  sufficed  for  war  and  may  intelli- 
gently decide  that  they  will  suffice  for 
peace.  If  he  reaches  that  decision  his 
generation  will  not  be  lost. 


HOUSEKEEPING   AFTER   THE   WAR 


PRISniLLA    ROBERTSON    AND 
HAWLEY    JONES 


THOSE  postwar  houses  we  read  about 
are  all  very  well,  but  what  about 
postwar  housekeeping?  Will  it  be 
the  same  old  routine  in  a  new  shell?  Will 
the  majority  of  American  women  still 
have  to  spend  their  lives  in  what  Elizabeth 
(Why  Women  Cry)  Hawes  refers  to,  some- 
what heatedly,  as  "the  Hitlerian  routine" 
of  being  mere  servants  for  their  husbands 
and  children?  Or  will  some  system  be 
devised  which  will  enable  them  to  do  a 
good  job  of  housekeeping  and  still  have 
time  to  hold  down  an  outside  job  if  they 
want  to,  or  at  least  to  engage  in  the  sort  of 
outside  activities  which  gives  them  a  share 
in  the  world  around  them? 

Right  now  the  difficulties  of  housekeep- 
ing are  especially  acute.  Many  of  the 
services  which  used  to  make  the  job  less 
grim  are  curtailed  in  wartime.  Commer- 
cial laundries  collect  and  deliver  less  fre- 
quently than  they  did,  if  they  haven't  quit 
altogether.  It  takes  forever  to  get  a  vac- 
uum cleaner,  or  iron,  or  leaky  faucet 
fixed.  The  grocer  and  butcher  have  in 
many  cases  stopped  delivering.  Shopping 
— with  fewer  clerks  in  the  stores  and  with 
many  transactions  complicated  by  ration 
coupons  and  tokens — takes  longer  than 
ever.  Getting  to  market,  taking  small 
children  to  school,  and  many  other  errands 
which  used  to  be  done  easily  and  quickly 
by  car  now  have  to  be  done  on  foot,  or  by 
bus  or  trolley.     And  the  supply  of  domes- 


tic workers  is  drying  up  so  rapidly  that 
fewer  housewives  than  ever  have  anyone 
to  help  get  the  work  done. 

Nobody  knows  just  how  many  of  Amer- 
ica's thirty-odd  million  families  now  have 
full-time  servants;  but  even  before  the 
war  boom  began  only  10  per  cent  of  them 
did  (according  to  a  1936  Fortune  survey) 
and — judging  from  the  communities  we 
know — less  than  half  of  that  10  per  cent 
still  do.  By  July,  1942,  the  supply  of  ap- 
plicants for  sleeping-in  jobs  had  so  com- 
pletely evaporated  in  the  metropolitan 
area  of  New  York  that  the  United  States 
Employment  Service  there  stopped  han- 
dling requests  for  workers  in  that  category. 
In  many  communities,  especially  in  the 
suburbs,  a  home  with  a  maid  is  rare  in- 
deed. It  has  got  to  the  point  where  the 
editors  of  Harper^ s  Bazaar  devoted  a  whole 
section  of  a  recent  issue  to  the  theme  of 
housekeeping  without  servants.  There 
was  a  "chins  up,  girls!"  air  about  it,  but 
you  couldn't  help  feeling  that  this  top- 
drawer  slant  on  how  exhilarating  it  is  to 
do  all  the  work  oneself  was  a  kind  of  whis- 
tling in  the  dark.  It's  a  safe  bet  that  most 
of  the  Bazaar"* s  readers  would  be  glad  to 
take  off  the  apron  and  turn  the  kitchen 
over  to  the  first  biddy  who  came  along. 

jUT  even  if  the  end  of  war  production 
throws  a  number  of  former  domestic 
workers  back  into  circulation,  as  it  prob- 


HOUSEKEEPING    AFTER    THE    WAR 


431 


ably  will,  the  proi)lcin  of  housekeeping 
will  not  be  solved  even  for  tliose  compara- 
tively few  people  who  can  afford  to  em- 
ploy them.  It  certainly  won't  be  if  the  job 
continues  to  be,  as  it  has  always  been  in 
tliis  country,  so  poorly  paid  and  unattrac- 
tive that  only  exceptionally  will  a  capable 
and  self-respecting  American  citizen  sub- 
mit to  it.  Since  1890  at  least,  in  spite  of 
the  wave  of  immigration  in  the  first  decade 
or  so  of  this  century,  there  has  been  a 
pretty  steady  decline  in  the  percentage  of 
the  country's  total  population  who  were 
engaged  in  domestic  service  (from  2.8 
per  cent  in  1890  to  1.6  per  cent  in  1940). 

And  why  not?  As  recently  as  1941  the 
average  wage  throughout  the  country  for 
domestics  was  only  S6  to  $8  for  a  week  of 
75  hours.  A  survey  made  by  Fortune  in 
1938  revealed  that  the  average  wage  paid 
to  general  houseworkers  by  the  magazine's 
subscribers  (51  per  cent  of  whom  had  in- 
comes over  $10,000)  was  only  $10  a  week. 
A  survey  of  564  houseworkers  in  Washing- 
ton, D.  C,  made  by  the  Y.  W.  G.  A.  in 
1940,  showed  that  the  median  weekly 
wage  in  that  city,  which  isn't  the  worst  in 
the  land  by  any  means,  was  $8.10  (white 
and  colored  workers  averaging  about  the 
same  rates)  and  the  median  hours  per  day 
more  than  twelve;  that  less  than  half  of 
the  workers  were  given  any  vacations  at 
all,  and  that  less  than  half  of  those  who  got 
them  received  vacations  with  pay.  Add 
to  this  the  lack  of  privacy,  the  sense  of 
social  inferiority,  and  the  lack  of  oppor- 
tunity for  advancement  , which  the  job 
usually  entails,  and  it  becomes  clear  that 
the  whole  setup  of  domestic  service  must 
be  improved  if  it  is  to  be  any  good  for 
either  the  employers  or  the  employees. 

In  recent  years  there  have  been  various 
attempts  to  raise  the  standards  of  domestic 
service.  The  Y.  W.  G.  A.  has  worked 
hard  at  the  job,  as  the  WPA  did  in  its  day 
and  as  the  Women's  Bureau  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor  was  doing  until  wartime 
problems  took  up  its  entire  time.  Most 
of  this  work  has  centered  in  efforts  to  ex- 
tend the  benefits  of  social  security  legisla- 
tion to  domestics,  who  are  not  covered  in 
most  existing  laws.  Only  one  state  (Wis- 
consin) has  set  minimum  wage  rates  for 
houseworkers,  and  only  one  (Washington) 
has  a  law  regulating  their  hours  of  work. 


In  no  case  are  domestic  workers  included 
in  state  or  federal  laws  governing  work- 
men's compensation,  *  old-age  benefits,  or 
unemployment  insurance.  Every  time 
the  subject  has  come  up  for  discussion  it 
has  been  shelved  on  the  grounds  that  it  is 
too  complicated  to  frame  and  administer 
laws  governing  so  many  separate  employer- 
employee  relationships.  The  whole  ques- 
tion is  now  up  for  discussion  in  Gongress 
again  as  a  result  of  the  Wagner-Murray- 
Dingall  bill,  which  proposes  to  broaden  the 
Social  Security  Act  to  include  domestic, 
agricultural,  and  other  workers  who  are 
not  now  protected. 

In  time  that  problem  will  be  solved  and 
social  security  will  be  extended  to  domes- 
tics. But  this  is  tied  up  with  another 
problem,  which  must  also  be  solved.  For 
even  when  hours  and  wages  are  controlled 
by  law,  the  law  is  very  difficult  to  enforce. 
State  officials  in  Washington,  for  instance, 
where  an  hours  law  is  in  effect,  find  that 
the  worker  is  reluctant  to  invoke  the  law's 
penalty  clauses  against  an  employer  for 
fear  of  losing  the  job.  Without  a  strong 
union  or  other  organization  to  back  the 
worker  up,  legislation  will  accomplish 
little. 

Yet  unionization  of  domestic  workers  is 
hindered  by  the  same  separateness  that 
delays  social  security  for  them.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  organize  widely  scattered  workers, 
and  only  a  strong  faith  in  the  benefits  of  a 
union  would  persuade  individuals  with  so 
little  time  off  to  spend  that  time  at  union 
meetings.  Several  unions  have  been 
formed  in  spite  of  these  difficulties,  but 
none  has  been  notably  successful.  There 
were  two  locals  in  New  York  at  one  time, 
both  affifiated  with  the  A.F.  of  L.  Building 
Service  Employees  International;  but  both 
apparently  degenerated  into  mere  employ- 
ment bureaus  and  social  clubs,  and  their 
charters  were  lifted.  In  Baltimore  and  in 
Washington,  D.  G.,  there  are  small  GIO 
unions  (both  of  which  seem  to  have  drawn 
their  membership  largely  from  Y.  W.  G.  A. 
Industrial  Glubs)  which  are  trying  to  build 
up  their  membership  now,  while  wages 
are  somewhat  better  than  they  were,  so 
that  they  will  be  strong  enough  to  hold 
some  of  the  gains  that  domestic  workers 

*  Connecticut's  law  applies  only  where  an  em- 
ployer has  five  or  more  servants. 


432 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


have  made  in  wartime,  when  and  if  the 
squeeze  is  put  on  them  afterward. 

Employers,  too,  have  made  some  de- 
fensive moves  to  improve  the  conditions  of 
domestic  service.  Operating  independ- 
ently, or  in  collaboration  with  local 
Y.  W.  G.  A.  branches  and  union  groups, 
a  number  of  women's  organizations — 
notably  in  Ghicago  and  New  York — have 
experimented  with  standard  written  agree- 
ments or  contracts,  tailored  to  local  condi- 
tions, between  employers  and  maids. 
These  cover  hours,  duties,  wages,  and 
recreation  and  living  facilities.  Accord- 
ing to  the  industrial  secretary  of  the  Ghi- 
cago "Y,"  the  plan  accomplishes  some- 
thing for  both  employer  and  employee, 
but  ''it  can't  be  called  revolutionary  or  a 
solution  of  the  problem." 

Probably  there  is  no  solution,  at  least  if 
we  continue  to  think  in  terms  of  a  setup 
which  resembles  the  old  days  when  house- 
workers  were  plentiful  and  subservient. 
Given  unions,  and  social  security,  and 
expert  training  in  the  highly  skilled  tech- 
niques of  cooking  and  housecleaning,  we 
may  someday  have  a  supply  of  expert  do- 
mestic workers.  But  they  will  be  well 
paid,  and  their  job  will  command  respect, 
and  their  services  won't  be  available  to 
more  than  a  small  minority  of  American 
homes.  Most  of  us  will  have  to  give  up 
the  idea,  if  we  ever  had  it,  that  the  way  to 
cope  with  the  drudgery  of  housekeeping  is 
to  hire  someone  to  move  in  unobtrusively 
and  do  it  for  us  without  our  noticing  it. 


II 

THERE  have  always  been  two  ways  of 
living  pleasantly  without  servants: 
either  you  learn  to  do  things  very  well 
yourself  or  you  organize  some  community 
plan  of  getting  work  done  for  you. 

A  hundred  years  ago  Louis  Napoleon 
and  other  visitors  to  America  were  sur- 
prised to  meet  women  who  were  doing 
their  own  housework  in  New  York,  with- 
out making  any  bones  about  it,  and  were 
still  more  astonished  when  these  same 
women  met  guests  as  graciously  as  a 
European  hostess  who  had  a  staff  below 
stairs.  Of  course  there  were  not  many 
things  which  a  lady  was  permitted  to  do 
outside  her  home  in  those  days;  if  she 


didn't  work  at  home  she  didn't  work  at  all. 
Since  then  women  have,  through  necessity 
or  otherwise,  come  to  engage  in  many 
more  outside  activities  and  jobs.  But  if 
they  have  no  servants  they  can  do  so  only 
by  running  their  houses  much  more  effi- 
ciently and  quickly  than  their  grand- 
mothers or  else  letting  a  lot  of  the  house- 
keeping slide. 

If  they  have  young  children  their  prob- 
lem is  so  much  the  more  complex — in  some 
cases  insoluble  for  a  few  years  no  matter 
how  energetic  they  may  be  and  no  matter 
how  adept  they  may  be  at  reducing  every- 
thing in  their  homes  to  simple  routine. 
In  some  ways  modern  methods  do  not 
save  time;  having  to  sterilize  the  baby's 
bottles  takes  as  much  time  in  the  kitchen 
as  the  electric  mixer  saves,  and  so  on. 

Which  raises  the  whole  question  of  just 
how  much  the  house  of  the  future  and  its 
equipment  can  be  counted  on  to  help. 
Obviously  the  architects  can  be  of  some 
assistance  by  working  out  floor  plans 
which  eliminate  unnecessary  steps  for  the 
mother  (or  for  the  general  houseworker, 
if  the  mother  can  employ  one)  who  runs 
the  house  and  minds  the  children  single- 
handed.  We  obviously  won't  build  any 
more  houses  with  kitchen  in  the  basement, 
dining  room  on  the  first  floor,  and  chil- 
dren's playroom  on  the  second  floor,  as 
was  true  in  the  days  when  two  or  three 
servants  were  assumed  as  "given"  in  even 
moderately  well-to-do  residential  districts. 
And  in  addition  to  improved  layouts,  we 
can  reasonably  expect  that  new  materials 
and  simplified  designs  will  make  cleaning 
and  maintenance  easier.  But  many  of  the 
ideas  advanced  for  the  postwar  house  by 
publicity-seeking  architects  and  designers 
have  been  as  silly  as  the  "hot  and  cold 
folding  doors"  which  are  ridiculed  in  a 
recent  advertisement  of  the  National  Gyp- 
sum Gompany. 

The  manufacturers  of  household  appli- 
ances and  gadgets  can  help  too,  but  there 
are  limits  which  we  may  as  well  accept. 
Better  and  cheaper  vacuum  cleaners, 
toasters,  electric  mixers,  washing  ma- 
chines, and  so  on  will  be  a  blessing,  of 
course.  Maybe  someone  will  even  turn 
out  a  really  efficient,  simple,  and  sturdy 
dishwashing  machine  (though  the  ones 
that  were  around  before  the  war  took  so 


HOUSEKEEPING    AFTER    THE    WAR 


433 


long  to  stoke,  and  left  so  niiieh  egg  on  the 
plates,  and  got  out  of  order  so  easily  that 
the  public  has  reason  to  be  skeptical).  In 
the  end,  however,  mechanical  aids  are 
subject  to  the  law  of  diminishing  returns. 
The  number  of  mixers,  squeezers,  grind- 
ers, pea  shellcrs,  ice  crushers,  bread  she- 
ers, cleaning  and  washim^  machines,  can 
openers,  and  waflle  irons  which  any  one 
housekeeper  can  cope  with  in  a  compact 
house  is  limited  not  only  by  the  amount  of 
time  she  can  spend  in  taking  care  of  them, 
getting  them  out,  setting  them  up,  clean- 
ing them,  and  putting  them  away  again, 
but  also  by  the  amount  of  space  they 
require. 

MORE  promising  than  these  mechanical 
and  architectural  aids  to  the  indi- 
vidual housekeeper  are  the  projects  which 
involve  some  attempt  at  commercial  or 
co-operative  organization  on  a  commu- 
nity basis.  This  isn't  a  new  idea  by  any 
means.  A  century  ago  Alexander  Her- 
zen,  the  Russian  socialist  whose  distaste 
for  the  mutually  depraving  master-serv- 
ant relationship  didn't  make  him  any  the 
more  willing  to  wash  his  own  teacups  or 
light  his  own  fires,  was  delighted  with  the 
way  you  could  live  in  Paris  apartments. 
The  secret  of  their  comfort  lay  in  the  bell- 
pull  which  led  from  every  room  down  to 
the  concierge's  loge. 

The  concierge  was  always  at  the  service 
of  the  tenants.  He  it  was  who  brushed 
your  clothes  every  morning  before  you 
arose,  polished  your  boots,'  cleaned  the 
rugs,  and  washed  the  chandeliers.  He 
fetched  tobacco  or  wine  for  you,  delivered 
your  mail,  received  your  visitors'  cards, 
lighted  your  hallway,  locked  your  door. 
But  could  you  count  on  him?  Yes,  said 
Herzen,  like  a  rock,  because  he  was  ex- 
tremely well  paid,  receiving  something 
from  each  of  perhaps  twenty-five  tenants, 
and  something  from  the  owner  too.  And 
so  he  did  not  need  to  cheat  you  and  did  not 
dare  neglect  you. 

Then  there  were  plenty  of  other  people 
ready  to  offer  service.  It  was  simplest  to 
go  to  a  cafe  for  coffee  and  a  look  at  the 
papers,  but  for  a  franc  extra  a  lazybones 
could  have  these  sent  up  to  his  apartment. 
Dinner  was  managed  the  same  way.  Ev- 
erything from  cudets  to  wine  could  be 


served  from  across  the  street  with  no  bother 
to  you  at  all.  If  you  had  children,  of 
course,  they  might  need  a  cook  and  a 
nurse — but  according  to  Herzen  most 
children  did  better  put  out  at  pension 
than  at  home  watching  all  that  went  on 
under  the  paternal  roof. 

Nowadays  we  do  not  need  and  cannot 
expect  to  get  people  to  post  our  letters  or 
light  our  fires  for  us,  but  it's  reasonable 
to  argue  that  an  industrial  civilization 
like  ours  ought  to  be  able  to  provide  at 
least  as  much  comfort  as  pre-industrial 
Paris. 

To  begin  with  the  problem  of  cleaning. 
A  good  thorough  weekly  cleaning  is  the 
most  backbreaking  part  of  housework. 
Other  jobs  may  be  more  tedious  and  more 
recurrent — but  many  women  feel  that  if 
they  could  just  get  their  heavy  cleaning 
out  of  the  way  they  could  handle  every- 
thing else  with  ease. 

Cleaning  a  house  should  be  a  skilled 
job.  Those  who  do  it  should  be  as  pro- 
fessional as  a  radio  repair  man  or  beauty- 
parlor  operator,  with  just  as  much  skill 
and  training.  They  need  to  know  the 
difference  between  waxed,  oiled,  and  shel- 
lacked furniture,  and  how  to  treat  different 
wall  surfaces,  as  well  as  good  techniques 
for  washing  windows  and  dusting.  Train- 
ing girls  for  such  highly  skilled  domestic 
work  as  this  is  being  done  in  the  public 
schools  of  Niagara  Falls  and  perhaps  else- 
where, and  some  people  have  high  hopes 
for  such  courses,  though  others  claim  that 
girls  don't  get  very  much  out  of  them  until 
they  are  really  up  against  the  job  of  run- 
ning a  house  themselves. 

But  perhaps  the  single  worker,  even 
trained,  is  not  the  final  answer  to  cleaning 
houses.  There  is  a  wartime  phenomenon 
in  England  which  suggests  that  some  as- 
pects of  the  job  might  become  municipal 
functions.  After  a  house  has  been  blitzed 
in  London,  for  instance,  the  government 
sends  around  a  truck  with  a  huge  vacuum 
cleaner  on  it,  which  sucks  up  all  the  debris 
and  broken  glass  so  that  the  houseowner 
can  start  fresh  again.  After  the  war  these 
trucks  could  be  used  to  take  away  the 
peacetime  dirt  of  moving  day,  the  soot 
and  ashes  of  winter's  fires,  and  October's 
fallen  leaves.  Why  could  not  this  be  as 
normal  a  service  as  garbage  removal? 


434 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


IT  IS  more  immediately  practical  to  talk 
of  a  commercial  cleaning  service.  Un- 
der such  a  plan  a  firm  would  contract  to 
clean  your  house  every  week,  whether 
you  were  at  home  or  out  shopping  or  at 
your  office.  Every  Wednesday  at  ten, 
say,  a  team  of  bonded  workers  would 
arrive,  equipped  with  vacuum  cleaners, 
metal  polish,  rags,  mops,  and  whatever 
they  needed  besides,  and  go  to  work. 
Such  a  team  might  consist  of  a  man  and 
two  women.  The  man  would  do  the  re- 
quired lifting  and  reaching,  the  dusting  of 
high  places,  the  cleaning  of  walls,  win- 
dows, and  floors.  Meanwhile  one  of  the 
women  would  work  on  the  mirrors,  silver, 
and  woodwork,  while  the  other  would 
dust  and  clean  the  furniture.  Occasion- 
ally the  team  would  wax  the  floors  and 
wash  the  windows,  and  there  might  be 
other  jobs  that  would  not  need  attention 
every  single  week.  Shelves,  closets,  and 
bookcases  could  be  done  in  rotation  so  as 
to  eliminate  the  need  for  "turning  a  house 
out"  every  March  in  an  orgy  of  spring 
cleaning. 

No  one  knows  how  long  it  would  take 
such  a  team  of  workers  to  do  up  an  aver- 
age house  until  it  has  been  tried,  but  it  is 
likely  that  they  could  do  two  or  three  in 
one  day.  Even  so  the  job  would  un- 
doubtedly cost  more  to  the  individual 
houseowner  than  having  an  unskilled  day 
worker  come  in  and  clean  up.  Each 
house  would  have  to  be  specially  analyzed, 
with  a  notation  on  cards  of  just  what  was 
to  be  done,  and  the  price  would  have  to  be 
estimated  accordingly.  Then  each  job 
would  have  to  be  inspected.  Part  of  the 
job  of  a  housekeeper  in  a  hotel  is  to  inspect 
every  room  every  time  it  is  done  up,  and 
nothing  less  thorough  works. 

In  an  apartment  house  these  jobs  of 
analyzing  and  inspecting  would  be  much 
simplified^  so  this  sort  of  service  might 
find  its  easiest  starting  point  there.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  something  approaching  it 
has  already  been  put  into  eff*ect  by  several 
commercial  outfits.  One  agency  in  New 
York,  for  instance,  was  started  in  1 940  by 
two  young  men  who  had  the  notion  that 
cleaning  apartments  could  be  done  on  a 
scientific  basis.  They  confess  to  having 
made  the  preliminary  mistake  of  consult- 
ing a  home  economist  about  the  proper 


II 


procedure.  But  this  was  a  passing  phase 
and  they  soon  went  at  the  job  of  cleaning 
apartments  themselves — their  own  and 
those  of  their  friends — and  timing  the  op- 
eration. Then  they  interviewed  maids 
and  timed  them  on  similar  routines. 
When  they  had  systematized  the  jobs  re- 
quired in  a  typical  apartment  (they  spe- 
cialized in  the  four-room  size),  they  set  up 
shop  and  began  taking  on  clients.  They 
pay  their  maids  by  the  job  rather  than  by 
time  and  provide  social  security,  work- 
men's compensation,  and  unemployment 
insurance,  give  a  week's  vacation  with  pay, 
and  off'er  bonuses  for  keeping  customers 
and  for  perfect  attendance.  The  scheme 
has  been  sufliciently  successful  to  indicate 
that  expanded  commercial  service  of  this 
kind  may  some  day  be  provided. 

There  is  no  reason  why  in  time  it  should 
not  spread  to  suburban  houses  too.  If 
enough  people  subscribed  to  the  service 
so  that  workers  did  not  need  to  spend 
much  time  in  getting  about  but  could  go 
from  one  house  to  another  in  the  same 
block;  and  if  people  were  willing  to  accept 
a  standardized  job  without  any  fancy 
touches;  and  particularly  if  they  weren't 
always  calling  up  to  say,  "I  can't  have 
you  Tuesday;  won't  you  come  Thursday 
this  week?"  and  if  they  realized  that  this 
service  would  spare  them  the  expense  of 
keeping  their  own  vacuum  cleaners  and 
tools — if  all  these  conditions  were  met, 
having  one's  house  cleaned  professionally 
might  get  to  be  no  more  of  a  luxury  than 
sending  one's  clothes  to  the  laundry.  And 
with  the  new  easy-to-clean  houses,  and  the 
new  gadgets  (like  Westinghouse's  electric 
air  cleaner,  which  collects  all  the  dust — 
even  the  tobacco  smoke — from  the  air  of  a 
house  and  which  may  sell  for  less  than  $200 
after  the  war)  the  job  of  housecleaning 
may  become  so  much  simpler  and  less 
frequent  that  the  cost  of  commercial  serv- 
ice will  be  within  the  reach  of  many  of  us. 

FOOD  preparation  and  marketing  are 
also  jobs  which  may  increasingly  be 
handled  professionally  or  on  a  community 
basis.  For  some  people  there  would  be 
real  advantages  in  the  development  of 
communities  of  houses,  each  built  with  a 
minimum  of  kitchen  facilities  and  all 
grouped  (as  Mrs.  Hawes  suggests  in  her 


HOUSEKEEPING    AFTER    THE    WAR 


435 


book)  about  a  central  building  where 
everyone  could  eat,  except  on  those  occa- 
sions when  families  preferred  to  cook  for 
themselves,  much  as  summer  cottages  in 
the  Adirondacks  and  elsewhere  are  often 
grouped  about  a  central  dining  lodge.  A 
single  well-paid  chef  could  take  care  of 
cooking  for  such  a  group  at  a  cost  per 
family  much  lower  than  the  wages  of  a 
sleep-in  cook,  and  there  would  be  consid- 
erable savings  resulting  from  wholesale 
purchases  of  supplies.  But  in  planning 
such  house-communities  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  relatively  few  people  are 
eager  to  mix  so  intimately  with  other 
families,  and  that  no  arrangement  of  the 
kind  is  likely  to  work  for  anybody  unless  it 
makes  a  maximum  allowance  for  privacy. 
The  war  has  accelerated  experiments 
with  ''factory  feeding."  For  example,  in 
some  war  plants  a  mother  emerging  from 
her  eight-hour  shift  can  buy  ready-cooked, 
hot  meals  which  are  packed  to  be  carried 
home  to  her  family.  In  New  York  and  a 
few  other  cities  there  are  commercial 
services  which  prepare  and  deliver  and 
serve  meals  to  subscribers,  like  similar 
services  which  were  set  up  in  Louisville, 
Brookline,  and  other  places  after  the  last 
war;  but  meals  provided  on  this  basis  are 
very  expensive.  In  general,  however, 
there  has  been  a  continuous  increase  over 
the  past  twenty  years,  in  the  cities  es- 
pecially, in  the  sale  of  ready-to-serve  food, 
notably  at  delicatessens  and  at  chains  like 
Xew  York's  Horn  and  Hardart  retail 
shops,  and  the  trend  will  undoubtedly 
continue. 

BUT  the  field  where  there  is  the  greatest 
•  opportunity  for  organized  service 
undoubtedly  lies  in  the  expansion  and  im- 
provement of  nursery  schools  and  child- 
care  centers,  for  it  is  small  children  who 
make  the  largest  demands  on  a  house- 
keeper's time.  Much  has  been  done 
along  these  lines  during  the  war  by  fed- 
eral, state,  and  local  agencies,  and  thou- 
sands of  women  who  would  otherwise  have 
been  unable  to  get  away  from  home  have 
taken  on  war  jobs,  for  pay  or  as  volunteers, 
while  their  children  were  enjoying  expert 
care  and  supervision. 

There  are  still  many  shortcomings  in  the 
nursery  school  setup,  of  course.     One  of 


the  problems  which  has  been  most  trouble- 
some stems  from  the  fact  that  the  more 
careful  a  school  is  about  sending  children 
home  when  they  have  running  noses  the 
harder  it  is  for  a  working  mother  to  keep 
on  her  job.  But  even  this  problem  may 
be  licked.  The  Scranton  Child  Care 
Center  in  New  Haven,  for  example,  has 
made  up  a  list  of  women  who  are  willing 
to  serve  as  housekeeping  aides  in  the  homes 
of  sick  children.  These  women  are  on 
call,  more  or  less  like  substitute  teachers  in 
the  public  schools,  so  that  if  a  child  de- 
velops the  sniffles  on  Tuesday  afternoon, 
the  person  in  charge  of  the  nursery  looks 
over  her  list  of  women  available  on  Tues- 
days and  calls  one  of  them  to  take  the 
child  home  and  stay  with  him  until  his 
mother  gets  back.  The  same  woman  will 
usually  come  every  day  until  the  child  is 
well  enough  to  go  back  to  school,  thus 
permitting  the  mother  to  go  on  with  her 
work.  The  housekeeping  aide  is  paid  by 
the  family  of  the  sick  child  at  an  hourly 
rate.  Since  children,  especially  sick  ones, 
are  often  unwilling  to  go  with  strangers, 
some  nursery  schools  are  trying  to  work 
out  plans  whereby  these  women  may  get 
training  in  child  care  plus  an  acquaintance 
with  their  possible  charges  by  doing  some 
of  the  work  around  the  school  on  a  part- 
time  basis. 

But  there  is  more  to  the  nursery  school 
problem  than  the  mere  difficulties  of 
running  the  schools  effectively.  Even  in 
wartime,  when  the  children  of  working 
mothers  have  become  a  subject  of  national 
concern  and  federal  funds  have  been 
allocated  under  the  Lanham  Act  to  pro- 
vide day-care  centers  for  them,  only  a 
small  percentage  of  parents  have  made  use 
of  these  facilities.  In  Buffalo  nine  child- 
care  centers  with  a  capacity  of  2,000  chil- 
dren were  set  up,  but  the  number  of  chil- 
dren who  came  was  so  small  that  all  nine 
were  closed.  In  Detroit  only  700  out  of 
a  possible  50,000  children  of  working 
mothers  have  come  to  the  centers. 

To  some  extent  this  is  doubtless  the 
result  of  ignorance  of  what  the  centers  can 
provide  for  small  children,  but  it  is  also 
to  some  extent  based  on  prejudice.  Many 
people  simply  dislike  the  idea  of  having 
their  children  cared  for  by  "an  institu- 
tion."    But  more  and  more  are  discover- 


436 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ing  that  a  well-run  nursery  or  play  school 
is  not  just  a  place  for  a  selfish  or  irrespon- 
sible woman  to  dump  her  kids  while  she 
does  something  she  likes  better  than  look- 
ing after  them.  In  all  kinds  of  communi- 
ties, from  wealthy  suburbs  to  the  slums, 
there  is  certain  to  br  an  increase  in  the 
number  of  well-equipped,  privately  oper- 
ated or  community-sponsored  centers 
where  small  children  can  play  and  learn 
together  under  trained  supervision.  And 
as  such  facilities  increase  there  will  be 
more  and  more  women  who  will  reorgan- 
ize their  domestic  routine  to  take  full 
advantage  of  them. 

Ill 

-TTjTERE,  then,  are  a  few  of  the  notable 
j£jL  contemporary  trends  toward  making 
housekeeping  and  family-raising  a  job 
which,  with  all  its  demands  upon  a 
woman's  intelligence  and  interest,  need 
not  become  the  kind  of  drudgery  which 
discourages  all  other  interests.  Of  course 
the  imperative  demand  for  some  of  the 
organized  services  we  have  mentioned  will 
slack  off  after  the  war.  It  was  the  consen- 
sus of  a  group  of  newspaper  women  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  who  met  recently 
in  New  York  that  though  many  women 
are  gladly  working  in  war  industries  and 
as  volunteers  for  the  duration,  there  will 
be  a  general  exodus  from  these  outside 
activities  back  into  the  home  when  the 
war  is  over.  If  that  is  so,  the  industrial 
plants  and  some  of  the  government  agen- 
cies which  have  supported  nursery  schools 
and  factory-feeding  projects,  for  instance, 
may  lose  interest  in  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  not  all  women  who 
have  kept  their  homes  running  with  one 
hand,  as  it  were,  while  working  eight  or 
more  hours  a  day  on  outside  jobs  will 
return  meekly  to  a  routine  of  housework 
and  children  and  nothing  else.  For  one 
thing,  many  of  them  through  force  of  cir- 
cumstances have  learned  ways  and  means 
of  streamlining  the  housekeeping  job. 
The  women's  editor  of  the  Denver  Post  is 
convinced  that  what  women  have  learned 
during  the  war  about  marketing  and 
foods  will  contribute  to  better-run  homes 
for  years  to  come,  and  she  is  probably 
right. 


There  undoubtedly  are  many  ways  in 
which  habitual  housekeeping  routines 
could  be  simplified  and  reorganized  to 
save  time  and  effort.  There  have  been 
any  number  of  attempts  in  this  direction 
lately.  The  Extension  Service  of  the 
U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture  reported 
recently  that  farm  women  in  many  states 
are  now  being  asked  "to  study  their 
household  tasks  with  a  view  to  applying 
factory  speed-up  methods"  in  an  effort  to 
save  time  for  the  work  of  the  Women's 
Land  Army  this  coming  spring  and  sum- 
mer. Industrial  engineers,  we  are  told, 
are  analyzing  and  breaking  down  house- 
hold jobs  in  the  same  way  that  factory 
jobs  were  broken  down  to  speed  up  pro- 
duction, and  farm  women  are  co-operating 
by  making  time  and  motion  studies  of  the 
jobs  they  do.  Purdue  University,  Michi- 
gan State  College,  and  the  University  of 
Iowa  are  all  working  on  these  matters, 
too,  and  have  published  several  bulletins 
containing  suggestions.  And  a  New  York 
home-management  specialist  has  discov- 
ered that  if  you  iron  a  man's  shirt  on  a 
twenty-inch  board  instead  of  a  regulation 
fifteen-inch  board  you  have  to  move  the 
shirt  only  four  times  instead  of  twenty- 
two  times,  and  lift  or  set  down  the  iron 
only  twenty-six  times  instead  of  seventy- 
two. 

Well,  probably  the  American  ironing 
board  should  be  redesigned  (though  we 
hope  that  the  experts  don't  prove  we  ought 
to  have  a  different-sized  board  for  every 
item  in  the  laundry).  And  doubtless 
many  other  improvements  can  and  will 
be  made,  as  they  have  been  in  the  past. 
But  we're  suspicious  of  the  general  notion 
that  the  house  can  be,  or  should  be,  run 
like  a  factory.  It  strikes  us  as  more  of  the 
same  sort  of  rot  which  the  starry-eyed 
apostles  of  the  great  Swiss  architect  Le 
Corbusier  went  in  for  ten  years  ago  when 
they  picked  up  his  catchword  about  the 
house  as  "a  machine  for  living."  A  house 
obviously  is  not  a  machine — it  is  a  home. 
The  more  machines  you  can  get  to  do  the 
dirty  work  in  it,  the  better;  but  it  is  not 
itself  a  machine,  and  as  long  as  people  live 
in  it,  it  can't  be  run  like  one. 

We're  inclined  to  think  that  the  house- 
keeper's best  hope  lies  in  the  same  two 
directions  that  were  open  a  century  ago: 


FOURTH    DIMENSION 


437 


learning  to  do  the  job  more  and  more  ex- 
pertly, and  encouraging  the  organization 
of  more  and  more  outside  agencies  to  take 
over  parts  of  the  job.  The  former,  as 
Charlotte  Adams  makes  abundantly  clear 
in  a  book  called  The  Run  of  the  House  (which 
deserves  to  be — but  isn't — more  widely 
read  than  the  book  by  Mrs.  Hawes  which 
we  have  already  mentioned)  is  principally 
a  matter  of  education.  By  all  means  let's 
have  all  the  new  mechanical  and  tech- 
nological aids  we  can  get,  and  develop 
all  the  improved  techniques  we  can;  but 
in  the  meantime  there  is  a  tremendous 
job  to  be  done  in  learning  how  to  use  the 
facilities  we  already  have. 

As  for  the  outside  agencies,  even  if  the 
wartime  trend  toward  increased  depend- 
ence on  them  slacks  off,  there  is  probably 
no  field  which  is  so  wide  open  for  ex- 
ploration. Organized  services  are  a  real 
need,  and  they  will  inevitably  be  de- 
veloped, either  as  civic  projects,  or  as 
co-operative  ventures  among  individuals, 


or  as  commercial  enterprises — depending 
on  the  kind  of  service  which  is  involved 
and  the  kind  of  people  for  whom  it  is 
intended. 

Fundamental  changes  in  housekeeping 
techniques  come  slowly.  Families  that 
have  been  used  to  keeping  a  maid  usually 
stick  to  this  luxury  through  thick  and  thin 
(if  they  can  find  one)  no  matter  what  else 
they  have  to  give  up,  just  as  other  people 
who  become  quite  rich  still  do  not  engage 
help  because  they  have  not  the  habit.  It 
will  not  be  easy  for  the  families  that  have 
always  had  servants  to  accept  the  more 
professional,  less  personal,  and  very  likely 
unionized  help  that  will  be  available  in 
the  future;  nor  will  those  who  have  never 
had  help  take  immediate  advantage  of  the 
organized  services  that  will  be  offered. 
But  there  seems  to  be  no  other  course  in  a 
country  where  no  citizens  want  to  be 
menials  and  where  women  are  increas- 
ingly determined  to  live  a  part  of  their 
lives  outside  their  homes. 


FOURTH    DIMENSION 


MARTHA    KELLER 


THIS  is  the  arm  beneath  my  head 
Foregone  so  long.     Forever  this 
Is  resurrection  from  the  dead 
By  reason  of  excessive  bliss. 

This  is  the  fever  nothing  stills, 
The  moonlight  of  the  mind — that  burns. 
This  is  the  happiness  that  kills 
Except  the  risen  ghost  returns. 


This  is  geometry  defined 
In  logic  as  exact  as  stone. 
This  is  a  passion  of  the  mind 
As  well  as  gospel  of  the  bone. 


THE    GREAT    GOLD    CONSPIRACY 


JOHN    BARTLOW     MARTIN 


r  WARTIME  a  nation's  currency  is  at 
once  its  powerful  weapon  and  its 
Achilles  heel.  Currency  control  must 
be  stringent.  The  nation's  gold  must  be 
kept  at  home;  its  currency  must  be  safe- 
guarded. Since  the  war  began  the  United 
States  Treasury  Department's  Secret  Serv- 
ice has  been  watching  for  an  enemy  at- 
tempt to  flood  the  country  with  counter- 
feit money.  Foreign  agents  within  the 
United  States  might  manufacture  spurious 
currency  on  the  spot  or  might  smuggle  it 
in,  or  an  enemy  power  might  send  into  the 
United  States  some  of  the  millions  of  dol- 
lars in  genuine  but  old-sized  American  bills 
which,  though  outlawed  here,  still  are 
floating  around  Europe.  And  likewise 
there  might  be  an  attempt  to  ship  part  of 
the  enormous  U.  S.  gold  reserve  to  an 
enemy  power,  which  might  find  it  vastly 
useful  in  paying  for  war  materials 
elsewhere. 

Late  in  1 942  it  looked  to  the  government 
as  though  some  such  plot  were  afoot  in 
Chicago.  Government  agents  went  into 
action.  Three  men  were  indicted  on 
charges  of  conspiring  to:  (1)  acquire  gold 
in  excess  of  1 ,000  ounces  in  violation  of  Ex- 
ecutive Order  6260,  issued  by  the  Presi- 
dent under  the  Trading  with  the  Enemy 
Act;  (2)  earmark  for  export  gold  in  excess 
of  1,000  ounces;  (3)  export  gold  in  excess 
of  1,000  ounces  to  the  government  of  the 
Third  German  Reich;  (4)  counterfeit  $20 
gold  coins;  (5)  possess  dies  to  counterfeit 


S20  gold  coins:  At  a  subsequent  trial  two 
of  the  men,  Elbridge  Gerry  Bates  and 
Frank  S.  Smith,  were  convicted,  and  Kurt 
Erich  Schimkus  was  acquitted.  Bates  and 
Smith  have  appealed  and  are  out  on  bond. 
This  article  was  prepared  entirely  from 
testimony  at  the  trial. 

The  case  is  unusual  in  that  it  is  a  pure 
conspiracy  case.  None  of  the  defendants 
actually  did  anything;  what  the  govern- 
ment charged  was  that  they  just  conspired 
to  do  things.  According  to  the  charge, 
most  of  the  action  took  place  inside  the 
heads  of  the  plotters.  So  shadowy  and 
elusive  were  their  designs  that  to  this  day 
even  the  government  is  not  quite  sure  it 
knows  the  whole  truth  about  what  hap- 
pened. Was  there  a  tie-in  with  the 
Reich?  Or  did  these  men,  like  many  in- 
discreet Americans  without  criminal  in- 
tent, simply  do  a  lot  of  harmless  talking? 
The  case  is  one  of  the  minor,  not-quite- 
solved  mysteries  of  this  war. 

E\RLY  in  October  of  1 942  a  government 
informer,  Myron  Landau,  told  the 
Secret  Service  in  Chicago  that  he  knew  a 
man  who  wanted  to  obtain  a  large  amount 
of  gold  and  dispose  of  it  through  a  foreign 
agent  named  Kobelt.  Karl  Kobelt  (the 
name  is  spelled  variously)  was  known  to 
the  authorities  as  a  key  German  espionage 
agent;  having  been  manager  of  the  Chi- 
cago office  of  North  German  Lloyd,  he  had 
been  interned  at  Pearl  Harbor  time  and 


THE    GREAT    GOLD    CONSPIRACY 


439 


rloportcd  on  the  Drottningholm.  The  Sc- 
(ict  Service  now  thought  that  Kobelt 
might  have  returned  to  the  United  States 
secretly.  At  about  this  same  time — Octo- 
ber, 1942 — six  persons  were  scheduled  for 
trial  in  Chicago  on  charges  of  sheltering 
Herbert  Maupt,  executed  Nazi  saboteur, 
.ifter  his  submarine  return  to  the  United 
States;  and  so  it  was  natural  that  through- 
out the  investigation  of  this  gold  con- 
spiracy the  Haupt  case  should  be  much  in 
the  minds  of  the  agents,  for  every  now  and 
then  a  parallel  element  would  appear 
tantalizingly,  only  to  dissolve  into  nothing. 

The  informer  Landau  said  that  the  man 
who  wanted  to  get  hold  of  gold  in  order  to 
dispose  of  it  through  Kobelt  was  one  El- 
bridge  Gerry  Bates.  Bates,  small,  bald, 
gentle,  mustached,  glib,  was  a  salesman  of 
electrical  apparatus  and  had  maintained 
an  office  at  549  West  Randolph  Street, 
just  west  of  the  Chicago  Loop,  for  about 
fourteen  years.  He  lived  in  Glen  Ellyn, 
an  upper-middle-class  suburb  of  Chicago, 
with  his  wife  and  two  children;  he  was  born 
forty-three  years  ago  in  suburban  Elm- 
hurst.  His  mother's  parents  were  born  in 
England  and  his  father's  parents  in  Massa- 
chusetts. In  this  background  the  Federal 
Bureau  of  Investigation  could  find  no 
German  or  criminal  connections,  and  by 
Bates's  own  account  he  had  never  previ- 
ously been  involved  with  the  law.  Yet  in 
the  fall  of  1942  he  met  Myron  Landau,  a 
small,  dapper,  mustached  man  who  was 
then  on  probation  following  a  conviction 
on  a  Federal  gold  charge;  and  according 
to  Bates's  own  subsequent  testimony,  this 
is  what  happened: 

Bates  and  Landau  met  in  a  Loop  sa- 
loon, Fogarty's  Grill.  They  were  in- 
troduced by  a  mutual  friend  named  Louis 
Piquette,  whom  Bates  had  known  for  sev- 
eral years.  (Whether  he  was  the  same 
Louis  Piquette  who  was  an  attorney  dis- 
barred for  his  connections  with  a  follower 
of  the  outlaw  John  Dillinger  does  not  ap- 
pear in  testimony;  he  was  not  indicted  in 
the  present  case.)  Piquette  had  previ- 
ously told  Bates  (again  according  to 
Bates's  testimony)  that  if  Landau  should 
ask  him  if  he  had  ever  sold  gold,  or  if  he 
had  contacts,  he  should  say  yes.  When 
the  men  were  actually  introduced.  Landau 
motioned  Bates  to  silence  and  led  him  up- 


stairs and  asked  him  if  he  "really  had  gold 
contacts."  Bates  replied,  "Sure  I  do." 
Landau  said  he  had  access  to  an  enormous 
quantity  of  gold,  so  much  that  no  private 
party  could  handle  it,  and  that  he  wanted 
the  gold  sold  outside  the  United  States. 

For  Bates's  reply  to  this — and  his  subse- 
quent interpretation  of  it — we  turn  to  his 
own  testimony  on  the  stand.  "My  mind," 
Bates  testified,  "dictated  a  foreign  agent;  I 
manufactured  one  ...  I  said  I  had  con- 
tacts and  told  him  about  Mr.  Kobelt; 
that  is  what  he  wanted  to  know." 

This  was  the  burden  of  Bates's  defense — 
that,  being  a  salesman,  he  would  reply 
"yes"  if  anybody  asked  him  if  he  could  sell 
anything;  that  he  did  not  have  any  gold 
contacts  at  all;  that  "the  matter  was  a 
fabrication  from  start  to  finish."  "I 
never  saw  Kovelt  [Kobelt]  in  my  life  .  .  . 
and  would  not  know  him  if  he  popped  up 
in  the  middle  of  my  lap.  I  got  the  name 
off  the  window  of  the  North  German 
Lloyd's  on  Randolph  and  La  Salle.  I 
used  to  pick  up  literature  for  my  children 
to  make  books  at  school  in  geography,  and 
I  had  been  in  that  office  for  literature,  just 
as  I  picked  it  up  at  every  other  steamship 
company  in  Chicago." 

Bates  said  that,  having  mentioned  Ko- 
belt's  name  to  Landau,  he  thought  he  had 
better  find  out  a  little  more  about  Kobelt, 
so  he  went  to  Kobelt's  office;  apparently  it 
never  occurred  to  him  that  the  North 
German  Lloyd's  office  would  have  been 
closed  by  this  time,  since  Germany  and 
the  United  States  had  been  at  war  nearly  a 
year.  He  even  inquired  after  Kobelt  of 
the  building  manager,  who  thought  Bates 
was  from  the  FBL  Bates  said  he  wasn't 
from  the  FBI  and  left.  Throughout  his 
testimony  Bates  pictured  himself  as  a  man 
who,  glib  but  innocent,  was  put  into  a  false 
position  and,  to  maintain  it,  heaped  lie  on 
lie.  "I  lied  my  head  off,"  he  testified. 
He  denied  the  indictment  item  by  item, 
and  ended,  "I  never  had  in  mind  the  ship- 
ment of  gold  to  the  Third  German  Reich. 
I  do  not  have  or  hold  any  loyalty  or  love 
for  Germany;  I  loathe  them.  I  loathe 
Hitler,  the  Nazis,  and  others  associated  in 
the  party."  Nearly  all  his  actions  which 
looked  so  suspicious  to  the  government  he 
explained  as  innocently  as  he  explained 
the  Kobelt  connection. 


440 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


|UT  naturally  the  Secret  Service  was  in- 
terested when  Landau,  turning  in- 
former, first  brought  in  the  tip  on  Bates. 
In  wartime,  anybody  who  claimed  that 
he  had  contacts  which  ^would  enable  him 
to  export  large  quantities  of  gold  from  the 
United  States  must  be  followed  up  closely. 
So  Thomas  J.  Callaghan,  Supervising 
Agent,  assigned  one  of  his  best  undercover 
investigators,  Harry  A.  Schaetzel,  to  the 
case.  Schaetzel  was  introduced  to  Bates 
by  Landau  as  Harry  Dexheimer,  and  it  is 
as  Dexheimer  that  we  shall  know  him. 
Landau  called  Dexheimer  "impetuous," 
and  this  was  apparently  an  understate- 
ment: at  least  one  of  Dexheimer's  asso- 
ciates has  spoken  of  him  as  "a  wild  man." 
He  cannot  be  described  physically  here, 
for  obvious  reasons,  but  his  manner  and 
personality  can  be  read  in  his  numerous 
successful  attempts  to  obtain  evidence 
against  experienced  criminals  by  consort- 
ing with  them  and  gaining  their  complete 
confidence.  Landau  pointed  out  Bates  to 
Dexheimer  and  Supervising  Agent  Calla- 
ghan about  October  15,  1942,  in  the  lobby 
of  the  Morrison  Hotel,  in  the  Loop;  and 
five  days  later  he  introduced  Dexheimer  to 
Bates  in  the  quiet  paneled  lobby  of  the  La 
Salle  Hotel,  near  the  south  entrance.  At 
Bates's  suggestion  they  left  Landau  in  the 
lobby  and  went  to  the  north  mezzanine 
and  sat  down  about  a  hundred  feet  to  the 
left  of  the  stairway. 

This  is  how  the  conversation  went  be- 
tween Dexheimer  of  the  Secret  Service  and 
Bates,  according  to  Dexheimer's  testimony: 

Bates  asked,  "Did  Myron  [Landau]  tell 
you  about  my  connection?" 

Dexheimer  said,  "Yes,  he  did,  but  I 
would  like  to  know  more  about  it.  I 
would  like  to  have  you  tell  me  in  person." 

"Did  he  tell  you  about  the  gold,  the 
twenty-dollar  gold  coins?" 

"He  did.  But  let  us  start  from  the  start 
of  it  and  go  all  the  way  through." 

"Where  were  you  from?" 

"I  am  from  Dakota." 

"What  kind  of  business?" 

Dexheimer  said  he  was  interested  in  the 
mining  industry. 

Bates  said,  "Now  one  thing.  Of  course, 
you  have  to  be  very  careful  of  what  I  am 
going  to  tell  you,  because  if  we  got  caught, 
it  will  be  so  very  serious  of  a  nature,  and 


we  could  be  tried  the  same  as  the  Nazis 
were  tried — the  saboteurs  were  tried  in 
Washington,  and  executed." 

"What  are  the  facts  of  it?"  Dexheimer 
asked.     "What  are  the  details?" 

"Well,  I  have  a  connection,  I  made  a 
connection  through  a  Mr.  Kobelt,  and 
through  Mr.  Kobelt  and  his  connections  I 
sold  $83,000  worth  of  gold  to  the  German 
agents  in  New  York."  He  added  that  he 
had  received  $32.60  an  ounce.  Bates  said 
that  his  connections  now  wanted  to  buy 
from  one  to  five  thousand  ounces.  (As 
the  plot  progressed  it  sometimes  appeared 
that  the  gold  was  to  be  sold  as  bar  gold,  or 
bullion,  while  sometimes  there  was  talk  of 
counterfeiting  it  into  $20  gold  coins.) 

Dexheimer  asked,  "What  about  the  dies 
for  making  the  coins?"  and  Bates  replied, 
"We  will  make  that  after  we  get  rid  of  this 
other  deal  I  have  in  mind." 

Dexheimer  wanted  to  know  how  pay- 
ment was  made  and  Bates  said,  "Well,  I 
got  paid  in  old-sized  currency  I  [they?] 
brought  to  this  country  by  submarine  and 
they  took  this  gold  out  of  the  country, 
loaded  the  boat,  the  submarine,  thirty-six 
miles  off  the  coast  of  Massachusetts, 
where  they  will  be  met  by  a  boat.  ...  I 
suppose  they  will  .  .  .  bring  some  more 
of  that  money  over  but  we  will  have  to  be 
very  careful.  .  .  .  We  don't  want  to  get 
caught  in  changing  the  old-sized  cur- 
rency to  new  denominations." 

Dexheimer  said  he  wanted  to  meet  the 
foreign  agents  personally,  especially  Ko- 
belt. Bates  replied,  "Well,  Kobelt  is  a 
very  much  wanted  man.  I  have  not  seen 
him  since  last  January,  but  ...  I  know 
people  in  Chicago  that  know  his  pres- 
ent whereabouts  and  we  will  try  to  see  if 
we  can  make  the  necessary  arrangements." 
Dexheimer  and  Bates  agreed  to  consult 
their  respective  connections  as  to  price  and 
to  confer  again. 

The  matter  of  price,  Bates  testified,  was 
crucial:  he  saw  a  chance  to  make  $1.40  an 
ounce  and  "We  were  talking  in  terms  of 
.  .  .  thousands  of  ounces,  it  became  a 
fabulous  amount  of  money.  ...  I  told 
him  it  would  run  into  millions  of  dollars. 
...  I  could  envision  making  more  that 
way  than  I  could  the  rest  of  my  life,  even 
if  I  lived  to  be  a  hundred." 

During    the    conversation    Dexheimer 


illE    GREAT    GOLD    GONSPIRACY 


441 


posed  as  a  "falKiIoiisIy  wealthy"  mining 
man,  though  he  must  have  appeared  to  be 
an  eccentric  one;  according  to  Bates's  ver- 
sion of  the  conversation,  Dexheimer  said 
that  the  gold  "was  his  life  blood;  that  he 
had  worked  for  it  and  no  one  was  going  to 
take  it  from  him."  Bates  reassured  him. 
Bates  wanted  to  know  where  Dexheimer 
was  staying  but  the  agent  replied  only 
that  Bates  could  reach  him  through 
Landau. 

They  separated.  Dexheimer  reported 
to  Supervising  Agent  Callaghan  and  then 
went  to  the  FBI,  where  agents  were  as- 
signed to  shadow  Bates  and  investigate 
hin^  secretly  while  Dexheimer  developed 
his  direct  contact. 

Now,  as  we  watch  the  negotiations 
progress,  we  must  always  bear  in 
mind  one  point:  none  of  these  men  ever  ac- 
tually possessed  any  gold  at  all  (except,  of 
course,  a  few  bars  which  the  government 
agents  used  as  "props"  when  they  baited 
their  trap).  Yet  so  involved  did  the  nego- 
tiations become  and  so  realistic  the  play- 
acting of  Agent  Dexheimer  and  Bates  and 
his  acquaintances  that  at  times  it  must 
have  seemed  even  to  Dexheimer  that  he 
'  was,  in  truth,  a  mining  man  from  Dakota 
I  with  gold  to  sell,  as  he  pretended  to  be. 
As  might  be  expected,  double-dealing 
entered  into  the  price  negotiations.  Dex- 
heimer cut  the  price  for  the  gold  he  was 
supposed  to  be  selling  to  Bates  from  $33.50 
an  ounce  to  about  $22;  in  this  Bates  did 
not  see  a  warning  but  only, a  chance  for 
more  money.  They  said  they  would  split 
the  difference  three  ways  among  them- 
selves and  Landau.  Dexheimer  said  this 
arrangement  must  be  kept  secret  from  his 
"boss,"  whom  he  described  as  "one  of  the 
biggest  people  in  Chicago,"  a  "big  broker 
on  the  Board  of  Trade  [dealing]  in  millions 
of  bushels,"  a  man  whose  initials  were 
G.  L  Landau  later  told  Bates  that  C.  L 
was  one  Charley  Ingram;  when  Bates 
could  not  find  Ingram  in  the  telephone 
directory  or  the  Board  of  Trade's  member- 
ship roster  he  concluded  not  that  Dex- 
heimer was  trying  to  trap  him  but  that 
Dexheimer  simply  was  concealing,  reason- 
ably enough,  the  identity  of  his  "boss." 

The  attempt  to  coax  Bates  into  disclos- 
ing just  what  he  was  up  to  continued  at 


meeting  after  meeting.  Landau  was  with 
Bates  almost  constantly,  urging  him  to 
produce  his  foreign  agents.  "He  was 
forever  shivering,"  Bates  testified.  "He 
was  always  wanting  a  cup  of  cofTec." 
Bates  liked  Landau  and  later  even  made 
him  a  partner  in  his  electrical  business;  he 
explained  that  Landau  possessed  shrewd 
business  acumen,  and  thus  complemented 
Bates,  who  was  primarily  an  engineering 
man. 

At  various  meetings  Dexheimer,  too, 
put  pressure  on  Bates  to  produce  his  higher- 
ups.  Finally  in  the  Morrison  Hotel,  late 
in  October,  Bates  told  Landau  and  Dex- 
heimer that  he  had  made  arrangements  to 
sell  the  gold  and  that  they  would  have  to 
go  to  New  York  to  meet  the  buyers. 
Dexheimer  wanted  assurance  that  the  trip 
would  be  worth  while  and  Bates  said  he 
had  arranged  to  sell  25,000  or  30,000 
ounces  the  first  time. 

The  trail  seemed  to  be  getting  hot. 

The  negotiations  now  went  into  de- 
tails. Dexheimer,  who  was  supposed  to 
be  producing  the  gold  which  Bates  would 
help  him  sell  in  New  York,  said  he  would 
send  the  gold  from  his  mine  to  New  York 
by  car.  Bates  wanted  to  go  to  New  York 
October  31st,  but  Dexheimer  held  out  for 
November  1st  so  that  they  might  arrive  on 
a  day  when  the  banks  would  be  open;  thus 
he  sought  to  create  the  impression  that  he 
was  taking  no  chances  that  the  gold  buyers 
would  try  to  pay  him  in  counterfeit  cur- 
rency. Bates  agreed  to  this  and  asked 
Dexheimer  to  take  with  him  some  samples 
of  the  gold  to  show  to  the  buyers. 

Bates  said  he  had  called  his  people  in 
the  East,  had  told  them  his  plans,  and  had 
asked  them  to  have  in  readiness  new  cur- 
rency in  denominations  not  larger  than 
$50.  He  added  that  the  captain  of  the 
submarine  would  come  in  with  the  large- 
sized  American  bills  "that  had  been  seized 
from  the  captured  people  of  Europe  .  .  . 
the  gold  was  to  be  left  in  a  room  in  the 
hotel,  protected  by  the  machine  guns 
they  [Dexheimer's  people]  had  brought 
with  them.  I  did  not  see  any  machine 
guns,  but  was  assured  [by  Dexheimer] 
there  were  plenty  of  them  there,  and  if 
anyone  got  the  idea  he  would  steal  this 
gold,  it  would  be  very  unhealthy  for  him. 
They  would  leave  the  gold  on  the  table, 


442 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  my  people  would  walk  in  with  the 
money  to  purchase  that  gold.  We  would 
give  them  that  money  on  the  side  of  the 
counter;  then  we  would  walk  out  with  the 
gold  and  leave  the  money  there.  After 
having  taken  the  gold,"  they  could  check 
up  and  determine  wh  sther  or  not  it  was 
the  type  of  gold  they  were  going  to  give  us. 
They  could  go  out  and  check  the  money. 
After  we  found  the  gold  was  all  right,  we 
could  leave  the  money  and  walk  out  with 
the  gold.  That  same  thing  would  be  re- 
peated until  thousands  of  ounces  of  gold 
had  been  negotiated."  (The  change  of 
person  used  here  by  Bates,  apparently  un- 
intentionally, is  curious.) 

Bates  admitted  later  he  could  not  figure 
out  how  the  old  outlawed  currency  was  to 
be  exchanged  for  new  money.  He  showed 
Dexheimer  a  large-sized  SIO  bill  and  said 
it  might  be  the  kind  that  the  gold  pur- 
chasers would  bring.  (He  later  testified 
that  he  had  carried  this  bill  as  a  curio  for 
about  four  years,  having  purchased  it  from 
a  numismatist  because  it  was  printed  the 
year  he  was  born.) 

The  transaction  promised  to  be  an  enor- 
mous one.  According  to  Bates,  "The 
amount  of  gold  that  was  involved  was  be- 
tween $750,000  and  $1,000,000.  How 
much  that  would  be  in  size  or  packages  I 
cannot  estimate  ...  I  never  saw  that 
much  money." 

II 

AT  LAST  the  three  men,  Bates,  Landau, 
/\^  and  Dexheimer,  set  out  upon  the 
journey  to  New  York  that  Dexheimer  must 
have  thought  might  bring  him  to  the  end 
of  his  trail,  with  the  German  agents  caught 
red-handed.  What  did  Bates  think? 
What  was  he  really  up  to?  That  is  the 
puzzle  we  confront  as  we  follow  the  de- 
veloping evidence  in  the  case. 

The  three  men  left  Chicago  for  New 
York  on  the  Commodore  Vanderbilt  at  3:15 
P.M.,  November  1st.  Also  on  the  train 
but  in  another  car — and  unknown  to  Bates 
— was  Agent  Marvin  W.  Lewis  of  the  Fed- 
eral Bureau  of  Investigation,  who  had 
been  assigned  to  shadow  Bates.  In  def- 
erence to  Dexheimer,  Landau  and  Bates 
gave  him  the  lower  berth  while  they  shared 
an  upper.  The  three  of  them  spent  most 
of  their  time  in  the  club  car.     Dexheimer 


(according  to  Bates's  testimony)  said  he 
had  shipped  the  gold  to  New  York  in 
three  automobiles,  each  protected  by 
machine-gunners  in  case  Bates  intended  to 
have  the  load  hijacked.  They  exchanged 
unpleasantries.  (Dexheimer  denied  the 
various  references  to  machine  guns  and 
gangster  methods.)  According  to  Dex- 
heimer, Bates  warned  him  to  beware  of 
being  followed  in  New  York.  Then,  leav- 
ing the  club  car.  Bates  said,  "After  a 
minute,  stop  by  and  I  will  show  you  some- 
thing." On  their  way  to  the  diner  Dex- 
heimer and  Landau  stopped  at  Bates's 
Pullman  space  and  he  displayed  a  bar  of 
gold  and  silver  about  two  and  a  half  inches 
long  and  an  inch  and  a  half  wide.  It  was 
inscribed  "J.  Myra  to  Mary"  and  bore  the 
state  seal  of  Virginia  and  an  assayer's  seal. 
Bates  told  Dexheimer  (the  agent  testified) 
that  "this  bar  was  given  to  him  by  Ko- 
belt's  connection  for  identification  with 
the  people  in  New  York." 

But  Bates,  in  his  own  testimony,  had  a 
different  story  about  this  bar  of  gold.  He 
declared  the  truth  was  that  he  had  ob- 
tained the  bar,  a  collector's  item,  from  a 
numismatist  in  Chicago,  Frank  S.  Smith — 
the  codefendant  who,  like  Bates,  was 
convicted  of  conspiracy.  And  here  we 
run  into  another  puzzling  element  in  the 
case.  For  Smith  too  had  a  curious  story 
to  tell. 

It  appears  that  Smith,  born  Frank 
Sawrosobyz  (a  name  he  can't  spell)  in 
Lithuania,  had  come  to  the  United  States 
in  1909  when  he  was  seventeen  and  had 
gone  to  live  in  Sheboygan,  Wisconsin, 
where  he  worked  in  a  chair  manufacturing 
plant.  He  became  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States  and  by  1943  his  wife,  his  son,  his 
daughter-in-law,  and  his  grandson  lived 
with  him  above  his  own  factory  at  2267 
Clybourn  Avenue.  In  addition  to  manu- 
facturing furniture  he  bought  and  sold 
coins,  a  hobby  which  began  when  as  a  youth 
he  found  a  tin  can  of  rusty  coins  along  the 
shore  of  Lake  Michigan.  Smith  first  met 
Bates  about  1938,  when  Bates  sold  him 
$283  worth  of  coins.  (Bates  has  claimed 
that  this  odd  sum  of  $283  suggested  the 
figure  $83,000  which  he  told  Dexheimer 
was  the  amount  of  gold  he  had  sold,  not  to 
a  numismatist,  but  to  German  agents.) 
After    1938   Bates   and   Smith   saw   each 


THE    GKEM     GOLD    CONSPIRACY 


443 


)(hcr  about  twice  a  year  on  numismatic 

)usiness. 

In  October  of  1942,  according  to  the 
testimony,  Bates  asked  Smith  to  come  to 
Ills  ofiice  and  told  him  he  represented 
wealthy  acquaintances  who  had  millions 
j(  dollars  in  gold  ingots  and  bars  for  sale. 
Smith  asked  if  the  bars  bore  government 
markings  and  Bates  said  they  did  not. 
Smith  testified,  "I  told  him  I  could  not 
handle  that  kind  of  bars;  he  asked  if  I 
knew  of  anyone  that  could  handle  them. 
I  told  him  this  kind  of  business  is  different 
from  other  business,  it  is  sort  of  a  con- 
fidential business,  and  you  have  to  look 
around  to  find  who  can  handle  it."  He 
gave  Bates  the  address  in  Philadelphia  of 
Ira  Reed,  a  large  and  reputable  coin 
dealer.  Then,  apparently  to  safeguard  his 
own  commission,  Smith  telephoned  Reed. 
When  Smith  told  Reed  that  the  gold  did 
not  bear  federal  markings,  Reed  said  he 
wasn't  interested. 

Smith  tried  to  relay  this  intelligence  to 
Bates,  but  Bates  already  had  gone  to  Phila- 
delphia. Here  he  induced  Reed,  ill  with 
a  cold,  to  open  up  his  shop  on  a  Sunday, 
but  when  he  told  Reed  that  he  had  bar 
gold  to  sell.  Reed  replied  he  did  not  handle 
it.  Before  leaving,  Bates  asked  the  price 
of  a  set  of  china  in  the  showcase,  and 
when  Reed  quoted  it,  "I  nearly  fell  over." 
From  this  came  Bates's  suggestion  that 
Reed  use  the  word  "china"  as  code  for 
"gold"  if  he  ever  wrote  to  Bates  telling 
him  of  anybody  who  could  handle  the 
big  gold  deal.  Bates  then  returned  to 
Chicago  and  told  Smith  that  Reed  wasn't 
big  enough,  and  Smith  suggested  a  New 
York  dealer  named  Max  Berenstein. 

Thereupon  Smith  telephoned  Beren- 
stein long  distance  and  told  him  that  he 
was  in  touch  with  people  who  wanted  to 
sell  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  gold; 
Berenstein  said  that  no  transaction  was  too 
large  for  him.  (Bates  later  testified  that 
one  point  bothered  him:  if  Berenstein 
consented  to  buy  the  gold,  how  could 
Bates  convince  Dexheimer  that  Beren- 
stein, a  Jew,  was  a  Nazi  agent?)  On  the 
occasion  of  this  phone  call  Bates  procured 
from  Smith  for  $55  "on  a  memo"  the  little 
bar  of  silver  and  gold  which  he  displayed 
to  Dexheimer  and  the  informer  Landau  on 
the  train  bound  for  New  York.     Smith 


identified   it  as  a  collector's  item,   made 
sometime  between  1832  and  1841. 

These  efforts  of  Bates  to  find  a  legitimate 
buyer  for  the  gold  he  thought  he  could  get 
from  Dexheimer  appear  excessively  naive. 
Certainly  they  are  not  the  actions — if  they 
can  be  accepted  at  face  value — of  a  foreign 
agent.  It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  them 
with  Bates's  known  shrewdness.  Yet 
testimony  did  not  suggest  the  possibility 
that  Bates  might  simply  have  been  lining 
up  alibi  witnesses  in  case  he  were  caught. 

WHEN  the  train  stopped  at  Harmon 
two  more  FBI  men  swung  aboard. 
At  New  York  Landau  and  Dexheimer 
went  to  the  Governor  Clinton  Hotel, 
where  the  government  had  made  reserva- 
tions for  them,  and  Bates  went  to  the  Com- 
modore, where  he  had  to  wait  in  line  at 
the  desk  to  get  a  room,  so  many  FBI  men 
had  got  there  ahead  of  him. 

About  an  hour  later  Bates  called  Dex- 
heimer and  told  him  he  believed  he  had 
been  followed  from  Grand  Central  Station 
to  the  Commodore,  and  he  warned  Dex- 
heimer to  be  very  careful  "because  he  was 
going  to  meet  his  people."  With  FBI 
agents  shadowing  him  Bates  went  to  the 
office  of  Max  Berenstein,  the  numismatist. 
Bates  said  he  had  gold  to  sell  and  Beren- 
stein asked  him  what  kind.  Bates  replied 
that  it  was  bar  gold  and  Berenstein  said  he 
was  licensed  to  buy  only  DE's  ($20  double 
eagles).  Bates  asked  what  DE's  were,  and 
Berenstein  asked  him  what  business  he  was 
in.  Bates  told  him  he  was  in  the  electrical 
business  and  ofTered  his  gold  at  $28  an 
ounce.  Berenstein  said  he  wasn't  in- 
terested. Bates  left.  (Later  in  the  day 
he  returned  and  cut  the  price  to  $24,  but 
Berenstein,  using  the  word  "illegal,"  ad- 
vised him  to  drop  any  such  transaction 
and  to  go  back  to  Chicago  and  take  care 
of  his  electrical  business.) 

From  Berenstein's  office  that  morning 
Bates  walked  south  on  Madison  Avenue 
and  bought  a  couple  of  neckties  and  some 
socks;  then  he  went  to  the  New  York  Cen- 
tral general  offices  on  Lexington  Avenue 
and  bought  a  model  locomotive  for  his  son, 
paying  $3.30.  After  depositing  this  at  his 
hotel  he  went  by  subway  to  the  Battery. 
Either  at  this  time  or  later  in  the  day  he 
eluded  his  FBI  shadows  by  changing  sub- 


444 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


way  trains  quickly.  (Bates  himself 
claimed  he  got  lost  and,  discovering  he 
had  boarded  the  wrong  train,  got  off  and 
took  another.  But  since  testimony  hinted 
that  the  Navy  might*  have  been  guarding 
New  York  Harbor  that  morning  against 
the  possible  entrance  of  the  submarine 
which  Bates  had  mentioned,  it  is  easy  to 
see  why  Bates's  disappearance  somewhere 
between  midtown  and  the  Battery  caused 
consternation  among  the  numerous  gov- 
ernment agents.) 

Dexheimer,  waiting  at  the  Governor 
Clinton,  did  not  hear  from  Bates  till 
about  three  that  afternoon,  when  Bates 
telephoned  and  said  "he  was  with  his 
people  waiting  for  the  arrival  with  the 
money  from  across,  but  that  for  some  un- 
known reason  there  was  delay.  .  .  ." 
Dexheimer  asked  where  he  was  but  Bates 
said  he  couldn't  tell. 

By  Bates's  own  account  he  spent  this 
afternoon  in  calling  on  officials  of  the  Ana- 
conda Copper  Company  and  the  Interna- 
tional Telephone  and  Development  Cor- 
poration in  regard  to  some  inventions  in 
which  Bates  was  interested  with  an  inven- 
tor named  Kurt  Erich  Schimkus  (who  was 
to  become  another  codefendant  with  Bates 
in  this  gold  case). 

Bates  telephoned  Dexheimer  about  seven 
o'clock  in  the  evening  and,  Bates  testified, 
Dexheimer  demanded,  "Where  the  hell 
have  you  been?"  and  told  him  to  come 
to  Dexheimer' s  "very  beautiful  room," 
as  Bates  described  it.  There,  in  Room 
2446  at  the  Governor  Clinton,  Dexheimer 
tried  to  find  out  if  Bates  was  taking  him 
and  Landau  "on  a  wild-goose  chase,"  if 
he  was  "putting  us  on  the  spot."  Bates 
denied  it  and  "said  that  he  could  not  con- 
trol the  arrival  of  the  submarine."  Bates 
said  he  had  spent  the  day  waiting  in  a 
warehouse  near  the  waterfront.  "They 
looked  at  me  askance  and  said  we  would 
go  out  and  eat." 

They  went  to  Dinty  Moore's  restaurant 
on  West  46th  Street  and  ordered  corned 
beef  sandwiches  and  Bates  paid  the  check, 
about  $10.  They  left  and  went  to  a 
movie,  "The  Moon  and  Sixpence,"  but, 
Bates  testified,  "it  was  a  morbid  picture 
and  we  did  not  stay  there  long."  Through 
the  dimout  they  went  back  to  their  re- 
spective hotels  and  went  to  bed. 


ABOUT  10:30  A.M.  next  day  Bates  told 
jf\  Dexheimer  that  he  had  contacted  his 
New  York  connection  and  that  this  man 
was  "very  suspicious,"  "afraid  something 
had  happened."  So  Bates  had  tele- 
phoned his  connections  in  Chicago  and 
had  been  instructed  to  return  to  Chicago 
at  once.  Therefore  Bates  had  made  three 
reservations  on  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road's General  for  that  same  afternoon. 
Thereupon  Dexheimer  and  Landau  up- 
braided Bates — "their  speech  was  force- 
ful ..  .  not  the  same  nice  cajoling  voice" 
— and  Dexheimer  said  indignantly  that 
Bates  was  "full  of  hot  air,"  that  Bates  had 
come  to  New  York  on  private  business, 
that  he  never  had  anybody  to  buy  the 
gold,  that  he  had  put  Dexheimer  to  the 
useless  expense  of  shipping  the  gold  under 
machine-gun  guard,  and  that  "he  thought 
it  a  lousy  trick." 

Bates  attempted  to  placate  Dexheimer, 
who  left  the  room  and  returned  in  a  mo- 
ment with  a  bar  of  gold  under  his  dressing 
gown.  (He  had  procured  it  from  an  FBI 
man  stationed  by  prearrangement  in  a 
nearby  room.)  Dexheimer  threw  the 
gold  down  and  accused  Bates  of  not  know- 
ing Kobelt. 

Bates  and  Dexheimer  exchanged  more 
sharp  words  but  in  the  end  they  returned 
to  Chicago  that  same  day.  On  the  way 
Bates  played  pinochle  with  Landau  for 
stakes  of  25  cents  a  hundred,  double  on 
spades — "if  you  do  not  know  how  to  play 
it,  it  is  disastrous" — and  lost  $30  or  $35 
to  the  informer.  Dexheimer  continually 
brought  up  the  expense  of  this  fruitless 
trip  to  New  York  and  wanted  to  know 
who  was  going  to  pay  for  it.  Bates  testified. 
His  tone.  Bates  said,  was  threatening  on 
this  and  subsequent  occasions.  Dex-, 
heimer  denied  this.  Bates,  to  appease 
him,  promised  to  introduce  him  to  "Ko- 
belt's  lieutenant"  on  their  return. 


Ill 

IN  Chicago  the  next  morning  Dexheimer 
telephoned  Bates,  who  said  that  he  had 
contacted  Kobelt's  lieutenant,  that  this 
man  would  not  meet  Dexheimer  because 
he  had  been  ill,  but  that  he  would  tele- 
phone Dexheimer  at  a  public  phone  booth 
which  would  be  designated   by  Bates  if 


THE    GREAT    GOLD    CONSPIRAGY 


445 


DcxiKMincr  would  call  Bales  at  9  a.m.   tlic 
next  day. 

DcxluMincr  thought  he  saw  here  an  op- 
portunity to  nab  Kobelt's  lieutenant.  So 
he  conferred  with  FBI  Agent  Lewis  and 
with  ).  R.  Ihu  inon,  Special  Agent  of  the 
Illinois  Bell  Telephone  Company,  and 
they  made  the  necessary  arrangements. 
The  next  morning,  when  Dexheimcr  called 
Bates  at  9  o'clock,  Bates  told  him  to  be  at  a 
public  phone,  the  number  of  which  was 
Dearborn  4944,  in  the  concourse  of  the 
Northwestern  Railway  Station  at  pre- 
cisely 11  A.M.,  two  hours  later,  and  said 
he  would  receive  a  call  from  Kobelt's  lieu- 
tenant, who  would  be  identified  by  the 
code  phrase,  "This  is  it."  Dexheimer  im- 
mediately passed  this  information  on  to 
Lewis  and  Harmon,  then  went  to  the 
designated  phone  booth  at  about  five  min- 
utes before  eleven.  From  here  he  called 
Harmon  again  as  a  precautionary  meas- 
ure.    Then  he  hung  up  and  waited. 

At  exactly  11  a.m.  the  phone  rang  and 
Dexheimer  answered  it  and  heard  Bates's 
voice  say,  "This  is  it." 

Another  voice  came  on,  a  voice  with  a 
guttural  accent  which  sounded  German, 
and  this  voice  said,  "My  name  is  Otto;  I 
don't  know  you.  You  have  to  be — we 
have  to  be  very  careful  of  our  meetings  and 
of  our  conversations  in  this  kind  of  a  busi- 
ness ...  if  anybody  would  catch  us  it 
would  mean  death."  According  to  Dex- 
heimer's  testimony,  he  asked  Otto  if  he 
were  a  German  representative  there  in 
Chicago,  and  Otto  said  he  was;  he  asked 
Otto  if  Otto  would  handle  the  transaction 
in  Chicago  and  when  the  money  would 
arrive,  and  Otto  replied  that  he  would 
notify  Bates  when  it  arrived  so  that  ar- 
rangements for  a  face-to-face  meeting  could 
be  made. 

Meanwhile,  of  course,  Lewis  and  Har- 
mon had  spotted  the  source  of  the  tele- 
phone call.  Bates  and  "Otto"  had  made 
it  from  a  public  booth  at  the  Milwaukee 
Avenue  National  Bank  at  1200  North 
Ashland  Avenue.  Lewis  hurried  there 
and,  by  questioning  various  bank  em- 
ployees, established  that  "Otto"  had  been 
none  other  than  Frank  S.  Smith,  the 
numismatist. 

That,  at  least,  is  Dexheimer's  version  of 
the  episode.     Here  is  the  defendants'  ver- 


sion: that  Bates  went  to  Smith  and  told 
him  he  was  afraid  of  Dexheimer  and  his 
machine-gunners  and  that  Dexheimer 
demanded  reimbursement  for  his  expenses 
to  New  York;  that  Smith,  in  reply,  curtly 
advised  Bates  to  cease  associating  with 
"gangsters";  that  Bates  said  he  would  be 
glad  to  do  so  as  soon  as  he  could  get  them 
off  his  neck;  and  that  finally  Bates  in- 
duced Smith — partly  by  appealing  to  his 
friendship  and  partly  by  hinting  that 
Smith  too  was  in  danger — to  make  the 
phone  call,  posing  as  Otto  and  speaking 
a  few  rehearsed  lines  which  were  meaning- 
less to  Smith.  Smith  testified  that,  as 
Otto,  he  only  disclaimed  responsibility  for 
the  expensive  New  York  trip  and  told  Dex- 
heimer that  the  deal  would  go  through  if 
they  but  had  patience.  Smith  denied 
that  anything  was  said  over  the  phone 
about  Nazi  agents;  he  added  that  later 
that  day  he  asked  Bates  to  leave  him  alone. 
Bates  testified  he  once  had  known  a  bar- 
tender named  Otto  and  that  this  had  sug- 
gested the  name.  As  for  the  credibility  of 
this  version,  as  compared  with  the  other, 
you  will  have  to  judge  for  yourself. 

During  the  next  couple  of  weeks  noth- 
ing much  happened.  Part  of  the  time 
Dexheimer  pretended  to  be  out  of  town. 
Landau  saw  Bates  almost  daily  and,  ac- 
cording to  Bates's  testimony,  told  him  that 
Dexheimer  was  a  "  'deadeye  Dick'  and 
could  shoot  dimes  off  telephone  poles  at 
a  couple  of  hundred  feet."  Dexhei- 
mer was  mysterious,  Bates  testified.  On 
one  occasion  Bates  showed  Dexheimer  a 
letter  in  German,  mailed  to  him  from  Ger- 
many and  purportedly  signed  by  a  "Mr. 
Goering."  (This,  Bates  testified,  had 
been  sent  to  him  about  1933  when,  after 
several  American  oil  companies  had  de- 
clined a  device  designed  to  conserve  used 
motor  oil  on  grounds  they  were  in  the  busi- 
ness of  selling,  not  conserving,  oil.  Bates 
had  offered  it  to  the  German  government.) 

On  November  14th  Agent  Lewis  of  the 
FBI,  apparently  acting  on  advance  infor- 
mation, went  to  the  Chicago  Municipal 
Airport  at  6:25  p.m.,  and  at  7:00  Bates 
and  his  wife  and  two  children  came  there. 
At  7:20  an  American  Airlines  plane  came 
in,  and  Smith  got  off  and  met  Bates  in  the 
airport  lobby.  They  shook  hands  and 
went  to  a  corner  and  talked  "out  of  hear- 


446 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


ing  of  anyone  else  for  about  five  to  ten 
minutes."  Subsequently  Bates  told  Dex- 
heimer  that  he  had  met  "Otto,"  who  was 
going  "to  a  designated  place"  to  make  ar- 
rangements for  the  gold  purchase.  The 
defendants  later  explained  it  all  this  way: 
Smith,  the  numismatist,  had  gone  to  Wash- 
ington on  November  9th  to  deliver  to  the 
Egyptian  Legation  nearly  $10,000  worth 
of  rare  coins  which  the  King  of  Egypt  had 
ordered  from  him;  when  he  returned  by 
plane  he  only  chanced  to  meet  Bates,  who 
had  gone  to  the  airport  to  arrange  a  reser- 
vation for  the  president  of  the  St.  Louis 
electrical  equipment  manufacturing  com- 
pany whose  products  Bates  sold. 

Five  days  later  Bates  told  Dexheimer 
that  he  knew  he  was  being  followed  by 
FBI  agents  and  that,  to  cover  up,  he  was 
going  to  the  FBI  office  and  was  going  to 
ask  why  agents  were  snooping  around  his 
house.  Bates  did  this,  and  the  FBI 
Agent-in-Charge,  A.  H.  Johnson,  asked 
him  if  he  had  a  guilty  conscience.  Bates 
said  "he  was  going  to  use  a  shotgun  on 
anyone  peeping  in  there  again.". 

IV 

BOUT  this  time  the  third  man  who  later 
was  accused  (but  acquitted)  in  the 
conspiracy  arrived  on  the  scene.  He  was 
Kurt  Erich  Schimkus,  and  he  was  a  Ger- 
man alien,  the  only  German  alien  among 
the  defendants  or  witnesses.  Moreover  he 
was  the  inventor  of  a  "death  ray"  which 
works  and  which  is  at  present  a  war  secret. 
It  was  in  regard  to  this  "scheme  to  explode 
powder  at  a  distance  without  any  connec- 
tion" that  he  first  came  to  the  United  States 
in  1930,  when  he  was  about  twenty-four 
years  old,  at  the  invitation  of  the  Patent  Ex- 
ploitation Company.  He  had  been  born 
and  educated  in  Germany,  and  he  was  a 
chemist  specializing  in  electrochemistry. 
However,  his  invention  was  abandoned 
temporarily  and  he  remained  in  America 
only  four  months,  returning  to  Germany, 
where  he  remained  until  1933.  Then  he 
returned  to  Chicago  and  went  to  work  as 
a  research  chemist  for  the  Utah  Radio 
Products  Company.  Here,  about  1934 
or  1935,  he  met  Bates.  Except  for  a  brief 
visit  to  Germany  in  1935  Schimkus  had 
remained  in  the  United  States  thereafter, 


marrying;  he  had  lived  most  of  the  time 
in  Chicago. 

Apparently  Bates  had  secured  a  "gen- 
tleman's agreement"  to  promote  Schim- 
kus's  inventions,  and  in  1942  Bates  was 
instrumental  in  obtaining  a  research  posi- 
tion for  Schimkus  with  the  George  A. 
Stutz  Company.  Bates  was  interested  in 
several  of  Schimkus's  inventions,  in  one  of 
which  he  invested  about  $500,  and  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Bates  were  entertained  several 
times  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Schimkus  in  their 
home  at  141st  Street  and  Blue  Island 
Avenue  on  the  far  South  Side.  Once,  in 
June  of  1 942,  Bates  gave  Schimkus  a  speci- 
men of  mineral  to  examine  for  gold  con- 
tent. It  was  iron  pyrites,  or  fool's  gold. 
On  at  least  one  occasion  Agent  Lewis, 
trailing  Bates  about  Chicago,  saw  him  and 
Schimkus  call  at  the  United  States  Army 
Ordnance  Department,  in  the  First  Na- 
tional Bank  Building.  Ordnance  officers 
were  interested  in  a  rust-proofing  solution 
and  in  other  of  Schimkus's  inventions,  and 
visited  him  in  his  jail  cell  after  his  arrest  in 
the  gold  case. 

He  first  was  drawn  directly  into  Bates's 
activities  in  the  conspiracy  on  December 
14th.  Ten  days  earlier  Bates  had  told  )\ 
Dexheimer  that  arrangements  were  com- 
plete for  the  purchase  of  up  to  a  quarter- 
million  dollars'  worth  of  gold  in  amounts 
of  $25,000  to  $30,000  every  other  day, 
but  that  his  connections  wanted  to  see 
samples  of  the  gold.  Dexheimer  refused 
to  let  Bates  or  his  associates  drill  one  of  the 
bars  but  said  he  would  drill  one  himself 
and  submit  the  drillings.  Dexheimer 
then  went  to  a  smelting  company  and  ob- 
tained some  drillings,  which  he  placed  in 
two  small  envelopes  and  took  to  Bates's  of- 
fice on  December  14th.  Outside,  Agent 
Lewis  was  waiting  inconspicuously  in  a 
parked  car. 

At  5:10  P.M.  Lewis  saw  Bates  appear  in 
front  of  his  office  building,  holding  in  his 
hand  a  small  envelope  (which  Lewis,  of 
course,  had  been  told  about  in  advance). 
Almost  immediately  a  trolley  car  stopped 
at  the  street  corner.  Bates  stepped  to  the 
rear  of  the  car  and  handed  the  envelope  to 
Schimkus,  who  was  waiting  on  the  rear 
platform.  The  trolley  car  moved  off  at 
once. 

Again  the  defendants  had  an  innocent 


THE    GREAT    GOLD    CONSPIRACY 


447 


explanation  for  a  scrminpjly  suspicious 
act:  they  claimed  they  made  the  arrange- 
ment to  save  time  for  Schimkus,  who  was 
in  a  hurry  to  get  home. 

Schimkus  made  a  superficial  test  which 
indicated  that  the  drillings  were  gold,  and 
he  so  reported  to  Bates,  who  gave  the 
drillings  back  to  Dexheimer  and  prom- 
ised that  the  actual  transaction  would 
take  place  very  shortly.  After  a  certain 
amount  of  pressure  which,  Bates  testified, 
included  arguments  by  Dexheimer  that  he 
needed  to  put  the  deal  through  before 
Christmas  so  he  could  visit  his  aged  mother, 
the  long-anticipated  meeting  was  ar- 
ranged for  December  22nd,  in  the  Mor- 
rison Hotel  in  Chicago. 

V 

AT  THE  Morrison  Hotel  the  government 
^/\  rented  an  expensive  suite.  No.  1531, 
for  Dexheimer,  and  agents  littered  it  with 
empty  liquor  bottles,  including  some 
which  had  held  champagne,  in  order  to 
create  the  impression  that  Dexheimer  had 
lived  there  quite  a  while  and  that  he  was 
a  wealthy  man  of  the  world.  Agent  Lewis 
hid  in  an  adjoining  room  behind  a  door 
from  which  a  strip  of  molding  had  been 
removed  to  afTord  a  view  of  1531.  Other 
agents  were  in  nearby  rooms,  well  supplied 
with  bars  of  gold.  Dexheimer  and  Lan- 
dau went  to  the  suite,  and  about  4  p.m. 
Bates  arrived.  He  brought  a  bottle  of 
whisky  with  him,  apparently  the  only  full 
one  in  the  room;  the  defense  made  much 
of  the  drinking  which  went  on. 

Once  more  the  government  seemingly 
approached  the  verge  of  triumph.  Dex- 
heimer's  elaborate  play-acting  as  a  Da- 
kota miner  had  not  succeeded  in  trapping 
the  Nazi  agents  in  New  York;  but  now 
Bates,  the  supposed  go-between  whose  ac- 
tions had  been  so  consistently  mysterious, 
appeared  ready  to  produce  them.  Every- 
thing was  ready  for  a  mock  sale  of  gold  to 
them  in  order  that  the  government  might 
learn  just  who  they  were  and  how  they 
operated.     The  stage  was  set. 

And  what  happened?  Let  us  begin 
with  Dexheimer's  account.  According  to 
Dexheimer' s  testimony,  Bates  told  Dex- 
heimer and  Landau  "that  he  made  ar- 
rangements for  one  of  the   Nazi  repre- 


sentatives to  come  to  the  room  and  have  a 
final  discussion  as  they  were  now  ready  to 
make  purchase  of  gold."  Then  Bates 
made  a  telephone  call,  left  the  room  for 
nearly  an  hour,  and  came  back  with 
Schimkus. 

Bates  had  a  difTerent  version  of  this 
episode.  He  claimed  that  a  good  deal  of 
pressure  was  put  on  him  by  Landau  and 
Dexheimer  to  "dig  up  somebody"  who,  as 
Landau  put  it,  would  do  as  a  German 
agent;  and  so  Bates  called  Schimkus  and 
asked  him  to  come  to  the  hotel  and  meet 
some  friends.  Schimkus  didn't  want  to 
but  Bates  talked  him  into  it  and  went  out 
to  meet  him  at  the  elevated  station. 
There  Schimkus  accused  him  of  having 
been  drinking  and  asked  whom  Bates 
wanted  him  to  meet.  Bates  named  Lan- 
dau, whom  Schimkus  already  knew,  and 
another  man.  Schimkus  wanted  to  know 
what  was  going  on  and  Bates  told  him  that 
"I  wanted  him  to  go  up  and  tell  them  he 
was  my  contact;  that  I  wanted  him  to  tell 
them  he  was  a  Nazi  agent,  that  that  was 
what  they  expected  to  meet.  I  told  him  he 
should  tell  them  he  knew  all  about  the 
transaction  .  .  .  and  that  everything 
would  go  through  O.K." 

To  this  (according  to  Bates's  testimony) 
Schimkus  replied,  "My  God,  how  can  I  do 
that?  I  am  a  German.  I  am  an  alien." 
But  Bates  pleaded  with  him,  telling  him, 
"I  am  in  trouble  and  I  got  to  get  out  and 
you  have  got  to  do  it,"  and  so,  reluctantly, 
Schimkus  went  to  the  room  with  him  and 
was  introduced  to  Dexheimer. 

Schimkus's  own  version  of  all  this  dif- 
fered slightly  from  Bates's;  he  said  that 
Bates  told  him  he  had  led  a  wealthy  mine 
owner  to  believe  "he  had  a  contact  man 
for  the  International  Banking  Trust"; 
that  Bates  told  him  he  would  have  to  do 
nothing  but  answer  affirmatively  the  ques- 
tions which  would  be  asked;  that  Bates  did 
not  use  the  word  "Nazi,"  that  Bates  said 
he  needed  a  man  with  a  German  accent, 
and  that  he,  Schimkus,  somehow  got  the 
idea  that  Bates  was  "playing  detective" 
for  a  U.  S.  Alcohol  Tax  Unit  man  whom 
Bates  professed  to  know.  Schimkus  pro- 
tested unavailingly  he  didn't  know  how  to 
act  as  a  contact  man. 

Scarcely  had  he  entered  the  suite  when 
Bates  and  Landau  led  him  on  an  inspec- 


448 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


tion  tour,  opening  closet  and  bathroom 
doors  and  assuring  him  that  "everything  is 
all  right."  This  baffled  Schimkus,  he  tes- 
tified, but  Bates  whispered  something  to 
the  effect  that  "this^  has  to  look  real." 
They  all  had  a  drink,  and  Schimkus  "went 
to  the  washroom  bv^cause  I  felt  ill."  He 
heard  Bates  assuring  Dexheimer  that  "I 
[Schimkus]  was  the  man." 

According  to  Lewis,  the  FBI  man  who 
was  listening  from  the  next  room.  Bates 
said  to  Schimkus,  "I  have  done  everything 
you  have  told  me,  told  everything  to  Mr. 
Dexheimer  and  to  Mr.  Landau.  Now  we 
have  come  to  that  point  where  it  is  impos- 
sible to  go  further.  I  have  tried  to  keep 
your  identity  out  of  this  as  much  as  possi- 
ble; now  it  appears  if  we  are  to  proceed 
any  further,  the  next  move  is,  I  want  you 
to  tell  these  men  everything  that  you  have 
told  me  and  I  want  you  to  tell  them  who 
you  are,  what  your  connections  are." 

Then,  Lewis  testified,  Bates  said,  "And 
we  don't  want  to  have  any  witnesses  to 
this  transaction  ...  if  anybody  tries  to 
prove  a  conspiracy  against  us" — and  so, 
mentioning  the  showing  of  the  gold.  Bates 
led  Landau  out  of  the  room.  They  went 
across  the  street  and  bought  two  quarts  of 
whisky  and  returned  to  the  second  room 
of  the  suite,  where  they  waited. 

According  to  Dexheimer  this  was  the 
conversation  between  him  and  Schimkus: 

Dexheimer  asked  if  Schimkus  was  the 
Nazi  representative  who  would  handle 
"this  transaction"  and  Schimkus  replied, 
"Yes,  I  know  all  about  it." 

Dexheimer  asked,  "Do  you  know  about 
the  trip,  our  trip  to  New  York,  my  conver- 
sation with  Otto?  .   .  .  Who  is  Otto?" 

Schimkus  said,  "Well,  that  is  a  man  that 
Mr.  Bates  refers  to  in  this  picture.  He  is 
one  of  the  men  that  knows  about  this 
whole  transaction." 

(Schimkus  testified  that,  when  Dex- 
heimer asked  him  if  he  knew  Otto,  he  re- 
plied, "What  Otto?") 

Dexheimer  testified  he  then  asked, 
"Mr.  Schimkus,  did  you  make  the  test  for 
the  gold,  or  do  you  know  about  it?" 

"Yes,  I  know  all  about  it,  and  I  made 
the  tests,  and  that  is  gold,  the  stuff  that 
we  want." 

"How  much  [do  you  want]  to  pay  at 
this  time?" 


"We  will  take  $250,000  worth,  but  no 
one  will  trust  anyone  with  that  much 
money  at  any  one  time,  but  will  make 
buys  of  twenty-five  to  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars every  other  day  until  the  $250,000 
purchase  are  made."  (Schimkus  did  not 
testify  to  this.) 

Dexheimer  asked  what  would  become 
of  this  gold  and  Schimkus  gave  an  answer 
which  Dexheimer  thought  had  something 
to  do  with  international  transactions. 
(Schimkus,  testifying,  was  equally  vague.) 
Dexheimer  testified  that  Schimkus  ex- 
pressed doubt  about  "whether  there  would 
be  that  much  gold,"  and  Dexheimer  left 
the  room  three  times,  returning  each  time 
with  a  bar  of  gold  worth  seven  or  eight 
thousand  dollars  which  he  obtained  in 
Room  1503  from  another  agent.  Schim- 
kus examined  the  bars  and  said,  "This  is 
the  stuff  we  want.     That  is  nice." 

With  the  exceptions  already  noted 
Schimkus  did  not  contradict,  in  essence, 
this  version  of  the  conference.  He  added 
that,  when  Dexheimer  said  he  knew 
Schimkus  had  made  munitions  in  Persia  for 
the  German  government,  he  acknowl- 
edged it,  although,  he  testified,  he  actually 
had  been  in  Persia  a  long  time  before, 
making  cosmetics.  Schimkus  also  testified 
that  he  denied  he  belonged  to  the  Nazi 
party  and  said  he  told  Dexheimer  that 
"the  Nazis  and  Republicans  were  fighting 
all  the  time"  and  that  he  himself  was  in- 
terested in  an  international  banking  trust 
which  disregarded  nationalities. 

After  this  conference  Bates  and  Landau 
came  back  into  the  room  and,  according 
to  Dexheimer's  testimony,  "Schimkus 
spoke  up  and  said,  'Why  all  of  this  fooling 
around?  You  could  have  got  hold  of  me 
in  the  first  place  instead  of  running  around 
and  I  could  have  had  the  deal  over  a  long 
while  ago.' "  Bates  poured  a  drink. 
Dexheimer  and  Lewis  testified  that  Schim- 
kus proposed  "Heil  Hitjer";  Schimkus  de- 
nied it  was  he  who  proposed  this  but  added 
that  "it  was  said,  more  than  one  said  it"; 
Bates  claimed  they  all  said  it  and  that  he 
himself  added  "a  little  appendage"  which 
delicacy  prevented  him  from  repeating  in 
the  courtroom  but  the  initials  of  which 
were  "S.  O.  B."  They  played  pinochle 
and  had  a  few  drinks  and,  Schimkus  testi- 
fied, "I  went  a  number  of  times  to  the 


THE    GREAT    GOLD    GOiNSPlRACY 


449 


washroom  and  threw  u})."  About  niid- 
i<;ht  the  j:)aily  broke  up. 

NoLhiu^^  more  happened.  Perhaps 
Dexheuner,  Icarfnl  of  arousing  suspicion, 
did  not  want  to  force  the  situation  at  this 
lirst  meeting  with  Scliiinkus.  Perhaps,  as 
the  defense  seemed  to  hint,  the  liquor  con- 
tributed to  the  negative  result.  How- 
ever, such  inconclusiveness  is  not  unusual 
at  meetings  of  this  type;  usually  it  can  be 
attributed  to  nuitual  distrust,  feigned  or 
real. 

Dexheimer  saw  Bates  only  once  there- 
after; on  this  occasion  he  accused  him  of 
stalling  and  threatened  to  drop  the  mat- 
ter. Bates  pleaded  that  he  would  turn 
over  to  Dexheimer  the  dies  for  stamping 
twenty-dollar  gold  coins;  the  Germans 
would  pay  S60  for  each  twenty-dollar 
coin.  But  Dexheimer  said  he  was  disgust- 
ed, and  left. 

After  that  Bates  did  only  one  thing  more 
of  interest:  one  cold  morning  he  took  the 
informer  Landau  on  a  long  streetcar  ride 
out  to  95th  and  South  State  Streets. 
They  had  made  the  trip  at  Bates's  sugges- 
tion to  pick  up  the  dies,  but  these  did  not 
materialize;  instead  the  two  men  simply 
breakfasted  at  a  dining  car  and  went  back 
to  the  Loop,  transferring  to  an  elevated 
train  en  route  because  Bates  thought  they 
were  being  followed.  It  must  have  been 
about  this  time  that,  Schimkus  testified, 
"I  told  [Landau]  to  try  to  get  Mr.  Bates 
to  forget  playing  detective  and  similar 
things,  and  to  try  to  settle  down  to  do 
something  for  the  rust-proofing  process, 
to  sell  it." 

Bates  was  arrested  on  March  16th  in  his 
office.  Landau  was  with  him  at  the  time, 
and  Bates  thought  Landau  and  Dexheimer 
were  arrested  too.  To  explain  his  activi- 
ties he  told  a  fictitious  story  about  having 
negotiated  with  Dexheimer  for  the  pur- 
chase of  some  real  estate;  he  later  testified 
that  Dexheimer  had  suggested  this  story, 
and  he  stuck  to  it  until,  several  days  after 
his  arrest,  he  learned  from  Landau  that 
Dexheimer  was  actually  an  undercover 
agent  for  the  Secret  Service.  Schimkus 
was  arrested  at  about  the  same  time;  while 
awaiting  trial  he  lost  fifty  pounds  or  more, 
and,  Bates  testified,  "Mr.  Schimkus  is 
now  so  emaciated,  my  heart  bleeds  when  I 
look  at  him;  I  didn't  know  what  I  was 


doing  to  him  when  I  led  him  to  the  Mor- 
rison tiiat  day." 

The  trial  began  on  October  4,  1943, 
before  Federal  District  Judge  John  P. 
Barnes  and  a  jury.  Assistant  U.  S.  At- 
torney Maurice  V.  Walsh  prosecuted  the 
case,  under  the  direction  of  U.  S.  Attorney 
J.  Albert  Woll.  Bates  and  Smith  were 
convicted;  Schimkus  was  acquitted.  On 
October  19,  1943,  Judge  Barnes  com- 
mitted Bates  and  Smith  to  the  custody  of 
the  Attorney  General  for  a  year  and  a  day. 
They  are  now  at  liberty  on  appeal  bonds. 
Schimkus,  of  course,  is  free. 

SURELY  this  was  an  extraordinary  case. 
A  Secret  Service  agent,  suspecting  a 
man  of  having  contact  with  German 
agents  for  the  disposal  of  American  gold 
to  the  enemy,  poses  as  a  miner  who  has 
illicit  gold  to  sell,  and  tries  to  get  his 
suspect  to  produce  the  German  agents. 
He  is  taken  to  New  York  to  meet  them, 
and  the  trip  fizzles.  Then  the  suspect 
produces  by  telephone  what  he  has  said 
would  be  a  German  agent,  and  the  man 
proves  to  be  a  non-German  numismatist. 
Again,  after  further  negotiation,  the  sus- 
pect produces  what  he  claims  is  a  German 
agent,  and  this  man  (Schimkus)  proves  to 
be  so  unconvincing  as  a  gold-buyer  that  a 
jury  subsequently  acquits  him.  That  the 
Secret  Service  agent  was  play-acting 
throughout  was  quite  natural:  that  was  his 
job.  It  is  Bates's  defense  that  he  too  was 
play-acting.  Was  he?  Did  Dexheimer 
play  so  convincing  a  part  that  Bates  stalled 
him  along  with  the  idea  of  improvising 
some  way  of  making  a  profit  out  of  this 
strange  charade?  Did  he  actually  invent 
his  ''German  connections"  for  this  pur- 
pose? Was  he  doing  what  he  said  he  was 
doing  on  the  trip  to  New  York?  Later, 
why  did  he  produce  Smith,  and  then 
Schimkus,  and  why  did  they  let  them- 
selves be  produced  in  such  a  dangerous 
connection?  What  was  actually  going  on 
in  Bates's  mind  during  all  this  elaborate 
maneuvering? 

You  will  have  to  guess  for  yourself. 
For  this  case  was  not  an  invented  detective 
story;  it  was  real;  and  there  is  no  omnis- 
cient author  to  explain  everything  at  the 
end.  The  complete  truth  may  never  be 
known. 


HORSES    IN   THE    SKY 


JAMES    BOYD 


THE  ex- Cavalry  Colonel  stood  with  the 
other  officers  at  the  edge  of  the  pine 
wood  and  looked  at  the  blackboard. 
"This,  gentlemen,"  a  staff  major  was 
saying,  waving  his  piece  of  chalk  in  one 
hand  and  his  pointer  in  the  other,  "repre- 
sents the  wood  where  we  now  stand. 
This  is  the  small  sandy  field  in  front  of  us 
with  its  farther  border  of  pine  woods. 
We  will  assume  .  .  ." 

The  ex-Cavalry  Colonel  looked  away 
across  the  faint  pattern  of  old  furrows 
under  the  broom  straw  and  the  tumble- 
weed  to  the  dark  dense  wall  of  pines  and 
then  up  to  the  North  Carolina  sky.  He 
was  tall  and  slim  and  the  gray  hair  of  his 
head  fitted  him  like  a  close  furry  cap  as  he 
held  his  hat  under  his  arm  and  stood  quiet 
and  straight.  He  had  not  wanted  to 
come  here  to  observe  a  demonstration  of 
air-borne  tactics,  even  though  it  brought 
him  back  to  his  own  state.  He  had  been 
a  young  cavalry  officer  in  the  days  when 
the  horse  still  carried  prestige,  and  though 
now  he  had  become  G2  of  a  large  new 
impressive  cantonment  he  was  without 
enthusiasm  for  modern  warfare.  Why 
had  the  ancient  profession  of  arms  had  to 
pick  his  particular  lifetime  in  which  to 
turn  mechanical?  Why,  of  all  people, 
had  he  been  sent  to  see  this  show?  Cav- 
alry was  what  he  knew. 

As  the  Colonel  thought  about  this  the 
Staff  Major  continued  to  talk  in  a  precise, 
military  way.     The  observers  were  to  as- 


sume, it  seemed,  that  the  fields  were  in 
rear  of  the  enemy  lines  and  near  an  enemy 
airfield  and  subsidiary  base.  They  were 
to  assume  that  the  various  elements  to  be 
employed  represented  larger  elements; 
that,  as  employed,  they  were  not  to  be 
considered  as  a  normal  tactical  force. 
There  would  be  a  simulated  attack  on  the 
assumed  enemy  base.  "Assumed,"  the 
Colonel  thought,  "simulated.".  He  mas- 
tered a  yawn. 

PRESENTLY  the  Staff  Major  had  van- 
ished and  also  the  blackboard.  Noth- 
ing stood  between  the  group  of  observers 
and  the  faint  mist  of  wire  grass  in  the  old 
field  and  the  darkness  of  the  pines  beyond 
and  the  brightness  of  the  sky  and  the  small 
round  clouds. 

Overhead,  then,  a  light  hum  seemed  to 
come  and  go  and  soon  to  fill  the  sky.  The 
Colonel  made  out  a  flight  of  heavy-shoul- 
dered transport  planes,  group  after  group, 
in  triangular  formation,  making  long  col- 
umns in  the  sky.  The  drumming  rose  to 
bursting  as  the  formation  seemed  to  hang 
almost  motionless;  then  came  in  front 
of  a  cloud  and  was  seen  to  be  moving. 
As  the  Colonel  looked  it  passed  two  more 
clouds;  the  leading  elements  dove  down 
with  a  wheeling  motion,  leveled  off,  and 
burst  into  simultaneous  bloom.  Like 
blossoms  the  parachutes  showered  down  in 
a  dense  white  cloud;  a  second  cloud  fol- 
lowed and  a  third,  all  white  except  for 


HORSES    IN    THE    SKY 


451 


here  and  there  a  canopy  of  red  or  blue. 
The  caiu)[)irs  and  the  swinging  dots  of 
men  below  thcni  sank  behind  the  trees. 
Through  gaps  he  saw  men  strike  the 
ground  and  stumble  or  run  or  roll  while 
their  luminous  chutes  tugged  at  them  and 
rocked  and  wallowed,  collapsing  slowly. 
Then  the  dots  were  free,  were  running  to- 
gether into  the  woods  and  firing,  except  for 
one  or  two  who  lay  still  on  the  ground. 

Signal  Corps  men  were  dragging  their 
wires  and  strange  devices  around  close  to 
the  Colonel's  legs,  and  soon  there  was  a 
radio  loudspeaker  quacking  forth  another 
modern  young  officer's  dry  voice.  "Gen- 
tlemen," it  said,  "you  have  just  seen  the 
paratroops  go  into  action  on  what  is 
marked  Drop  Zone  A  on  Photographic 
Aerial  Mosaic  Map  II.  Similar  attacks, 
but  in  less  strength,  are  being  made  on 
Drop  Zones  B  and  C.  The  attack  which 
you  are  witnessing  is  being  made  by  a  bri- 
gade plus  the  following  elements:  two  bat- 
teries of  paratroop  artillery,  one  company 
of  engineers,  one  signal  company,  one 
medical  detachment,  one  ordnance  de- 
tachment, one  military  police  detail.  .  .  ." 

While  he  spoke  they  began  to  hear  the 
faint  popping  of  carbines  coming  to  them 
on  the  light  breeze.  There  were  mys- 
terious sounds  in  the  loudspeaker  and  then 
the  young  officer's  voice  again.  "Gentle- 
men," it  said,  "please  do  not  intrude  on 
the  edge  of  the  field.  Please  do  not  circu- 
late. The  glider  troops  are  about  to  ar- 
rive in  support.  The  first  tows  have  cut 
loose  at  2:34;  they  should  be, here  in  three 
and  a  quarter  minutes." 

The  Cavalry  Colonel  waited,  standing 
withdrawn.  Suddenly  a  shadow  fell  on 
him:  enormous.  Over  his  shoulder,  brush- 
ing the  treetops,  a  great  silent  shape 
skimmed  down;  its  wheels  touched  in  a 
flurry  of  sand;  its  tail  came  up  like  a  fight- 
ing tarantula  and  there  was  a  slight  hollow 
rumbling  in  its  belly  as  it  rolled  over  the 
broken  ground.  It  lurched  to  a  stop. 
Instantly,  little  men — looking  little,  at 
least,  under  the  wingspread — were  run- 
ning out  of  it,  their  helmets  strapped  down, 
their  wicked-looking  carbines  in  their 
hands.  Behind  them  there  was  another 
shadow,  another  hollow  rumble:  another 
glider  pulled  up,  gently  rocking. 

The    scene    then    lost    cohesion.     The 


gliders  were  coming  in  from  everywhere 
now,  at  all  angles  to  the  wind,  sliding  up 
fast  over  the  treetops  in  front,  behind, 
right,  left;  great  glassy-headed  dragon- 
flies  that  ran  high-tailed  or  stopped  with 
grinding  brakes.  One  spewed  out  a  small 
white  parachute  from  its  tail  to  check  its 
speed;  others,  having  cast  their  wheels, 
came  in  on  their  long  ski-like  skids  and 
coasted  down  the  field  in  fountains  of 
dust.  All  the  while,  more  close-helmetcd 
men  with  carbines  were  running  into  the 
woods. 

In  the  middle  of  this  almost  silent  vio- 
lence, the  Colonel  heard  the  thump  of  .75 
pack-howitzers  and  saw,  across  the  field,  a 
drift  of  light  blue  smoke.  Men  with  long 
gun  barrels  and  tripods  were  running  out 
of  the  holds  of  the  gliders  that  were  slip- 
ping in,  and  soon  there  was  the  crack  of 
anti-tank  guns. 

Still  the  gliders  came  into  the  little  field. 
One  drew  his  bead  too  fine  and  ripped  the 
tip  off  his  neighbor's  wing.  There  was  a 
crackle  as  a  small  pine  was  mowed  down 
by  another.  In  the  open  space  still  left, 
still  another  set  down.  Two  men  of  its 
crew  ran  forward  and  lifted  the  cowling 
high;  like  a  rabbit  from  its  burrow  a 
jeep  popped  out  and  scuttled  toward  the 
firing  in  the  woods.    The  Colonel  laughed. 

By  now  the  incoming  gliders  were  crowd- 
ing the  field  like  a  parking  lot.  Engineers 
were  unloading  small  bulldozers,  and  sig- 
nalmen had  broken  out  a  reel  of  wire  and 
ran  it  forward  toward  the  firing  in  the 
trees.  Two  last  gliders  came  in  and  set- 
tled, rocking  slowly,  in  the  last  open  space. 

"Well,  well,"  thought  the  Colonel,  "this 
is  quite  a  circus.     Quite  a  show." 

66/^iTTiNG    ducks."     A    hard  voice  was 

1^  in  his  ear.  "Duck  soup.  Colonel. 
Just  when  they  come  in.  One  machine 
gun  could  get  a  dozen  of  'em." 

He  was  a  young  pilot,  a  chunky,  ruddy, 
black-haired  captain  with  wrinkled  hat 
and  leather  jacket,  and  he  was  as  familiar 
in  his  manner  to  the  Cavalry  Colonel  as  he 
would  have  been  to  an  Air  Force  colonel. 

"Are  you  an  observer.  Captain?"  the 
Colonel  inquired  stiffly. 

"Me?  Not  much,  sir.  I  just  flew  some 
of  those  generals  down  from  Washington. 
I'm  a  pilot." 


452 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"And  know  all  the  answers,  I  suppose," 
the  Colonel  said. 

"Well,  sir,"  the  pilot  answered  promptly 
but  judicially,  "most  of  the  answers  in  the 
air.  And  in  the  air,  those  kites  are  sitting 
ducks." 

The  Colonel  turned  away.  He  was  dis- 
posed to  watch  the  maneuvers  of  these 
curious  people  from  the  sky  who  by  now, 
among  other  amenities  of  warfare,  had  set 
up  a  dressing  station  and  an  ordnance  re- 
pair shop  complete  with  power  tools. 
The  ordnance  men  spun  their  air  com- 
pressor a  couple  of  times  to  show  that  it 
worked,  then  waited  disconsolately  to  be 
of  service.  Meanwhile  litter-bearers  be- 
gan to  appear  with  simulated  casualties. 
Great  was  the  dressing  station's  zest  when 
a  white-faced  private  was  brought  in  with 
an  actual  broken  leg. 

The  loudspeaker  was  quacking  again. 
"Attention  please,  gentlemen.  This  con- 
cludes the  afternoon's  tactical  perform- 
ance. Your  transportation  will  arrive 
shortly.  It  is  requested  that  each  officer 
take  pains  to  occupy  the  vehicle  assigned 
to  him.". 

II 

THAT  night  after  supper  it  was  dark — 
not  totally,  but  the  darkness  of  a  star- 
light night  without  a  moon.  In  a  long 
line  of  jeeps  they  bumped  over  old  furrows 
to  another  field,  smaller  than  the  one  they 
had  watched  that  afternoon.  Soon  after 
their  lights  were  put  out  they  heard  the 
towplanes  overhead  and  saw  their  small 
red  lights  and  the  small  white  lights  of  the 
gliders  that  rode  astern.  These  disap- 
peared and  they  were  left  again  in  the 
silence  and  in  darkness  broken  only  by  two 
hooded  lights  in  the  little  field  beside 
them,  lights  too  faint  to  be  seen  on  the 
ground  at  two  hundred  feet.  Gradually 
they  resumed  talking  until  cut  ofF  by  the 
loudspeaker's  voice:  "No  matches,  gentle- 
men; no  cigarettes  from  now  on,  and  also 
silence,  please." 

They  searched  the  sky  then,  but  never 
saw  a  sign.  At  last,  however,  they  heard 
a  faint  whisper  not  far  off  the  ground  and 
then  the  faint  hollow  rumbling  that  they 
had  heard  this  afternoon.  That  was  all — 
no  more.     But  at  its  end  they  were  con- 


scious that  right  before  them,  not  thirty 
feet  away,  a  great  shape  had  come  to  rest. 
Another  followed  shortly,  landing  close 
beside  it.  Then  there  was  quite  a  pause; 
it  was  only  when  they  heard  the  bump  of  a 
canteen  against  a  carrier  door  that  they 
realized  that  a  third  glider  had  come  in 
and  that  the  troops  were  leaving  it. 

Two  more  followed,  much  like  the  first, 
and  the  Colonel  and  the  other  observers 
had  given  up  trying  to  see  them,  either  on 
the  ground  or  in  the  sky,  when  far  above 
they  heard  celestial  music;  at  least  it  was 
coming  from  heaven  and  was  faint  and 
high  and  unearthly.  What  it  actually 
played,  up  there  in  the  sky,  was  "They 
Cut  Down  the  Old  Pine  Tree."  A  few 
supposed  that  it  was  some  trick  of  radio, 
but  the  music  kept  moving  through  the 
heavens  and  they  realized  that  there  was  a 
sixth  glider  and  that  in  that  glider  a  band 
was  playing  for  their  entertainment.  The 
tune  changed  to  "Coming  In  on  a  Wing 
and  a  Prayer"  and  the  music  swung  great 
circles  under  the  stars  and  finally  came 
to  rest  in  the  little  field  beside  the  other 
gliders. 

For  the  first  time,  there  was  a  comment 
from  an  observer:  "Great  day,"  a  flat 
Western  voice  said,  "ain't  that  Americans 
for  you?  Who  else,"  it  explained  plain- 
tively, "would  think  of  a  fool  thing  Hke 
that?" 

THERE  was  applause  then  and  the  lights 
came  on  and  the  ten-piece  band 
marched  up  and  so  did  the  glider  pilots 
and  the  air-borne  infantry,  and  all  the 
visiting  officers  closed  around  them  and 
asked  them  questions.  Flight  lieutenants 
and  even  privates  were  being  closely  lis- 
tened to  by  persons  of  rank.  The  ex- 
Cavalry  Colonel  overlooked  one  circle  and 
cocked  an  ear. 

"The  lights  on  the  field  are  infra-red,"  a 
pilot  was  saying  to  the  ring  around  him. 
"And  we  have  infra-red  goggles.  So  we 
see  them  for  miles  up  there.  No,  sir,"  he 
said,  "we  can't  see  the  ground;  oh,  some- 
times you  kind  of  think  you  see  it.  But 
what  you  do,"  he  said  patiently,  "is  to  feel 
for  it  with  your  wheels."  He  stopped  as 
though  that  ended  it. 

"Well,"  a  general  asked,  "and  then 
what  do  you  do?" 


HORSES    IN    THE    SKY 


453 


"Then  you  come  forward  with  your 
slick,"  the  pilot  said,  "but  of  course  you 
want  to  be  quick." 

There  was  a  thoughtful  pause.  *'Do 
you  mean  to  say,"  the  General  said, 
''that  you  can  do  this  anywhere?" 

"Oh  yes,"  the  glider  pilot  said  tone- 
lessly,  "wherever  we  have  two  lights.  On 
any  field.  Or  by  moonlight  without 
lights,"  he  added.     "On  any  field." 

"All  right,  youVe  down,"  the  General 
said;  "then  what  do  you  do?" 

"Unless  the  CG  is  to  be  picked  up  again, 
we  go  into  action  with  the  men." 

"General,"  an  Official  Voice  said, 
"we  consider  our  glider  pilots  about  the 
most  all-round  fighting  men  in  the  world 
today."  An  Official  Finger  pointed  at 
the  glider  pilot.  "He  is  trained  to  fly 
powered  ships,"  said  the  Voice,  "then 
to  fly  gliders;  he  receives  full  infantry 
combat  training;  he  flies  his  men  to  the 
fighting  front  and  leads  them  into  action 
when  he  gets  there." 

Thus  exhibited,  the  glider  pilot  hung 
his  head  and,  seeing  that  the  General 
was  momentarily  distracted  by  the  Of- 
ficial Voice,  he  seized  the  opportunity  to 
back  crabwise  out  of  the  circle. 

The  old  Cavalry  Colonel  smiled  to 
himself.     Nice  boy,  he  thought. 

He  looked  at  the  men  again,  at  the  pilots 
in  their  flying  helmets,  at  the  infantry  in 
their  close  steel  hats.  The  faces,  impas- 
sive, showed  up  sharp  in  the  beams  from 
the  jeep  headlights  or  were  half  hidden  in 
the  shadows  between.  These  were  the 
world's  newest  foot  soldiers.  The  newest 
version  of  the  oldest  arm.  The  para- 
troopers with  their  pants  tucked  in  their 
boots  were  dashing  fellows:  thought  well  of 
themselves  and  had  a  right  to.  But  here 
were  men  who  with  no  extra  pay,  no  dif- 
ferent uniform,  had  simply  been  assigned 
by  authority  to  sail  fantastically  through 
the  skies.  The  paratroopers  broke  legs 
and  sometimes  spines,  but  when  these 
men  had  trouble  it  was  apt  to  be  final — 
when  something  happened,  as  it  did  now 
and  then,  to  a  glider,  there  was  no  way  out. 

Having  just  arrived,  at  some  risk,  out 
of  the  void,  the  men  stood  around  now 
patiently  waiting  for  orders.  The  eternal 
infantry:  the  sort  of  men  who  had  formed 
the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  and  also, 


for  that  matter,  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 
The  Colonel's  heart  warmed  to  these 
men:  he  knew  them  of  old  and  understood 
them. 

But  mostly,  as  he  stood  there,  it  was 
cavalry  that  he  was  thinking  about.  He 
sought  out  the  pilot  who  had  called  these 
air-borne  troops  duck  soup. 

Ill 

IT  WAS  late  and  empty  in  the  officers' 
mess  when  the  Cavalry  Colonel  and 
the  pilot  came  in.  The  Colonel  sat  down 
and  rapped  on  the  table.  The  barman, 
walking  in  his  sleep,  came  round  the 
corner  of  the  bar.  The  Colonel  turned 
back  to  the  pilot  and  drew  in  his  long, 
thin  legs.     "Sit  down,  my  boy,"  he  said. 

The  pilot  sat  down,  very  upright  and 
chunky,  and  looked  at  the  Colonel  with 
bright  black  eyes. 

The  barman  was  standing  muffled  in 
sleep  like  a  cold  hen. 

"What  will  you  take?"  the  Colonel 
said. 

"Oh,  anything,"  the  pilot  said,  "any- 
thing at  all." 

"Then,"  the  Colonel  said,  "I  think 
we  will  have  some  bourbon." 

"Sir,"  the  barman  said,  "we  got  noth- 
ing but  beer." 

There  was  a  long  silence. 

"Very  well,"  the  Colonel  said  quietly, 
"beer."  He  turned  to  the  pilot.  "Well, 
what  did  you  think  of  it  this  evening?" 

The  pilot  shot  back  a  half-grin.  "Still 
sitting  ducks,"  he  said.  "It's  been  all 
gags.  Colonel.  Tonight,  trick  stuff  with 
hooded  lights;  this  afternoon,  the  gliders 
and  the  paratroops  coming  down — like 
Christmas  tree  ornaments." 

"They  are  not,  I  am  told,"  the  Colonel 
said,  "so  easy  to  hit  as  they  seem.  Like 
Canada  geese." 

"Give  me  an  Ml,"  the  pilot  said. 
"And  I'm  not  even  supposed  to  know  how 
to  shoot." 

"But  from  five  hundred  feet,"  the 
Colonel  said,  "the  carriers  come  in  hedge- 
hopping;  suddenly  they  jump,  the  cano- 
pies open,  and  they're  on  the  ground  and 
out  of  their  harness  in  seconds." 

"Shucks,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "I'd 
get  them." 


454 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"But  would  you  be  there?"  the  Colonel 
said.  '^That's  also  a  part  of  war.  To  be 
there.  How  can  you  know  where  to  be? 
They  may  land  anywhere." 

"Even  if  I  missed  them,  sir,"  the  pilot 
said,  "there  they  are  in  the  rear  of  our 
lines  without  support.  I'd  get  them 
sooner  or  later." 

"But  between  sooner  and  later  is  all 
the  difference,"  the  Colonel  said.  "  'To 
get  there  first  with  the  most  men' — 
which  is  actually  what  Forrest  said:  he  was 
no  total  illiterate — between  that  phrase 
and  the  phrase  'too  little  and  too  late' 
lies  all  the  science  and  all  the  accident  of 
war.  We  can  seldom  get  there  both  first 
and  with  the  most.  If  we  did,  few  actions 
would  be  fought.  But  we  can  often  do  very 
well  if  we  get  there  first  with  the  fewest." 
The  Colonel  eyed  his  beer  distastefully. 
"Even  to  get  there  second  with  the  fewest 
will  sometimes  do,"  he  said,  "if  the  sur- 
prise is  complete.  You've  heard  the  news 
from  Italy,"  the  Colonel  said,  "about  the 
German  tank  park?" 

"No,  sir."  The  pilot  spoke  as  if  the  news 
could  not  be  much. 

"One  of  these  fellows  this  afternoon 
told  me  that  during  the  crisis  at  Salerno  it 
was  decided  to  drop  a  parachute  battalion 
behind  the  enemy's  lines.  Air  reconnais- 
sance picked  a  suitable  field — 'drop  area' 
I  believe  they  call  it — and  the  men  were 
jumped  at  three  o'clock  that  morning. 
Everything  went  off  as  planned.  But  they 
landed" — the  Colonel's  mustache  bristled 
in  a  faint  smile — "on  top  of  a  German 
tank  park  that  had  moved  into  the  field 
during  the  night.  The  surprise,  of  course, 
was  mutual,  but  with  this  difference:  that 
the  Americans  were  armed  and  awake. 
So  they  killed  the  Germans  and  destroyed 
the  tanks. 

"They  could  do  this  more  readily,"  the 
Colonel  added,  "because  the  Germans  had 
set  up  machine  guns  to  protect  the  park. 
When  our  men  landed,  the  machine  guns' 
crews  opened  fire.  But  they  were  firing 
blindly  in  the  dark  and  since  the  guns  were 
set  to  traverse  against  attack  from  outside, 
they  had  no  effect  on  our  men  but  they  did 
prevent  the  Germans  in  the  park  from  get- 
ting out. 

"A  hint  there,  maybe,"  continued  the 
Colonel  cheerfully,  "of  what  a  problem 


the  defense  will  have  to  face  from  now  oni 
Attack  may  come  from  inside  as  well  a;! 
from  outside,  or  from  inside  and  outside 
It's  something  the  defense  has  never  triec 
to  handle  before  and  it  will  take  quite  z 
lot  of  figuring."  The  Colonel  stoppec 
talking  and  appeared  to  be  doing  some 
figuring  himself. 

"Well,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "whai 
happened  next?" 

The  Colonel  roused  himself.  "By  the 
time  the  enemy  headquarters  had  organ- 
ized measures,"  he  said,  "the  Americans 
had  taken  to  the  hills,  from  which  they 
contrived  to  raid  the  German  lines  at 
night  until  they  made  contact  with  our 
Army.  It  was  an  affair" — the  Colonel's 
voice  trailed  away  reflectively — "that 
would  have  pleased  Jeb  Stuart." 

The  pilot  seemed  amused  at  this.  "Jeb 
Stuart,  yes,"  he  said.  "Cavalry  raids." 
He  imitated  galloping  horses  by  patting 
the  table  and  then  emitted  a  muffled  rebel 
yell.  "But,  Colonel,  what  does  it  add 
up  to?" 

"More  than  you  might  suppose,"  the 
Colonel  said.  "I  have  inspected  some  of 
the  stuff  they  are  jumping  here  today — 
.75  pack-howitzers,  37-millimeters,  trench 
mortars;  medics  and  cooks  and  signal 
companies,  engineers  with  light  tools  and 
even  gasoline  saws  and  air  compressors. 
They  can  jump  all  that.  And  we  have 
seen  what  they  can  land  in  gliders." 

"Why,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "they'll 
be  scattered  all  over  the  place." 

"They  are  being  scattered  now,"  the 
Colonel  said.  "By  the  high  command." 

"How  did  you  find  that  out,  sir?"  the 
pilot  asked  with  some  respect. 

"I  found  out  nothing,"  the  Colonel 
said,  "just  guessed.  All  high  commands 
are  the  same.  They  always,  if  I  may  use 
the  term,  piddle  away  a  new  tool.  Look 
how  the  British  wasted  the  tank,  how  the 
French  wasted  the  anti-tank  gun,  how  we 
were  wasting  our  Air  Force." 

"By  gosh,  you're  right,  there,"  the  pilot 
said.     "They  had  us  sprawled  all  over." 

''//CONCENTRATION  of  forcc,"  the  Colonel 
\^^  said.  "Why  do  they  suppose  that 
law  will  ever  change?"  He  pointed  to- 
ward the  panes  of  the  window,  black  ex- 
cept where  two  stars  showed.     "Already 


i 


HORSES    IN    THE    SKY 


455 


wc.  have  enough  stuff  out  there  to  strike  a 
blow.  The  paratroops  come  down  and 
Ihen  the  ghders.  Or  perhaps  they  come 
together,  the  heavy  stuff  in  ghders,  the 
men  jumping;  they  form  a  front,  they 
take  or  build  an  airstrip;  then  the  trans- 
ports land.     And  air  support." 

^'Well,  but,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said, 
'^wliat's  the  enemy  doing  all  this  time?" 

'Tie  may  not  have  spotted  us  in  time," 
the  Colonel  said.  "After  all,  there  are  a 
hundred  places  we  can  land." 

"But  if  he  is  set  to  stop  us?"  the  pilot 
said. 

"Then,  of  course,  there  will  be  a  fight. 
Our  bombers  will  have  to  smother  his  de- 
fenses." 

"If  they  can,"  the  pilot  said. 

"If  the  enemy  cannot  stop  us  from 
bombing  Berlin,  how  can  he  stop  us  com- 
ing in  a  mere  ten  miles?  And  what  are 
we  also  doing?  Attacking  his  front  oppo- 
site where  we  have  landed.  As  he  resists 
our  frontal  attack,  our  paratroops  and 
glider  troops  attack  his  front  in  its  rear. 
In  rear,"  the  Colonel  said,  "the  great 
'  dread  of  all  soldiers." 

"Well,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "how 
will  we  keep  those  air-borne  troops  sup- 
plied?" 

"You  might  ask,"  the  Colonel  said, 
"how  will  the  enemy  keep  his  own  front 
!  supplied  where  we  have  occupied  its 
rear  areas?  It  is  his  people  who  are  cut 
off,  because  they  are  supplied  overland 
and  we  have  dropped  an  army  across  his 
supply  line.  But  our  people  can  be  sup- 
plied because  we  will  supply  them  by  air. 
The  way  the  British  supplied  their  Burma 
raiding  force." 

"All  I  can  say,"  the  pilot  said,  with 
professional  detachment,  "is  that  I'd  like 
to  have  a  crack  at  them." 

"You  would  have  a  crack,"  the  Colonel 
said,  with  equal  detachment.  "But  by 
the  time  you  concentrated  your  air  force 
we  would  be  dug  in.  And  our  air  force 
would  be  laying  for  you.  You  could  eas- 
ily be  too  late. 

"No  army,"  the  Colonel  continued  em- 
phatically, "can  be  always  ready  every- 
where. The  problem  has  been  bad  enough 
in  the  past.  But  now—"  The  old  Cavalry 
Colonel  gave  the  pilot  a  blazing  distant 
look.     "Everywhere  back  of  your  lines, 


for  hundreds  of  miles,  no  field,  no  open 
space,  no  wide  place  in  the  road  would 
be  safe  from  attack.  You  would  have  to 
watch  these  places,  to  dilute  your  forces, 
to  spread  them  so  thin  that  the  bubble 
finally  would  burst. 

4'A  LL  today,"  the  Colonel  went  on,  "as 
/-^  I've  watched  these  people  and  what 
they  were  up  to,  I've  been  thinking  about 
horses." 

The  pilot  looked  puzzled.  "How's 
that,  Colonel?"  he  said. 

The  Colonel  ignored  him.  "The  plane," 
he  said,  "is  a  horse,  inferior  in  all  respects 
to  a  true  horse  except  that  it  can  fly." 

"Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "have  you 
ever  ridden  a  P38?" 

''^Except  that  it  can  fy,''^  the  Colonel  re- 
peated, "and  can,  therefore,  ride  over  the 
enemy's  flank  instead  of  around  it.  Now 
what  is  the  history  of  the  horse  in  war- 
fare?" 

The  pilot  shook  his  head. 

"First  he  was  used  for  scouting,"  the 
Colonel  said.  "A  quick  look  over  a  hill, 
then  scamper  away  and  tell  the  news. 
Then,"  the  Colonel  said,  "he  was  used  for 
raiding  and  his  firepower  was  built  up 
with  bows  and  javelins  and  lances.  Next 
came  the  mass  attacks — the  Scythians,  I 
suppose,  and  the  Tartars — and  the  heavy 
cavalry  of  Napoleon's  time:  the  heavy 
dragoons,  big  horses,  big  men,  the  cui- 
rassiers armored  against  attack,  all  these 
squadrons  riding  in  close  formation,  roll- 
ing the  enemy  under.  At  least  demoraliz- 
ing him,  if  he  could  be  demoralized." 
The  Colonel  smiled.  "Otherwise  accom- 
plishing nothing  decisive.  But  Nash- 
ville— "  The  Colonel  checked  himself. 
"Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  Battle  of  Nash- 
ville?    Or  General  James  H.  Wilson?" 

"No,  sir,"  the  pilot  said,  "never  did." 

"They  represent,"  the  Colonel  said, 
"one  of  the  most  dramatic  moments  in  the 
War  Between  the  States,  and  a  landmark 
in  the  history  of  warfare.  Yet  no  one 
seems  to  have  heard  of  them." 

The  pilot  had  nothing  to  say. 

"Sherman's  march  to  the  sea  is  now 
accepted  as  obvious,"  the  Colonel  said, 
"but  it  was  not  so  regarded  at  the  time. 
At  the  time,"  he  said,  "he  and  his  army 
simply  disappeared  on  an  unheard-of  wild- 


456 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


goose  chase.  While  this  army  was  lost, 
Hood,  who  had  opposed  Sherman,  moved 
up  against  Schofield  in  Tennessee  and 
drove  him  out  of  Franklin.  If  he  could 
also  defeat  Thomas  at  Nashville  he  could 
free  all  of  Kentucky-  and  Tennessee  and 
have  time  to  turn  on  Sherman  before 
Sherman  could  help  Grant's  siege  of  Rich- 
mond. It  would  at  the  least  prolong  the 
war  indefinitely  and  the  North  was  about 
getting  ready  to  quit.  There  was  talk  of 
a  compromise  peace." 

The  Colonel  rapped  on  the  table  ab- 
sent-mindedly. ' ' Two  bourbons, ' '  he  called 
out.     "No  ice,  plain  water." 

The  barman  with  his  shoulders  hunched 
and  his  eyes  on  nothing  came  out  from  the 
bar  and  halted  by  the  Colonel.  "Sir," 
he  mumbled  uneasily,  "we  got  none.  We 
got  nothing  like  that." 

"Beer,  then,"  the  Colonel  said  with  re- 
strained exasperation.  "So  Hood  shut 
Thomas  in  Nashville  just  as  Grant  had 
shut  General  Lee  up  in  Richmond  and  the 
North  waited  to  see  what  would  happen. 
So  did  we."     The  Colonel  paused. 

"Well,  sir,  what  did  happen?"  the  pilot 
said. 

"Nothing,"  the  Colonel  said.  "Fi- 
nally, the  North  could  not  stand  it.  They 
began  telling  Thomas  he  must  fight. 
Thomas  refused  to  fight.  Said  he  was 
waiting  for  horses  for  his  cavalry." 

The  barman  arrived  with  the  two 
glasses  on  a  Coca-Cola  tray. 

"The  North  never  trusted  Thomas," 
the  Colonel  said,  "because  he  was  a  Vir- 
ginian. Absurd,  of  course."  He  looked 
severely  at  the  barman,  who  stood  waiting 
as  patiently  as  a  horse.  "Finally,  as 
weeks  passed  without  action,  everybody 
up  there  lost  their  nerve.  Grant  himself 
started  for  Nashville  with  orders  relieving 
Thomas.  On  the  train  he  got  word  that 
the  battle  had  been  fought.  The  Battle 
of  Nashville."  The  Colonel  dropped  two 
dimes  on  the  barman's  tray.  The  barman 
woke  up  with  a  start  and  moved  away. 
"Hood  was  a  good  general,"  the  Colonel 
said.  "I  suppose  no  first-class  general  has 
ever  taken  such  a  whipping.  He  went 
into  the  fight  with  63,000  men  and  came 
out  with  15,000.  Lost  his  trains,  his 
guns,  everything.  He  never  had  an  army 
again.     What  had  happened?" 


"Colonel,"    the    pilot    said,    "I    don't  ^ 
know  a  thing  about  it." 

"Wilson,"  the  Colonel  said.  "James 
H.  Wilson.  He  was  Thomas's  cavalry 
commander  and  Thomas  let  him  carry 
out  his  ideas  of  how  to  use  cavalry. 

"Now,  Wilson's  first  step  was  this:  he  got 
nine  thousand  cavalry  together  and  kept 
them  together.  That  was  what  he  and 
Thomas  had  been  waiting  for-:  to  build  up  ) 
that  enormous  supply  of  horses.  The  next  < 
step  was  firepower.  He  armed  the  men 
with  Spencer  repeating  carbines:  the  new- 
est, fastest-shooting  thing.  But  above  all, 
he  taught  them  to  fight  on  foot.  So" — the 
Colonel  leaned  forward — "the  morning  i 
the  action  started,  Wilson's  nine  thousand 
cavalry  rode  round  Hood's  left  flank — and 
remember  the  position  was  thoroughly  i 
fortified — dismounted  and,  before  Hood 
could  reinforce,  rolled  it  up  with  an  infan- 
try attack.  Then" — the  Colonel  tapped 
the  table  sharply  for  emphasis — "they  were 
back  on  their  horses  and  in  pursuit.  Every 
time  Hood  tried  to  make  a  stand  they 
would  dismount  and  attack  him  again. 
If  the  rains  had  not  flooded  a  river  or  two 
Hood  could  have  lost  every  man  he  had. 

66TpNiD  it  ever  occur  to  you  to  ask" — the 

II  J/  Colonel  tapped  the  table  again — 
"why  Sherman's  march  should  have 
knocked  the  whole  Confederacy  out  of  the 
war?  He  ran  ofl"  the  stock  and  burned  the 
crops  on  a  forty-mile  strip,  then  he  was 
gone.  Why  should  doing  that  paralyze  a 
country  as  big  as  Europe?" 

"I  don't  know.  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said. 
"I've  heard  about  Sherman,  but  I  never 
thought  much  about  him." 

"No  one  has  thought  about  him  to  any 
purpose,"  the  Colonel  said.  "Otherwise 
they  might  have  wondered  why  the  South's 
defense  collapsed  because  Sherman  had 
stolen  some  Southern  ladies'  tableware. 
The  fact  is  that  while  Sherman  was  ma- 
rauding, the  South  was  being  finished  by 
this  Wilson.  It  was  Wilson  who  snufied 
out  any  attempt  to  reorganize  forces  in 
the  South.  And  what,"  the  Colonel  said, 
"was  Wilson's  notion?" 

The  pilot  did  not  answer.  He  waited, 
expectantly. 

"To  use  the  horse  as  transportation  for 
firepower." 


HORSES    IN    THE    SKY 


457 


"He  was  a  smart  guy,"  the  pilot  said. 

"It  is  because  you  don't  know  the  past," 
the  Colonel  said,  "that  you  cannot  see  the 
future.  But  I  see  it.  This  new  horse  of 
yours,  the  plane,  follows  the  tracks  of  the 
old  horse.  First  he  was  used  for  scouting, 
then  for  raiding,  and  now  you  boast  of 
your  massed  charges  across  the  sky.  But 
these  people  here" — he  waved  at  the 
blank  window — ''are  using  your  horses  to  put 
the  fighting  men  where  they  are  wanted;  and  in 
warfare,  to  the  end  of  time,  the  place 
where  the  fighting  man  is  wanted  is  on  the 
t^round.  That,"  the  Colonel  said,  "is 
where  war  is  decided;  everything  else  is  a 
preparation  for  it. 

"So  what  you  have  is  a  horse  that  can 
put  the  fighting  man  on  the  ground, 
around  the  flanks,  over  the  flank,  any- 
where, faster  than  ever  before.  The  en- 
emy must  guard  every  open  space,  every 
field,  every  depot  and  base.  And  guard 
them  pretty  heavily  because  he  will  have 
no  time  to  move  troops  up  after  the  attack 
starts.  Hood's  infantry  could  move  at 
two  and  a  half  miles  an  hour,  Wilson's 
cavalry  at  five.  Only  twice  as  fast.  And 
look  what  he  accomplished.  But  these 
sky  divisions  move  at  a  hundred  miles  an 
hour.     Forty  times  as  fast." 


"But  what  about  panzer  divisions?"  the 
pilot  said.  "Air-borne  don't  move  forty 
times  as  fast  as  panzers." 

"Panzers  are  always  limited  in  num- 
bers and  by  roads  and  terrain,"  the  Colonel 
said,  "but  in  any  case  their  best  speed  is 
twenty  miles  an  hour.  So  tliat  even  if  all 
the  enemy's  troops  were  motorized,  we 
would  still  have  an  advantage  of  five  to 
one.  He  will  need  reserves  close  to  all 
important  forward  points  in  order  to  meet 
the  threat  of  our  hundred-mile-an-hour 
infantry. 

"Yes,"  the  Colonel  said,  "the  new  horse 
is  here.  But  whether  we  know  what  to  do 
with  him  depends  on  two  things.  On  two 
men  rather.  We  must  have  a  Wilson  to 
forge  the  tool.  And  we  must  have  a 
Thomas  in  the  high  command  who  will  let 
him  forge  it  and  let  him  use  it." 

The  Colonel  reached  for  his  glass.  "I 
propose  a  toast  to  the  James  H.  Wilson  of 
this  war." 

"Well,  Colonel,"  the  pilot  said,  "I  de- 
clare I  never  expected  to  hear  you  propose 
a  toast  to  a  Yankee  general." 

The  Colonel  looked  on  the  pilot  sternly. 
"General  Wilson  may  not  be  a  Yankee 
this  time,"  he  said.  "Any  more  than 
General  Thomas  was  a  Yankee  last  time." 


&^^ 


RELIGION  AND  THE   PUBLIC   SCHOOLS 


VIVIAN    T.     THA\'ER 


THE  issue  of  church  and  state,  long 
dormant  in  American  life,  is  coming 
to  the  fore  again.  For  the  depres- 
sion and  the  war  have  brought  a  steady 
and  accelerating  growth  of  religious  in- 
struction in  our  public  schools,  and  this 
new  trend  brings  into  conflict  large  bodies 
of  earnest  people  who  want  it  to  go  still 
further,  and  other  citizens  who  fear  that  it 
will  foster  division  and  disunity  in  a  popu- 
lation as  varied  in  creed  and  background 
as  ours. 

Various  methods  of  introducing  reli- 
gious education  into  the  public  schools  are 
already  employed.  In  some  communi- 
ties, predominantly  of  one  denomination 
or  one  faith,  the  churches  and  the  public 
schools  join  in  selecting  religious  teachers 
who  thereupon  conduct  regularly  sched- 
uled classes  on  school  time  and  often  in 
the  school  building.  In  other  communi- 
ties religious  education  is  recognized  as  a 
normal  function  of  the  regular  teacher. 
For  example,  a  city  school  system  in  the 
South  reports  as  follows: 

Assembly  is  held  three  times  a  week,  opened 
with  Bible  reading  and  prayer;  usually  the  Lord's 
Prayer  is  repeated  in  concert.  For  variet\'  Bible 
verses  are  memorized  and  repeated  in  concert. 
Once  a  year  the  minister  of  each  denomination 
is  asked  to  speak  at  assembly  period.  Each 
Monday  the  children  are  asked  if  they  attended 
any  Sunday  School  or  church  the  preceding 
Sunday.     A  record  is  kept. 

Still  a  third  method  is  more  sensitive 
to  the  American  conception  of  the  separa- 


tion of  church  and  state.  This  is  the 
method  of  ''released  time."  For  exam- 
ple, in  a  number  of  states,  children  of 
parents  who  request  it  are  excused  from 
school  at  a  given  hour  once  a  ^v•eek  to  at- 
tend religious  classes  in  church  schools. 
Probably  a  thousand  or  more  communities 
in  the  United  States  have  in  operation 
plans  of  this  sort. 

On  the  surface  the  method  of  released 
time  seems  to  avoid  the  constitutional  dif- 
ficulties that  have  prevented  school  offi- 
cials and  church  authorities  from  joining 
forces  for  the  religious  education  of  chil- 
dren. Nevertheless  in  ten  states  (Cali- 
fornia, low^a,  Kentucky,  Maine,  Massa- 
chusetts, Minnesota,  New  York,  Oregon, 
South  Dakota,  and  West  Virginia)  it  has 
seemed  essential  for  the  legislatures  to 
approve  specifically  a  released-timxC  pro- 
gram. Elsewhere  such  programs  have  re- 
lied upon  decisions  rendered  by  school 
officials,  in  accordance  with  the  general 
provisions  of  the  law,  or  on  rulings  of  state 
attorneys  general.  (The  rulings  have 
been  by  no  means  unanimous:  in  eight 
states  the  attorneys  general  and  court 
decisions  have  authorized  the  release  of 
pupils  from  school  for  religious  instruction, 
while  in  three  states  the  attorneys  general 
have  ruled  against  it.) 

r\\^  are  to  understand  the  nature  and 
significance  of  this  re-emerging  issue  we 
must  look  into  its  background. 


RELIGION    AND    THE    PUBLIC    SCHOOLS 


459 


First  wc  should  remind  ourselves  that 
public  schools  represent  a  relatively  late 
development  in  our  educational  history. 
American  schools  originated  as  sectarian, 
religious  institutions.  Not  until  roughly 
1830,  in  the  period  of  Jacksonian  democ- 
racy, did  public  education  at  public  ex- 
pense become  an  accepted  policy;  and  not 
until  the  court  decision  in  the  famous 
Kalamazoo  case  in  Michigan,  in  1874,  was 
11  clearly  established  that  taxes  might  be 
k^vied  in  support  of  public  high  schools  as 
well  as  public  elementary  schools. 

It  was  natural  that  the  states,  in  pro- 
\  iding  for  public  education,  should  insist 
upon  the  principle  of  separation  of  church 
and  state;  for  this  principle  was  commonly 
embodied  in  state  constitutions  and  had 
become  generally  accepted  as  a  cardinal 
principle  of  American  life.  It  had  not 
been  abruptly  arrived  at.  The  first  settle- 
ments in  America  had  been  religious  set- 
tlements undertaken  by  people  who  wanted 
to  worship  God  according  to  the  dictates 
of  their  own  conscience.  Only  gradually 
did  they  come  to  see  that  the  right  they 
claimed  for  themselves  was  a  duty  they 
owed  to  others.  The  governments  that 
they  set  up  were  originally  Congregational 
in  Massachusetts,  Anglican  in  Virginia, 
Catholic  in  Maryland.  But  new  settle- 
ments brought  new  religious  sects,  religious 
tension  increased,  and  only  the  tolerance 
and  the  foresight  of  men  like  William 
Penn  in  Pennsylvania,  and  the  practical 
need  for  finding  ways  in  which  diverse 
groups  could  live  together  with  some  sem- 
blance of  harmony  in  a  polyglot  religious 
community,  gave  birth  to  the  concept  of 
religious  freedom.  In  order  to  insure  this 
freedom  the  colonies  and  later  the  states 
gradually  adopted  the  policy  of  benevo- 
lent neutrality  toward  all  religious  groups 
and  special  favors  toward  none — the  pol- 
icy that  we  characterize  as  the  separation 
of  church  and  state. 

Naturally  the  schools  reflected  this  de- 
velopment. They,  too,  began  as  narrow 
sectarian  institutions,  designed  to  instruct 
young  people  in  the  tenets  of  the  true 
faith  and  to  breed  fear  and  hostility  to- 
ward unbelief  and  unbelievers.  But  de- 
nominational schools  were  difficult  to  fi- 
nance, so  gradually  they  opened  their 
doors  to  children  of  various  other  Protes- 


tant sects,  and  accordingly  the  instruction 
tended  to  become  less  sectarian.  By  1 830, 
when  Jacksonian  democracy  gave  impetus 
to  the  development  of  public  schools, 
publicly  supported,  the  principle  of  non- 
sectarian  instruction  was  already  fairly 
well  established. 

From  nonsectarian  instruction  the  next 
step  was  to  secular  instruction.  The 
change  came  slowly,  but  by  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century  a  combination  of 
factors  had  succeeded  in  altogether  elimi- 
nating religious  instruction  from  the  public 
schools  in  most  of  our  states.  These  fac- 
tors were  (1)  the  objections  registered  by 
Jews,  Catholics,  and  nonbelievers  to  "non- 
sectarian"  instruction  that  was  essentially 
Protestant  in  character;  (2)  a  belated  rec- 
ognition on  the  part  of  liberal  religious 
groups  that  the  forcing  of  religious  doc- 
trines upon  children  of  alien  mind  was  an 
ineffective  method  of  promoting  these  doc- 
trines; and  (3)  the  widespread  secularizing 
influences  in  American  life  that  tended  to 
divert  men's  minds  from  religious  pre- 
occupations. 

DURING  the  period  from  1830  to  the 
present  the  tide  of  court  decisions  on 
this  question  has  ebbed  and  flowed.  While 
the  constitutions  of  many  states  forbade 
religious  instruction  in  public  schools, 
common  practice  and  court  decisions  were 
slow  to  interpret  these  prohibitions  as 
applying  to  the  reading  of  the  Bible  or  the 
repeating  of  the  Lord's  Prayer.  For  ex- 
ample, a  Maine  court  in  1854  sustained 
the  expulsion  of  a  Catholic  child  from 
school  because  of  his  refusal  to  read  from 
a  Protestant  Bible;  and  both  a  Kansas  and 
a  Texas  court,  in  1904  and  1906  respec- 
tively, refused  to  consider  the  reading  of 
the  Bible  and  the  use  of  the  Lord's  Prayer 
as  running  counter  to  the  Constitution  or 
to  statutes  prohibiting  religious  worship 
and  sectarian  instruction  in  the  school- 
room. An  annotation  of  the  Wisconsin 
Statutes  of  1898  was  typical  of  a  general 
atmosphere  in  which  non-Protestant,  ag- 
nostic, and  atheistic  groups  fared  badly. 
It  stated  that  Constitutional  prohibitions 
against  sectarian  teaching  referred  exclu- 
sively "to  religious  doctrines  which  are 
believed  by  some  religious  sects  and  re- 
jected by  others,"  but  that  "to  teach  the 


460 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


existence  of  a  supreme  being  of  infinite 
wisdom,  power,  and  goodness,  and  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  all  men  to  adore,  obey,  and 
love  him,  is  not  sectarian  because  all  re- 
ligious .  .  .  sects  so  believe  and  teach." 

On  the  other  hand  there  was  a  steady 
drift  toward  secular  instruction  during  the 
last  quarter  of  the  last  century  and  the  first 
quarter  of  the  present  one.  In  1872  the 
Board  of  Education  of  Cincinnati  forbade 
the  reading  of  the  Bible  in  public  schools. 
In  1890  the  Supreme  Court  of  Wisconsin 
held  that  the  reading  of  the  Bible  was  un- 
constitutional on  the  ground  that  it  con- 
stituted sectarian  instruction.  In  1902, 
1910,  and  1915  respectively  the  Supreme 
Courts  of  Nebraska,  Illinois,  and  Louisiana 
rendered  similar  decisions.  Soon  other 
states  began  to  follow  suit  in  practice  if  not 
in  law.  As  Howard  K.  Beale  points  out 
in  his  History  of  Freedom  of  Teaching  in 
American  Schools,  liberal  groups,  including 
liberal  Protestant  ministers,  united  in  the 
1870's  with  Catholics  and  Jews  as  well  as 
agnostics  in  a  campaign  for  public  schools 
that  would  be  truly  free  of  religion.  Grad- 
ually these  efforts  bore  fruit;  whereas,  for 
example,  as  late  as  1903  ten  states  still 
required  the  reading  of  the  Bible  in  the 
schools,  by  1913  only  two  insisted  upon  it. 

Naturally  this  trend  was  affected  by  the 
arrival  in  America  of  great  numbers  of  im- 
migrants with  new  and  strange  religious 
views.  In  many  localities  these  immi- 
grants were  greeted  with  suspicion  and 
fear;  hence  the  insistence  of  many  of  the 
older  American  groups  upon  defining 
nonsectarian  instruction  in  Protestant 
terms.  On  the  other  hand,  the  objection 
of  Catholics  and  Jews  as  well  as  liberals  to 
defining  nonsectarian  instruction  in  Prot- 
estant terms  appealed  to  fair-minded  peo- 
ple and  gave  impetus  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
religious  teaching  from  the  schools.  Grad- 
ually many  came  to  believe  that  a  prin- 
ciple which  barred  the  teaching  of  ma- 
terial in  dispute  between  Protestant  sects 
should  also  bar  the  teaching  of  material 
in  dispute  as  between  Protestants,  Jews, 
Catholics,  and  even  nonbelievers. 

The  same  motive  of  fair  play  to  Cath- 
olics, Jews,  and  others  led  gradually  also 
to  the  provision  that  no  public  funds 
should  be  used  to  support  denominational 
or   private    schools.     In    1875    President 


Grant  suggested  the  adoption  of  a  consti- 
tutional amendment  that  would  forbid  the 
teaching  of  religious  tenets  and  prohibit 
"the  granting  of  any  school  funds  or  school 
taxes  .  .  .  either  by  legislative,  munici- 
pal, or  other  authority,  for  the  benefit  or 
in  aid,  directly  or  indirectly,  of  any  reli- 
gious sect  or  denomination."  The  pur- 
pose of  advocates  of  strict  neutrality  was 
not  antireligious;  Grant  and  others  were 
equally  insistent  that  the  Constitution  be 
altered,  if  necessary,  in  order  to  insure 
that  the  schools  be  safeguarded  from 
"pagan"  and  "atheistic"  tenets.  But 
some  of  these  advocates  were  animated  by 
an  impulse  less  generous  than  that  of  fair 
play:  they  wanted  to  exclude  Catholic 
and  other  "foreign"  sects  from  the  benefits 
of  public  support.  As  a  result  of  this  mix- 
ture of  motives,  laws  were  enacted  and 
clauses  written  into  state  constitutions 
prohibiting  the  use  of  public  moneys  on 
behalf  of  sectarian  schools.  By  1 903  state 
aid  for  religious  schools  was  forbidden  in 
thirty-nine  states. 

IT  IS  interesting  to  observe  the  attitude  of 
Catholics  toward  these  developments. 
As  Howard  K.  Beale  indicates  in  the  vol- 
ume mentioned  above.  Catholics  were 
torn  between  a  desire  to  keep  their  chil- 
dren in  parochial  schools  and  a  desire  to 
free  both  Catholic  children  and  Catholic 
teachers  from  the  necessity  of  using  the 
Protestant  Bible  in  public  school  classes. 
Consequently,  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  Catholics  joined  with 
Jews,  freethinkers,  and  other  dissidents  in 
opposing  the  reading  of  the  Bible  and  all 
compulsory  nonsectarian  religious  instruc- 
tion in  the  public  schools,  while  at  the 
same  time  they  strove  to  secure  public 
funds  with  which  to  develop  parochial 
schools;  and  in  cities  where  Catholics 
won  political  power  they  succeeded  both 
in  eliminating  the  Bible  from  the  schools 
and  in  securing  the  employment  of  Cath- 
olic teachers. 

On  the  whole  Catholics  have  consist- 
ently maintained  the  position  that  the  state 
should  support  denominational  schools. 
It  is  fairly  generally  accepted  Catholic 
theory  that  schools  should  be  adminis- 
tered by  the  churches  and  supported 
financially  by  the  state.     Thus  at  a  meet- 


RELIGION    AND    THE    PUBLIC    SCHOOLS 


461 


ing  of  the  American  Federation  of  Catholic 
Societies  in  1906  the  following  declaration 
of  policy  was  adopted: 

First,  let  no  public  moneys  be  paid  out  for 
religious  instruction  in  any  school;  secondly,  let 
die  educational  per  capita  tax  be  distributed  for 
results  in  purely  secular  studies  only  in  our  Cath- 
olic sch(X)ls,  our  teachers  receiving  their  salaries 
as  other  teachers  receive  theirs;  thirdly,  to  obtain 
these  results  let  our  schools  be  submitted  to  state 
or  city  examinations. 

Evidently  this  is  still  an  accurate  state- 
ment of  Catholic  policy  and  accounts  for 
repeated  efforts  on  the  part  of  Catholics 
to  secure  financial  assistance  from  state 
governments  with  v/hich  to  ease  the  ex- 
pense of  maintaining  parochial  schools. 

THE  attitude  of  orthodox  Jewish  groups 
toward  the  public  schools  is  different. 
In  general,  they  have  united  with  oppo- 
nents of  religious  instruction  in  the  public 
schools  because  they  considered  this  in- 
struction biased.  Consequently,  they  have 
preferred  on  the  whole  to  use  the  weekday 
synagogue  school  for  religious  education 
as  well  as  for  instruction  in  the  Jewish 
heritage.  They  have  thus  tended  both  to 
avoid  the  parochial  school  and  to  oppose 
the  idea  of  a  released-time  program. 

It  is  clear  from  all  this  that  religious  in- 
struction has  never  been  barred  completely 
from  the  public  schools  in  the  United 
States.  Nor  is  it  wise  to  infer  that  it  is 
any  longer  on  the  wane.  Anti-evolution 
laws  in  Southern  states  represent  one 
means  for  insuring  a  religious  interpreta- 
tion of  the  origin  and  nature  of  man.  The 
prohibition  against  sectarian  instruction, 
where  this  prohibition  exists,  is  variously 
interpreted,  meaning  often  in  homogene- 
ous communities  merely  the  elimination 
of  items  upon  which  Protestant  sects 
disagree.  At  the  other  extreme  we  can 
find  school  systems,  particularly  in  hetero- 
geneous communities,  that  interpret 
strictly  the  principle  of  separation  of 
church  and  state.  In  these  schools  all 
mention  of  religion  is  carefully  avoided, 
textbooks  or  discussions  in  history  or  the 
sciences  that  relate  to  controversial  topics 
are  carefully  eliminated,  and  the  sugges- 
tion that  a  program  of  released  time  be 
introduced  is  interpreted  as  a  reversion 
to  an  unenlightened  past. 


II 


How  shall  we  explain  the  new  trend 
toward  religious  instruction  under 
public  auspices? 

The  most  potent  factor  is  doubtless 
psychological:  fear  of  impending  change 
— change  in  manners  and  morals  such  as 
that  which  characterized  the  "revolt  of 
youth"  in  recent  years;  fear  of  fundamen- 
tal alterations  under  way  in  our  economic 
life;  fear  of  changes  in  government,  par- 
ticularly those  threatened  by  foreign 
"isms"  such  as  fascism  and  communism; 
fear  on  the  part  of  organized  religious 
groups  that  without  state  intervention 
large  numbers  of  children  will  grow  up 
strangers  to  religion. 

Seldom  do  fears  operate  singly.  Par- 
ticularly are  men  adept  at  utilizing  the 
fears  of  their  neighbors  in  order  to  ward 
off  threats  against  their  own  sacred  pre- 
serves. Accordingly,  economic  conserva- 
tives see  in  religious  instruction  one  means 
of  teaching  respect  for  traditional  property 
rights;  religious  groups,  fearful  of  the 
effect  of  science  upon  conventional  reli- 
gious ideas,  and  incidentally  upon  church 
membership,  say  that  there  is  a  necessary 
relationship  between  religious  belief  and 
adherence  to  the  democratic  form  of 
government;  and  political  conservatives, 
citing  the  attacks  upon  religion  that  fol- 
lowed the  adoption  of  communism  in  Rus- 
sia or  national  socialism  in  Germany,  use 
religious  orthodoxy  as  an  instrument  with 
which  to  ward  off  both  political  radicalism 
and  political  liberalism. 

Nor  should  we  lose  sight  of  the  tradi- 
tional notion,  so  commonly  accepted  un- 
critically, that  religious  belief  is  essential 
for  moral  development. 

A  simple  statement  of  this  attitude  ap- 
peared a  few  years  ago  in  a  letter  to  the 
New  York  Times,  when  the  proposal  for  a 
released-time  program  was  pending  before 
the  Board  of  Education.     Said  the  letter: 

A  good  Catholic  can  never  be  a  bad  citizen. 
Likewise,  neither  can  a  good  Protestant  or  a  good 
Jew  fail  in  his  civic  or  moral  obligation.  If,  as 
one  authority  has  said,  there  are  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  "spiritually  hungry  and  spiritually 
naked"  children  in  New  York  City  alone,  then 
a  challenge  exists  that  must  be  met  promptly  and 
fully.  These  children,  to  be  good  citizens,  are 
in  desperate  need  of  religious  orientation. 


462 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


A  similar  line  of  reasoning  prompted  the 
legislature  of  the  state  of  Maine  in  1939 
to  authorize  provision  for  moral  instruc- 
tion of  pupils  in  the  public  schools  in  ac- 
cordance with  their  reMgious  faith. 

Naturally  church  authorities  see  certain 
practical  advantages  in  tying  religious 
education  to  the  public  schools.  In  the 
first  place,  it  constitutes  an  easy  and  effec- 
tive means  for  reaching  the  children  of  the 
unchurched  as  well  as  the  churched.  For 
example,  W.  Dyer  Blair  wrote  in  the 
Church  Monthly  of  the  Riverside  Church  of 
New  York  City  for  May,  1940,  "Neither 
the  Sunday,  the  vacation  church  school, 
nor  the  young  people's  societies,  nor  all 
three  combined,  reach  as  high  a  percent- 
age of  the  total  youth  group  in  a  great 
many  communities  as  does  the  weekday 
church."  And  in  the  second  place,  week- 
day instruction  enables  religious  groups  to 
provide  better-trained  teachers  and  better 
teaching  than  was  possible  under  the  Sun- 
day-school plan  of  volunteer  instruction. 

MECENTLY  an  influential  group  of  liber- 
^  als  in  religion  has  brought  forward 
a  new  argument  against  secular  education. 
They  say  that  it  offends  against  the  funda- 
mental tenets  of  modern  education  by  not 
meeting  the  needs  of  the  whole  child. 
Affirming  a  fundamental  weakness  in 
Western  culture — that  it  is  shallow  and 
superficial,  lacking  an  integrating  spirit- 
ual principle — these  liberals  argue  that 
we  need  to  provide  a  more  adequate 
framework  of  values  for  men  to  hold  in 
common. 

These  people  also  contend  that  the 
present  secular  character  of  education 
tends  to  perpetuate  the  weakness  and 
superficiality  of  our  culture  by  setting 
religion  apart  from  the  rest  of  life.  This 
group,  in  the  words  of  Professor  F.  Ernest 
Johnson  of  Columbia  University,  would 
like  "to  see  the  same  attention  given  to  the 
religious  life  of  the  community  as  is  given 
in  the  social  studies  to  business,  politics,  art, 
and  public  welfare."  If  the  curriculum 
is  to  be  built  around  "life  experiences," 
they  say,  how  absurd  to  leave  out  religion, 
as  if  it  didn't  rate  inclusion! 

When  we  ask  ourselves  precisely  what 
sort  of  ultimate  program  these  people 
wish  we  do  not  receive  an  altogether  clear 


answer.  Obviously  they  would  like  the 
schools  to  be  more  willing  to  introduce 
knowledge  about  religion:  to  include  com- 
parative religion  on  the  higher  levels,  to 
refrain  from  excluding  material  touching 
upon  religion  and  religious  institutions  in 
history  and  the  social  studies,  and  certainly 
to  inform  children  about  the  religious  life 
and  religious  groups  within  their  own 
communities — all  as  an  inherent  part  of  i 
the  school  curriculum.  But  evidently  this  ' 
is  only  one  step  in  the  total  program  sug- 
gested. Professor  F.  Ernest  Johnson,  for 
example,  writing  in  the  Information  Service 
of  the  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of 
Christ  in  America,  distinguishes  sharply 
between  sectarian  and  religious  education, 
arguing  that  state  laws  exclude  the  former  ll 
and  not  the  latter  from  the  schools.  Re- 
ligious education,  he  holds,  does  not  con- 
sist of  doctrines  which  divide  religious  w 
groups  from  each  other,  nor  does  it  include  J 
necessarily  specific  doctrines.  Religion  I 
concerns  itself  rather  with  those  "assump- 
tions concerning  the  good  life  which  hold 
society  together;  with  belief  in  the  value 
of  reverence  and  in  the  importance  of 
belonging  to  a  worshiping,  working,  re- 
ligious community;  with  devotion  to  the 
ends  that  find  their  meaning  outside  the  i 
scope  and  span  of  the  individual  life — in 
short  .  .  .  spiritual  values  that  make  for 
the  unity  of  a  dynamic  culture."  Conse- 
quently, he  argues,  religion  should  assume 
a  central  role  in  the  education  of  every 
child. 

It  is  obvious,  of  course,  that  religious 
education  of  this  character  cannot  be  pro- 
vided for  adequately  by  released  time. 
Indeed,  Harrison  Elliott  and  other  reli- 
gious educators,  who  view  religion  as  a 
community  experience,  criticize  the  plan 
for  released  time  precisely  because  it  con- 
stitutes a  divisive  element  in  the  child's 
experience  and  introduces  still  another  at- 
omistic element  into  the  already  broken-up 
experiences  of  children.  "Children,"  says 
Mr.  Elliott,  "are  nurtured  in  Christian 
life  and  experience,  not  by  knowledge  of 
the  Bible  or  the  creeds  of  the  church  per 
se,  but  through  their  choices  and  their 
experiences  in  home  and  school  and  com- 
munity." Consequently,  Mr.  Elliott  de- 
parts from  the  proposals  of  many  of  his 
colleagues  in  religious  education  and  urges 


RELIGION    AND    THE    PUBLIC    SCHOOLS 


463 


n)  that  provision  be  made  for  dismissed 
(imc  for  which  the  school  is  in  no  way 
responsible;  and  (2)  that  within  this  time 
(considerably  more  than  one  hour  per 
week)  the  churches  should  organize  an 
adequate  program  that  involves  children 
within  the  liic  of  a  church  community. 

Ill 

WILL  religious  education  under  pub- 
lic auspices  realize  these  worthy 
aims?  There  is  little  in  our  past  to  sus- 
tain such  a  hope. 

Indeed  there  is  grave  danger  that  the 
opposite  will  be  true:  that  a  revival  of 
religious  instruction  within  the  schoolroom 
— or  under  conditions  that  require  school 
officials  to  check  and  control  attendance 
upon  religious  centers — will  keep  alive  or 
fan  into  flame  old  religious  and  racial  ani- 
mosities. Certainly  in  the  past  the  unfor- 
tunate tendency  on  the  part  of  many 
zealots  to  identify  morality  with  conform- 
ity to  their  own  religious  presuppositions 
has  by  no  means  fostered  "assumptions 
concerning  the  good  life  which  hold  society 
together."  On  the  contrary,  as  Charles 
and  Mary  Beard  have  pointed  out  in  The 
Rise  of  American  Civilization,  it  was  the 
bickering  and  rivalry  between  religious 
sects  that  constituted  one  of  the  original 
motives  for  the  establishment  of  secular 
schools. 

Since  those  days  our  public  education 
may  have  failed  in  many  respects,  but  one 
thing  it  has  done;  It  has  contributed 
much  toward  unifying  children  of  diverse 
racial,  national,  and  religious  origins.  In 
recent  years,  serious  fissures  have  occurred 
in  American  life.  There  has  been  an  in- 
sidious growth  of  anti-Semitism.  Con- 
flicts between  blacks  and  whites  have 
flared  into  race  riots.  Intolerance  of  mi- 
norities has  been  widespread.  Our  Amer- 
ican unity  is  sorely  tried.  Is  it  not  an  un- 
fortunate time  in  which  to  use  the  school 
as  an  instrument  for  calling  attention  to 
the  differences  between  children  of  Cath- 
olic, Protestant,  and  Jewish  faith? 

And  what  of  the  rights  of  the  child  who 
falls  outside  these  conventional  groupings? 
Many  parents  have  severed  their  church 
connections  or  retain  only  a  technical 
church  membership.     They  wish  to  post- 


pone, if  not  to  eliminate,  the  religious  issue 
for  their  children.  These  unchurched 
parents  are  required  to  face  an  unfair 
dilemma.  Shall  they  expose  their  chil- 
dren to  the  charge  of  being  "queer"  or 
"godless,"  or  shall  they  conform  and  insist 
that  their  children  receive  instruction  in  a 
context  to  which  they  object? 

Nor  is  this  dan^^er  confined  exclusively 
to  the  unchurched.  It  applies  wherever 
a  child  belongs  to  a  conspicuous  minority. 
In  overwhelmingly  Catholic  sections  the 
finger  of  deviation  will  point  to  the  Prot- 
estant. In  a  Protestant  locality  all  non- 
Protestants  will  be  identified  as  unbeliev- 
ers. It  requires  little  insight  into  the 
principles  of  mental  hygiene  to  realize 
that  this  situation  is  charged  with  psycho- 
logical as  well  as  social  danger. 

IT  IS  commonly  assumed  by  those  who 
oppose  our  secular  schools  that  reli- 
gious instruction  is  a  necessary  condition 
for  the  moral  education  of  children.  But 
surely  there  is  little  evidence  that  moral 
fiber  is  dependent  upon  orthodoxy  of  any 
one  kind.  Who  will  contend,  for  exam- 
ple, that  the  principles  we  admire  in  an 
honest  business  man,  an  incorruptible 
judge,  or  a  faithful  public  servant  derive 
from  convictions  that  mark  him  off  as 
Baptist,  Presbyterian,  or  Methodist,  or  as 
Catholic,  Protestant,  Jew,  or  skeptic?  In- 
deed, one  could  even  argue  that  religious 
education  as  commonly  provided  has  very 
little  influence  at  all  upon  morality;  wit- 
ness these  excerpts  from  a  recent  paper  by 
Dr.  Negley  K.  Teeters,  Professor  of  So- 
ciology at  Temple  University: 

Some  years  ago,  Dr.  George  Rex  Mursall, 
chief  psychologist  of  the  Ohio  Department  of 
Welfare,  examined  comparable  groups  of  boys 
in  the  Ohio  Reform  School  at  Lancaster  and  of 
supposedly  law-abiding  children  outside.  He 
found  that  the  inmates  of  the  reformatory  had 
received  fully  as  much  religious  training  as  those 
outside.  He  concluded  that  "it  seems  safe  to 
state  that  there  is  no  significant  relation  between 
religious  training  and  delinquent  or  non-delin- 
quent behavior.  ..." 

Professor  Hightower  of  the  University  of  Iowa, 
after  testing  3,000  children  for  lying,  cheating, 
and  deception,  concludes  that  "there  appears  to 
be  no  relationship  of  any  consequence  between 
Biblical  information  and  the  different  phases  of 
conduct  studies.  .  .  ;  It  indicates  very  definitely 
that  mere  knowledge  of  the  Bible  is  not  in  itself 
sufficient  to  insure  character  growth." 


464 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


I  am  not  saying  that  religious  belief  is 
unrelated  to  morality.  Obviously  faith 
can  sustain  and  anchor  our  moral  ideals 
as  well  as  move  mountains.  But  this  does 
not  mean  that  adhererfce  to  any  one  reli- 
gious belief  or  to  any  faith  at  all,  as  religion 
is  conventionally  conceived,  is  indispen- 
sable for  moral  character.  The  popular 
notion  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse. 

Character,  moral  behavior,  grows  out 
of  a  way  of  life  which  people  not  only 
profess  in  common  but  practice  in  com- 
mon; and  where  profession  is  sincere  it  is 
the  practice  rather  than  its  conscious  for- 
mulation that  is  primary  in  educational 
growth.  Accordingly,  if  we  are  genuinely 
concerned  that  our  children  shall  acquire 
habits  and  ideals  of  honesty,  fair  play, 
self-control,  generosity,  and  respect  for  the 
personalities  of  others,  we  will  have  to 
create  conditions  of  living  in  home  and 
school  and  community  that  embody  these 
ways  of  acting,  feeling,  and  thinking.  In 
short,  moral  ideals  as  moral  practices 
evolve  out  of  the  culture  in  which  men 
participate.  They  are  rooted  in  the  com- 
mon and  approved  ways  in  which  people 
deal  with  one  another.  In  so  far  as 
religious  ideas  give  body  and  substance  to 
these  assumptions  of  living,  they  do  so 
after  the  fact.  As  John  Stuart  Mill  long 
ago  pointed  out,  it  is  not  religion  that  sus- 
tains morality,  it  is  the  moral  life  which 
men  live  that  prompts  them  to  create, 
each  one  for  himself,  or  each  group  for 
itself,  a  religious  justification  for  this  be- 
havior. Certainly  in  a  land  to  which 
people  have  come  from  all  parts  of  the 
earth  in  order  to  better  their  own  lives  and 
the  lives  of  their  children,  it  is  a  condition 
of  mutual  freedom  to  recognize  that  mo- 
rality derives  from  what  men  hold  and 
value  in  common  rather  than  from  what 
distinguishes  them  as  Protestant  or  Cath- 
olic, Jew  or  Mohammedan,  skeptic  or 
atheist. 

If  this  position  is  sound,  the  introduc- 
tion of  religious  instruction  in  the  schools 
for  the  purpose  of  improving  morality 
may  have  the  result  of  encouraging  the 
school  to  neglect  or  to  delegate  responsi- 
bility for  a  task  that  is  uniquely  its  own: 
that  of  character  development. 

Among  the  profound  changes  that  have 
taken  place  in  our  modern  schools  in  re- 


cent years,  the  most  widespread  and  most 
valuable  has  been  the  attempt  to  trans- 
form schools  for  schooling  into  schools  for 
education.  The  emphasis  has  shifted 
from  instruction  in  matters  largely  verbal 
to  the  guidance  of  boys  and  girls  into  ex- 
periences of  varied  types,  academic  and 
nonacademic  alike,  that  reorganize  and 
reconstruct  experience;  that  give  new  qual- 
ity and  substance  to  their  lives;  that  en- 
courage intelligent  ways  of  seeing,  feeling, 
and  acting  toward  man  and  nature.  The 
modern  school,  the  progressive  school, 
may  have  erred  at  times  in  practice  but  its 
heart  has  been  in  the  right  place.  It  con- 
ceives the  primary  function  of  education  to 
be  that  of  providing  opportunities  for  chil- 
dren under  guidance  to  create  and  re- 
create their  lives. 

It  is  this  idea  that  gives  validity  to  the 
insistence  that  the  history  of  American 
culture  should  receive  more  serious  atten- 
tion than  of  late;  provided,  of  course,  that 
this  history  be  used  to  refine  and  temper 
our  standards  of  living.  It  likewise  sus- 
tains the  position  of  those  religious  liberals 
who  insist  that  education  should  develop 
a  framework  of  values  which  men  can  hold 
in  common.  But  it  does  not  sustain  their 
contention  that  religious  instruction  is  in- 
dispensable for  this  purpose. 

IV 

FINALLY  a  word  needs  to  be  said  about 
the  complications  with  which  reli- 
gious instruction  confronts  the  school 
administrator. 

Suppose  he  wishes  to  maintain  the 
scrupulously  neutral  attitude  toward  the 
interests  of  religious  groups  that  the  public 
character  of  his  school  requires.  His  first 
problem  relates  to  the  enrollment  of  chil- 
dren in  classes  in  religion.  How  shall 
these  classes  be  established  and  conducted 
without  improper  encouraging  of  one  de- 
nomination as  against  another?  How  can 
he  safeguard  the  interests  of  those  parents 
who  dissent  altogether? 

In  one  community  known  to  me,  the 
school  at  the  beginning  of  the  school  year 
sends  a  card  to  the  home  of  each  child 
with  instructions  for  parents  to  check  their 
preference  between  two  statements ^(1)  "I 
wish  my  child  to  receive  religious  instruc- 


RELIGION    AND    THE    PUBLIC    SCHOOLS 


465 


ion";  (2)  "I  do  not  wish  my  child  to  re- 
civc  religious  instruction."  There  arc, 
lowcver,  only  two  well-established  reli- 
gious denominations  in  this  community, 
loman  Catholic  and  Lutheran.  What 
cply,  under  the  circumstances,  should  a 
)arent  give  who  does  not  belong  to  either 
)nc  of  these  church  groups?  And  by 
vhat  right  is  the  school  put  in  the  position 
)f  exerting  pressure  upon  minorities  on 
:)eha]f  of  one  or  more  dominant  religious 
organizations?  In  this  particular  com- 
uunity  the  small  number  of  deviant  chil- 
Iren  in  the  school  are  subjected  to  taunts 
and  jeers  on  the  playground  and  the  street 
Vom  the  children  of  the  major  religious 
groups. 

Nor  should  we  overlook  the  fact  that 
Dne  purpose  of  the  weekday  religious 
school,  as  its  advocates  see  it,  is  to  bring 
into  the  church  fold  the  children  of  the 
unchurched.  Toward  this  end,  in  many 
a  community,  the  schools  are  expected 
to  "co-operate."  How  can  the  admin- 
istrator do  this  without  abandoning  his 
neutrality? 

Then,  too,  there  is  the  problem  of  pro- 
viding substitute  experiences  of  an  edu- 
cational character  for  those  children  who 
do  not  attend  the  religious  classes.  In 
some  communities  the  school  provides 
special  periods  in  the  arts  and  crafts,  or 
dramatic  play,  or  special  assistance  in 
academic  work.  But  this  commonly 
brings  forth  objections  from  religious 
groups  to  the  effect  that  it  constitutes  un- 
fair competition.  Similarly  the  attempt 
of  some  schools  to  provide  instruction  in 
ethics  during  this  hour  has  been  inter- 
preted as  an  unfriendly  effort  designed  to 
undermine  religious  instruction. 

These  objections  may  seem  small- 
minded.  They  are;  but  unfortunately  it 
is  the  lot  of  the  school  administrator,  all 
too  often,  to  encounter  molehills  endowed 
with  a  tendency  to  develop  into  mountains. 

If  it  is  hard  for  the  school  as  a  whole  to 
avoid  entangling  alliances  in  connection 
with  religious  instruction,  it  is  equally 
difficult  for  teachers,  who  are  in  intimate 
contact  with  the  children,  to  deal  wisely 
with  the  issues  raised.  A  recent  survey  of 
the  operation  of  the  released-time  program 
in  New  York  City,  conducted  by  the 
Public  Education  Association,  cited  many 


violations  of  neutrality  on  the  part  of 
teachers — instances  in  which  teachers 
brought  pressure  to  bear  upon  children  to 
enroll  in  religious  classes,  despite  the 
severe  injunctions  of  administrative  au- 
thorities to  the  contrary. 

As  a  result  of  its  study  of  the  actual  oper- 
ation of  the  released-time  program  in  New 
York  City,  the  Public  Education  Asso- 
ciation has  recommended  that  the  public 
school  be  freed  from  direct  responsibility 
for  the  enrollment  of  children  in  religious 
classes  conducted  in  religious  centers.  It 
suggests  that  parents  and  the  religious 
schools  should  take  the  initiative  in  these 
matters,  thus  relieving  the  school  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  recording  and  the 
checking  of  daily  attendance — a  task  that 
now  consumes  hours  of  public  school  time 
and  involves  considerable  expense. 

In  accordance  with  these  suggestions, 
parents  would  request  the  public  school 
authorities,  at  stated  intervals,  to  excuse 
their  children  from  school  to  attend  the 
church  schools.  The  public  school  would 
honor  these  excuses  and  dismiss  children 
for  the  purpose  indicated  on  the  days  indi- 
cated. (In  New  York  this  is  the  last 
period  of  the  school  day  on  Wednesdays.) 
At  this  point  the  church  school  would  be 
asked  to  assume  its  responsibility  as  a 
school,  and  to  become  responsible  to  the 
parents  for  the  attendance  and  the  conduct 
of  all  children  enrolled  with  it. 

This  arrangement  would  enlarge  the 
authority  and  responsibility  of  the  church 
school,  would  encourage  it  to  develop 
closer  relations  with  parents,  and  would 
free  the  public  schools  from  the  embarrass- 
ing duty  of  enforcing  attendance  upon 
classes  over  which  they  have  no  authority 
or  control. 

This  plan  might  reduce  the  attendance 
at  religious  classes,  especially  in  com- 
munities where  the  attendance  has  de- 
pended upon  the  police  power  of  the  pub- 
lic school  rather  than  upon  the  quality  of 
teaching  in  the  religious  school.  But  by 
what  authority  can  private  agencies  use 
the  public  schools  to  maintain  their  exist- 
ence? Certainly  it  is  both  fair  to  religious 
organizations  and  a  matter  of  plain  justice 
and  kindness  to  the  children  involved  to 
insist  that  religious  classes  survive  only  so 
long  as  they  can  maintain  the  loyalty  and 


466 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  co-operation  of  the  parents  and  the 
children  for  whose  welfare,  presumably, 
they  exist. 


THE  introduction  of  religious  instruc- 
tion into  the  public  schools  has  been 
accompanied  by  attempts,  on  the  part  of 
many  Protestant  and  Catholic  groups 
alike,  to  secure  state  support  for  private 
and  parochial  ends.  For  example,  re- 
ligious forces  succeeded,  in  1938,  in  per- 
suading the  President's  Advisory  Commit- 
tee on  Education  to  recommend  that 
federal  funds  be  used  to  provide  services, 
such  as  transportation,  for  children  in  non- 
public schools.  Since  then  state  legis- 
latures have  been  urged — not  without  suc- 
cess— to  pass  legislation  of  this  sort:  New 
York  State,  for  instance,  has  actually  au- 
thorized the  use  of  state  funds  for  the 
transportation  of  children  to  parochial 
schools;  and  efforts  have  also  been  made, 
in  New  York  and  other  states,  to  permit 
state  funds  to  be  appropriated  for  the  pur- 
chase of  textbooks  to  be  used  in  parochial 
schools. 

Thus  are  we  called  upon  to  define  anew 
the  relation  of  church  and  state  in  the 
sphere  of  education.  An  issue  that 
seemed  well  on  its  way  toward  settlement 
a  few  years  ago  elbows  its  way  once  more 
to  the  fore. 

But  it  is  not  altogether  a  case  of  history 
repeating  itself.  Several  elements  in  the 
problem  are  new. 

For  example,  the  position  of  the  Cath- 
olics is  different.  Some  years  back  it  was 
the  objection  to  the  reading  of  the  Prot- 
estant Bible  in  the  schools  that  led  Cath- 
olics and  Jews  as  well  as  agnostics  to  fight 
for  schools  free  of  religious  complications. 
Today  Catholics  in  many  localities  are 
endorsing  the  released-time  method  of  reli- 
gious instruction,  and  some  of  the  most 
vociferous  attacks  upon  our  secular  schools 
have  come  from  Catholics.  This  gives 
significance  to  the  following  words  in  the 
Pope's  Encyclical  addressed  to  the  Church 
Hierarchy  of  the  United  States  in  Octo- 
ber, 1939: 


We  raise  our  voice  in  strong,  albeit  paternal, 
complaint  that  in  so  many  schools  of  your  land 
Christ  is  often  despised  or  ignored,  the  explana- 
tion of  the  Universe  and  mankind  is  forced  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  materialism  or  of  rational- 
ism, and  new  educational  systems  are  sought 
after  which  cannot  but  produce  a  sorrowful  har- 
vest in  the  intellectual  and  moral  life  of  the  nation. 

And  there  is  another  difference  between 
the  contemporary  situation  and  that  of  a 
few  years  ago.  As  we  have  seen,  it  was 
jealousy  and  fear  on  the  part  of  Protes- 
tants toward  Catholics  and  Jews  that  led 
to  early  restrictions  upon  the  use  of  state 
funds  in  support  of  private  and  parochial 
schools.  They  were  determined  that  our 
government  should  not  aid  religious  sects 
which  they  feared.  Today  these  objec- 
tions are  disappearing  as  religious  groups 
begin  to  see  advantages  in  all  sharing 
alike  in  the  bounty  of  the  state.  Accord- 
ingly many  Protestants  as  well  as  Cath- 
olics are  looking  to  the  state  for  financial 
assistance  for  schools  of  a  religious  persua- 
sion. Under  these  conditions  it  is  impor- 
tant to  observe  that  the  principle  of  the 
separation  of  church  and  state  in  the 
United  States  has  often  meant  in  practice 
merely  an  insistence  upon  a  neutral  atti- 
tude on  the  part  of  the  state  toward  all 
denominations,  not  a  condition  of  non- 
intercourse.  In  other  words,  constitu- 
tional restrictions  and  legislation  have 
hitherto  grown  out  of  disagreements  be- 
tween sects.  Will  they  survive  a  period 
in  which  private  and  parochial  schools 
unite  in  pleas  for  assistance  with  which  to 
solve  their  financial  as  well  as  their  reli- 
gious problems? 

A  few  years  ago  the  secular  school  was 
enthusiastically  acclaimed  as  an  American 
answer  to  the  problem  of  educating  chil- 
dren of  diverse  religious,  racial,  and  na- 
tional backgrounds  in  a  spirit  of  peace  and 
unity.  Today  the  integrity  and  validity 
of  this  secular  school  are  being  challenged. 
It  would  be  tragic  if  the  challenge  suc- 
ceeded and  the  result  were  friction  and 
disunity;  and  no  one,  perhaps,  would  be 
more  dismayed  than  earnest  men  and 
women  who  are  the  present  proponents 
of  the  change. 


THE   CAMPAIGN   FOR   THE    SOLOMONS 
NO.   2.  THE   TOKYO   EXPRESS 


FLETCHER     PRATT 


In  the  first  article  oj  this  new  series  Mr.  Pratt  told  oj  the  landing  of  our  Marines  on  Guadalcanal 
and  Tulagi  on  August  7,  79-^2,  our  defeat  at  sea  off  Savo  Island  on  the  night  oJ  August  8th,  and  the 
Battle  of  the  Eastern  Solomons  on  August  24th  which  frustrated  a  Japanese  attempt  to  retake 
Guadalcanal,     He  now  resumes  the  story  at  that  point. — The  Editors 


WITH  the  opposing  fleets  rocking 
north  and  south  from  where  the 
carrier  Ryujyo  burned  to  her  doom 
and  planes  down  all  over  the  sea,  the 
confused  night  of  August  24th  closed  the 
first  phase  of  the  struggle  for  the  Solomons. 
It  left  us  with  the  possession  of  the  field 
of  battle,  v/hich  is  nine  points  of  the  law 
of  war;  but  it  was  a  possession  precarious. 
The  appearance  of  seven  Jap  destroyers 
in  Sealark  Channel  that  same  night 
marked  the  beginning  of  a  new  effort  to 
shake  loose  our  grip  which  was  to  turn 
the  whole  campaign  into  the  nightmare 
pictured  in  Tregaskis'  Guadalcanal  Diary. 
Gould  that  nightmare  have  been  exor- 
cised or  prevented?  The  strategic  think- 
ers who  have  dealt  with  the  operations 
have  largely  assumed  that  it  could  have 
been,  and  have  severely  criticized  Admiral 
Kinkaid  for  not  pursuing  the  Japs  to  the 
death  after  the  Battle  of  the  Eastern  Solo- 
mons, on  the  ground  that  this  was  the 
missing  element  in  our  tactics.  Or  they 
have  criticized  Ghormley  for  not  using  his 
cruiser-carrier  forces  to  break  up  the 
enemy  concentrations  among  the  upper 
Solomons,  which  comes  to  the  same  thing. 


It  is  an  injustice;  Kinkaid  steamed 
south  through  the  dark  with  only  a  single 
carrier  in  fighting  trim  and  no  reserves 
behind  till  repairs  were  completed  at 
the  terminus  of  a  long  journey.  The 
cruisers?  It  does  not  appear  that  Admiral 
Ghormley,  commanding  the  area,  had 
any  cruisers  to  speak  of  beyond  the  neces- 
sary escort  for  his  carrier  force.  During 
those  September  days  among  the  Solo- 
mons a  damaged  ship  was  for  us  a  lost 
ship,  with  a  thousand  miles  to  tow.  More 
cruisers,  troops,  airplanes,  PT  boats,  sup- 
plies, were  on  the  way;  but  for  that  time, 
at  that  place,  our  only  game  was  to  hold 
on,  waiting  for  daylight.  It  takes  ten 
days  to  load  a  freighter;  from  Frisco  to  the 
Solomons  she  must  steam  6,000  miles,  the 
distance  across  the  Atlantic  and  back. 

Per  contra,  the  Japs  had  all  their  goods 
in  the  front  window.  At  the  southern 
end  of  Bougainville  among  the  upper 
Solomons,  they  had  established  a  seaplane 
base  and  depot  for  stores  in  the  area  of 
Buin-Faisi.  During  August  it  was  for- 
tified, extended,  and  developed.  At 
Munda  in  northern  New  Georgia  they 
had  hacked  an  airfield  out  of  mangrove 


468 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


swamps  with  prodigious  labor;  beyond  it 
they  had  a  naval  station  at  Vella  Lavella 
on  Kula  Gulf,  and  another  at  Rekata 
Bay  on  the  north  side  of  Santa  Isabel 
island,  with  a  support  point  on  Choiseul. 
To  all  these  from  Truk  and  Rabaul  came 
a  stream  of  small  freighters  with  every- 
thing needed.  Behind  them  other  freight- 
ers bore  goods  and  men  to  Truk  and 
Rabaul,  and  so  the  line  stretched  clear 
back  to  Yokohama  Bay,  always  by  short 
stages,  always  under  good  protection. 

In  the  upper  Solomons  bases,  goods  and 
men  were  transshipped  to  fast  vessels — 
light  cruisers  and  destroyers  or  those  Jap 
warship  types  intermediate  between  the 
two.  ("Look,"  said  a  Marine  aviator 
once  who  had  fought  a  lot  of  them,  "when 
you  see  them  fourteen  thousand  feet  down 
on  the  water  you  can't  tell.  So  if  it 
swings  round  a  catapult  and  shoots  a 
plane  up  at  us,  we  call  it  a  cruiser;  if  it 
don't,  it's  a  destroyer.")  During  the  day, 
while  our  planes  were  active,  these  ships 
would  hide  out  with  their  loads  under  the 
overhang  of  the  jungle.  At  night  they 
would  assemble  from  several  points  and 
come  flying  down  "the  slot"  formed  by 
two  parallel  lines  of  islands.  At  Cape 
Esperance  they  landed  their  cargoes  and 
reinforcements;  they  pushed  on  to  the 
area  of  Henderson  Field,  shelled  it,  and 
rushed  back  to  be  in  hiding  by  day. 

This  was  the  "Tokyo  Express,"  the 
basic  enemy  combination  of  the  second 
phase  of  the  campaign,  designed  to  build 
up  by  inches  strength  enough  to  smash 
General  Vandegrift's  slender  force  of  Ma- 
rines on  Guadalcanal;  and  pending  that 
happy  day  "not  so  much  to  kill  us  as  to 
drive  us  cr&zy"  with  devices  compounded 
out  of  old  Oriental  experience  in  the 
psychology  of  horror  and  fatigue. 

Our  men  were  plagued  by  malaria 
and  continual  rain,  they  had  nothing  to 
smoke  but  Japanese  cigarettes,  "which 
is  only  not  quite  as  bad  as  wearing  Jap 
underwear,"  and  food  was  short.  Every 
night  a  single  Jap  submarine  surfac<:;d  in 
Sealark  Channel  to  see  whether  we  had 
moved  anything  in,  and  shelled  our  lines. 
Between  twelve  and  two  a  single  Jap 
plane  would  buzz  down,  drop  a  single 
flare  and  a  single  ineffective  but  sleep- 
inhibiting  bomb,  then  buzz  off*.     Toward 


morning  there  might  be  a  flight  of  Jap 
bombers,  high  and  fast,  away  before  our 
fighters  could  get  up  for  an  air  battle. 
In  addition  to  explosives  the  Japs  dropped 
propaganda  leaflets  with  luscious  nude 
blondes  on  the  covers.  From  the  Jap 
lines  phonographs  played  "Home,  Sweet 
Home";  the  enemy  caught  names  and 
used  them  ("Mr.  Manning,  withdraw!"); 
and  all  night  they  kept  up  a  drizzle  of 
sniping  and  small  raids  that  prevented 
sleep  as  thoroughly  as  the  bombers  that 
came  by  day. 

In  due  course  there  were  so  many 
breakdowns  among  our  men  that  the 
psychiatric  cases  equaled  those  hospital- 
ized for  wounds,  but  this  was  later,  after 
many  weeks  of  fighting  in  the  jungle  slime 
without  relief.  For  the  present  the  Ma 
rines'  defense  was  laughter.  The  Babu- 
English  of  the  propaganda  leaflets  wasi 
irresistibly  comic;  they  called  the  nightly 
sub  "Oscar"  and  the  plane  "Louie  the 
Louse"  or  "Washing-machine  Charlie," 
making  jokes  about  them  as  old  friends. 
They  held  mock  ceremonies  in  which  they 
decorated  newspapermen  from  the  crate 
of  Imperial  medals  captured  in  the  first  at- 
tack; they  taught  parrots  to  screech  "Hello, 
Tojo."  The  prevailing  atmosphere  on  the 
inland  was  the  slightly  swaggering,  hard 
cheerfulness  with  which  Americans  who 
know  their  business  approach  a  difficult 
task.  During  August  the  men  had  learned 
the  worst — heat,  hunger,  bombing,  and 
nasty  Jap  tricks  such  as  firing  from  under 
flags  of  truce  and  wiring  their  own  dead 
as  booby  traps.  T'hell  with  that  stuff*, 
said  the  Marines;  the  command  was  for- 
ward. 

For  it  was  evident  to  General  Vande- 
grift  that  his  position  was  militarily  far 
from  sound  for  withstanding  the  close 
siege  that  would  evidently  be  clamped 
down  on  him.  He  held  the  rolling  Lunga 
plain.  Behind  it  the  ground  rose  through 
a  series  of  draws  and  steep  ridges  to  the 
mountains  that  his  men  had  dubbed 
"Kayo"  as  the  nearest  approximation  to 
the  native  name.  These  mountains  both 
gave  artillery  positions  from  which  our 
holdings  could  be  shelled  and,  by  way  of 
the  draws,  covered  avenues  of  attack. 
In  a  series  of  little  operations,  each  a 
campaign  with  all  the  appurtenance  of 


i 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


469 


planninp^,  scouting,  lines  of  communica- 
tion and  movement,  artillery  support  and 
iiifantry  advance,  he  pushed  southward 
lo  secure  the  outlets  to  the  Kayo  valleys. 
Preferably  our  men  operated  by  day- 
light to  make  the  most  of  their  cohesion 
and  good  rifle- work;  always  the  fighting 
was  hard,  nerve-racking;  the  Japs  did 
not  give  up  and  some  of  the  movements 
failed.*  But  the  Japanese  system  pro- 
duces a  soldier  who,  up  to  company  com- 
mand, is  better  prepared  to  die  than  to 
think  how  he  may  win  without  dying. 
By  the  second  week  of  September  General 
Vandegrift  had  chess-played  his  dogged, 
stupid  opponents  out  of  all  the  positions 
he  thought  he  could  hold  against  the 
inevitable  counterattack. 


II 

You  must  imagine  as  the  background 
of  this  warfare  on  Guadalcanal  the 
constant  running  of  the  Tokyo  Express 
by  night  and  a  series  of  tearing  air  battles 
by  day.  Our  side  ran  a  minor  Tokyo 
Express  of  its  own  aboard  some  of  the 
World  War  I  destroyers  which  had  been 
converted  to  fast  transports,  bringing  in 
food,  ammunition,  and  little  contingents 
of  Marines  drawn  from  all  over  the  Pacific 
islands. 

On  August  26th  the  Japs  hit  an  oil 
dump  which  went  up  in  smoky  flame;  a 
big  bomb  just  missed  the  General;  four 
Zeros  were  shot  down.  On  the  27th  the 
Japs  lost  seven  bombers;  on  the  28th  our 
dive-bombers  knocked  off  a  couple  of 
enemy  torpedo  boats  that  had  not  quite 
hidden  themselves  along  the  shores  of  San- 
ta Isabel;  on  the  29th  four  Jap  bombers 
were  downed  and  three  Zeros.  Next  day 
our  interceptors  took  the  air  in  time  to 
catch  the  Jap  planes  coming  in,  shot  down 
eighteen  of  the  fighter  cover,  and  drove 
off  the  bombers  before  they  could  drop 
their  bombs;  but  that  night  the  Japs  came 
back  and  in  the  falling  twilight  blew  up 
our  transport-destroyer  Colhoun  just  as  one 
of  our  other  destroyers  depth-charged  a 
Jap  submarine.  "Oscar,"  the  Jap  sub- 
marine, did  not  shell  the  encampment  that 
night  and  all  the  Marines  celebrated  by 

*John  Hersey's  Into  the  Valley  is  the  story  of  one 
that  did  fail. 


eating  the  first  bread  on  the  island,  baked 
in  an  oven  that  the  Seabecs  had  con- 
jured up  out  of  a  captured  Jap  safe. 

On  September  2nd  came  an(jLlicr  raid 
that  knocked  ofi'  a  small  ammunition 
dump  with  an  efiect  like  the  Fourth  of 
July.  Three  Jap  bombers  and  five  fight- 
ers were  shot  down,  one  of  them  by  Gap- 
tain  Marion  Carl,  who  thus  ran  his  score 
to  ten.  "You  have  to  hand  it  to  those 
Jap  bomber  pilots,"  he  said.  "They  hold 
their  formation  and  fly  right  along,  pay- 
ing no  attention  till  you  hit  one  of  them, 
and  then  the  one  behind  closes  up  as  if 
nothing  had  happened."  He  had  been 
in  the  thundering  tumult  at  Midway — 
"but  their  fighters  aren't  the  same.  Up 
there  they  had  the  first  team  in;  they  were 
as  good  as  we.  Now  they  just  make  one 
pass  at  you,  and  if  they  miss,  pull  out. 
Their  work  is  rough  on  the  turns,  too; 
they  skid  and  you  can  get  inside  them." 

The  enemy  were  employing  the  old 
Japanese  strategy  of  using  to  the  hilt  every 
weapon  they  had,  but  they  were  also 
fighting  the  clock;  they  knew  that  one  day 
our  fresh  forces  would  come  pouring 
gigantically  down  from  Pearl  Harbor, 
and  they  could  not  wait  to  sharpen  the 
blade  that  had  dulled  at  Midway. 

Yet  the  blades  they  had  were  sharp 
enough  and  deadly  enough.  On  the  night 
of  September  4th  their  light  cruiser  Tubari 
with  a  couple  of  the  heavy  destroyers 
ran  down  the  slot.  Lying  off"  Savo  were 
our  destroyer-transports  Little  and  Gregory. 
Overhead  a  flare  burst;  the  third  salvo 
demolished  one  of  the  Little'' s  two  guns, 
the  next  one  smashed  the  other,  the  Greg- 
orys bridge  and  guns  were  hit,  and  what 
was  left  of  their  crews  pitched  into  the 
black  water.  The  Tubari  swept  the  area 
with  searchlights  and  turned  machine 
guns  on  the  swimmers  before  she  left. 

Next  morning  groups  of  Jap  landing 
boats,  small  craft,  were  found  on  the 
beaches  at  both  ends  of  the  Marine  posi- 
tion and  there  was  a  fight  down  near 
Taivu  Point,  where  the  newcomers  tried 
to  infiltrate.  Our  dive-bombers  caught 
some  of  the  boats  on  the  water,  full  of 
people,  and  gave  the  sharks  a  feed  to  the 
number  of  a  thousand  Japs. 

On  the  7th  an  American  convoy  came 
in,  a  few  small  cargo  craft  with  destroyers, 


470 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  a  force  of  our  raiders  attacked  from 
the  sea  a  native-hut  village  where  the 
Japs  had  landed  a  force,  killing  about 
thirty  of  them  and  capturing  three  75's 
plus  a  lot  of  English^'cigarettes  and  some 
American-made  ammunition  with  labels 
in  Dutch.  That  day  the  Jap  bombers 
slashed  at  Tulagi;  several  were  lost.  On 
each  of  the  next  four  days  there  was  a 
strong  Jap  air  raid  of  twenty  to  forty 
planes;  the  first  two  were  unopposed  but 
on  the  11th  and  12th  our  fighters  got 
in  among  them  and  shot  a  total  of  sixteen 
out  of  the  formations,  with  another 
brought  down  by  ground  artillery. 

That  night  messengers  went  through 
our  encampment  on  Guadalcanal  ordering 
everyone  up  to  the  ridge  southward.  The 
Japs  had  made  several  attempts  to  infil- 
trate and  the  flicker  of  their  flares  was  now 
all  round  the  horizon  like  heat  lightning. 
They  had  some  six  thousand  men  ashore; 
a  big  attack  was  imminent. 

Ill 

THE  Japanese  do  not  use  their  sub- 
marines as  we  do — or  as  the  Germans 
do — for  raiding  purposes  in  the  war  of 
attrition.  They  are  fleet  elements,  em- 
ployed in  concentration  against  the  war- 
ships of  the  enemy.  It  would  seem  that 
we  had  hardly  landed  on  Guadal  before 
they  began  to  rush  undersea  craft  to  the 
area.  Already  by  the  time  of  the  Battle 
of  the  Eastern  Solomons  they  were  a 
serious  nuisance;  planes  from  the  Enter  - 
prise  sank  one  during  the  action. 

Now  one  of  the  main  reasons  why  the 
Jap  planes  over  Henderson  Field  were 
being  slaughtered  with  so  little  loss  to  us 
was  the  presence  of  our  patrols  from 
carriers  cruising  out  to  the  south.  These 
scouts  spotted  the  enemy  in  time  for  the 
slower  American  fighters  to  meet  Jap 
formations  high  in  the  sky,  where  Ameri- 
can firepower  and  protection  made  deified 
dead  out  of  a  lot  of  Jap  aviators.  There 
was,  moreover,  every  reason  for  the  enemy 
to  suppose  that  when  they  launched  a  big 
land  attack  on  Guadal  our  carrier  planes 
would  intervene  with  decisive  effect.  It 
was  imperative  for  the  Japs  to  drive  those 
carriers  from  the  northern  Coral  Sea. 
The  submarines  were  assigned  to  the  job. 


They  very  soon  learned  through  their 
periscopes  that  we  had  nowhere  near 
enough  destroyers  to  give  our  ships  ade- 
quate coverage,  and  they  attacked  with 
that  determined  spirit  of  the  Japanese 
fighting  man  which  is  so  peculiarly  mani- 
fest when  he  discovers  that  his  opponent 
has  some  disadvantage.  We  know  little 
of  the  ensuing  struggle  save  that  it  was 
carried  out  at  a  pace  and  intensity  equal- 
ing the  campaign  on  shore.  But  we  know 
some  illuminating  details.  For  instance, 
twenty- two  torpedoes  were  fired  at  the 
Hornet  during  this  period  and  on  Sep- 
tember 6th  the  pilot  of  a  torpedo  plane 
from  the  carrier  spied  a  Jap  torpedo 
headed  for  her  side.  He  was  loaded  with 
depth  charges;  dropped  one  which  ex- 
ploded in  time  to  deflect  the  torpedo  and 
save  the  ship.  When  the  torpedo  planes, 
which  are  attack  weapons,  are  used  on 
anti-submarine  defense,  it  can  be  taken 
that  the  situation  is  tight. 

It  is  probable  that  the  Japs  lost  a  few 
good  submarines  during  this  period;  at- 
tacks made  in  their  fashion  usually  pro- 
duce losses.  It  is  possible  that  we  had 
some  damage;  there  are  tales  of  vessels 
coming  in  for  repairs.  But  the  grand 
climax  of  their  submarine  war  came  in 
mid-September,  just  as  the  Jap  land  forces 
were  closing  round  Henderson  Field  and 
the  carrier  Wasp  was  rushing  through  the 
patrol  area  to  the  rescue  with  a  big  convoy. 
The  Wasp  was  torpedoed. 

It  was  3:09  in  the  afternoon.  She  had 
just  flown  off*  an  attack  group  and  taken 
in  another;  hangar  and  flight  deck  were 
full  of  planes,  and  her  gasoline  lines  were 
running  as  they  were  refueled.  Two  Jap- 
anese torpedoes,  the  heaviest  in  the  world, 
hit  the  Wasp  in  the  same  spot,  a  third 
near  by.  All  the  gas  lines  caught,  her  own 
bomb  magazine  exploded,  and  fires  ran 
like  hurricanes  through  the  ship. 

They  could  not  be  checked,  since  the 
mains  were  gone;  the  other  ships  of  the 
force  could  give  no  help,  for  they  were 
engaged  in  a  desperate  pitched  battle 
against  as  formidable  a  force  of  submarines 
as  the  Pacific  ever  saw;  torpedo  wakes 
were  burning  the  brilliant  water  and 
depth  charges  were  shaking  the  world  till 
down  below  on  the  destroyers  the  engi- 
neers could  hardly  stand,     (Some  of  them 


V 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


471 


did  not  walk  well  for  a  week  after.)  One 
destroyer  was  hit,  too  -the  O'Brien,  which 
made  port  but  broke  up  and  sank  later. 
The  fiqht  went  on;  toward  evening  they 
al)and()ned  the  Wasp  under  the  pillar  of 
snioke  rolling  from  her  side  with  (thank 
(Jod)  few  casualties,  since  Captain  Sher- 
man had  backed  her  clear  of  the  area  of 
burning  oil.  The  fleet  with  its  cripples 
and  survivors  turned  sadly  away  from 
what  was  an  effective  defeat,  even  if  half 
a  dozen  Jap  subs  had  paid  for  it. 

"We'll  just  have  to  develop  better 
methods  of  detection,"  the  Exec  of  the 
flagship  remarked. 

Said  a  younger  man  with  the  looped 
chevrons  of  a  chief:  "I'm  thinking  of  those 
boys  on  Guadal." 

He  might  well.  On  that  day,  the  day 
of  September  15th,  the  Marines  were 
close  to  the  edge.  Just  after  midnight 
on  the  13th  the  Japs  had  launched  a 
triple  assault,  one  prong  across  the  bloody 
Tenaru,  one  from  the  west  against  the 
lines  on  that  side,  the  main  effort  through 
a  wide  gap  in  the  mountains  to  the  south 
against  the  low  Lunga  Ridge,  where 
Edson's  Raiders  were. 

The  group  at  the  Tenaru  was  the  one 
that  had  been  cut  up  in  its  boats  three 
days  before;  too  weak  for  its  purpose,  it 
was  pinned  down,  broken  with  heavy 
loss.  On  the  other  flank  the  Jap  attack 
became  involved  in  barbed  wire  and 
rugged  ground,  and  petered  out  as  an 
affair  of  sniping  and  counter-sniping  that 
lasted  for  days.  But  in  the  center  the 
Japs  lapped  round  Lunga  Ridge,  firing 
Roman  candles,  burning  flares,  emitting 
wild  yells  and  "a  loud,  blubbering  shout 
like  a  turkey  gobbler's  cry"  that  was  the 
banzai.  There  was  savage  knife-  and  gre- 
nade-work in  the  dark;  one  little  party 
won  through  to  General  Vandegrift's  CP, 
and  killed  a  sergeant  at  his  tent  before  they 
were  downed.  The  whole  front  hung 
by  a  hair  and  was  only  saved  by  our  artil- 
lery, which  caught  an  attack  forming  and 
killed  not  far  short  of  five  hundred  men. 
The  attack  was  stopped  but  not  alto- 
gether beaten;  as  it  pulled  back  into  the 
jungle  with  the  dawn  it  left  behind  ma- 
chine-gun parties  which  placed  the  pre- 
cious airfield  under  fire  and  killed  some 
of  the  mechanics. 


Now  our  planes  could  not  use  the  field 
on  this,  the  day  that  saw  the  end  of  the 
Wasp.  Tokyo  broadcast  the  news  that 
Guadalcanal  was  won,  and  so  it  might 
have  been,  had  the  enemy  been  able  to 
make  one  more  effort.  But  their  last 
reserves  were  in;  on  the  island  their 
broken  remnants  were  already  streaming 
back  through  the  jungle  when  Vande- 
grift's men  counterattacked  through  clouds 
of  snipers  to  wipe  out  their  machine-gun 
posts  in  the  afternoon.  Their  air  loss 
had  been  such  that  they  could  support 
their  land  forces  with  nothing  but  half 
a  dozen  old,  slow  float-biplanes  which 
were  shot  down  by  mere  ground  machine 
guns. 

On  the  16th  our  dive-bombers  took 
the  air  again  from  Henderson  Field  and 
near  Choiseul  popped  a  Jap  cruiser  which 
seemed  to  be  having  trouble  with  her 
fuse-settings.  On  the  18th  the  Wasp  did 
not  arrive  but  her  convoy  did;  food,  guns, 
and  ammunition  came  ashore  in  a  flood, 
with  thousands  of  Marines  in  new  uni- 
forms. 

IV 

THE  Battle  of  Lunga  Ridge  was  fol- 
lowed by  what  A.  Hitler  calls  a  ''con- 
structive pause."  ''Louie  the  Louse"  was 
over  the  anchorage  the  night  after  the 
big  convoy  unloaded  and  left,  but  his 
playmates  with  the  bombs  did  not  come 
that  night  nor  for  many  nights  thereafter. 
They  had  been  hit  hard;  and  while  we  do 
not  know  the  minds  of  the  Jap  admiralty 
or  the  distribution  of  their  strength,  it 
seems  probable  that  they  were  so  short  of 
planes  that  they  had  decided  to  lay  off 
air-raiding  till  they  could  send  concen- 
trations heavy  enough  to  force  our  fighters 
into  unremitting  combat,  attrition,  ex- 
haustion, and  collapse.  Meanwhile  the 
Tokyo  Express  was  to  be  speeded  up, 
building  a  force  of  troops  with  tanks  and 
heavy  artillery  against  which  there  could 
be  no  argument. 

Far  back  at  Truk  and  Rabaul  fleets 
were  assembled.  At  the  moment  of  im- 
pact these  would  come  down  in  a  typical 
Japanese  fast-moving,  two-finger  attack; 
would  drive  our  Guadalcanal  planes  tem- 
porarily into  the  ground  and  our  ships 
temporarily  from  Sealark  Channel;  would 


472 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


shell  our  positions  into  helplessness  from 
the  sea,  and  land  men  on  the  beaches 
while  their  forces  on  the  island  came 
down  to  recapture  the  airfield  in  one 
great  concentration  from  all  sides.  Once 
gained,  the  airfield  could  be  maintained 
by  the  troops  who  tock  it,  while  numerous 
planes  swiftly  flown  down  through  the 
chain  of  bases  in  the  upper  Solomons 
would  keep  our  floating  air  bases  at  arm's 
length. 

This  was  the  Japanese  pattern,  of  which, 
it  must  be  emphasized,  our  command 
knew  no  more  at  the  time  than  that  the 
Japs  were  using  their  constructive  pause 
to  build  up  their  strength  on  Guadal- 
canal by  means  of  the  Tokyo  Express. 
Our  first  efforts  to  upset  its  timetable  were 
aerial,  the  work  of  Marine  torpedo  and 
dive-bombers,  with  a  few  Army  Flying 
Fortresses  which  apparently  came  in  from 
bases  to  the  south  and  gassed  up  at  Guadal 
before  taking  off  to  strike  at  the  enemy  in 
places  like  Buka  Passage,  where  the  dis- 
tance is  uncomfortable  to  an  SBD. 

In  the  days  following  Lunga  Ridge  our 
planes  tapped  at  Rekata  Bay  and  Gizo 
in  the  New  Georgias  without  finding  any 
targets  but  some  small  buildings  under 
the  coconuts.  At  night  the  Tokyo  Ex- 
press ran.  On  September  25th  one  of 
our  B17's  found  new  seaplanes  on  the 
water  at  Rekata, — a  sign  of  revived  Jap- 
anese air  strength  in  the  upper  islands. 
Next  day  that  air  strength  came  thunder- 
ing down  in  a  big  raid  on  Guadalcanal, 
new  in  its  technique  to  the  extent  that 
it  had  really  heavy  fighter  cover.  There 
was  an  air  battle  over  the  island  and  on 
the  27th  another,  when  25  bombers  and 
18  Zeros  came.  The  concentration 
method  failed  statistically  on  those  two 
days,  33  Japs  being  shot  down  without 
a  loss  to  us.  On  October  2nd  they  lost 
4  fighters,  and  October  3rd  (when  they 
really  came  strong — 30  Zeros  to  only  5 
or  6  bombers)  they  lost  9  more  Zeros 
against  1  plane  of  ours. 

Not  much  of  a  showing  for  the  Japs,  one 
might  conclude.  But  attrition  in  air  war 
works  through  the  accumulated  fatigues 
that  make  pilots  inefficient,  and  all  this 
time  the  Japanese  offensive  against  our 
men's  nerves  was  being  stepped  up,  with 
Oscar  and  Louie  the  Louse  back  every 


night,  with  stabbings  in  the  brush  on  the 
outpost  line,  and  with  the  running  of  the 
Tokyo  Express,  whose  shells  were  the 
most  nerve-racking  of  all.  We  had  some 
slight  success  against  the  Express  on  Oc- 
tober 2nd  when  a  formation  of  our  dive- 
bombers  caught  four  destroyers  off  New 
Georgia  and  left  one  stopped  and  burn- 
ing, and  again  on  the  night  of  October 
3rd  when  all  the  Guadalcanal  planes 
boiled  out  to  go  for  a  particularly  big 
train  on  the  Express,  got  a  torpedo  hit 
on  a  cruiser,  and  smashed  up  some  land- 
ing boats  (with  men  in  them)  at  the  Gape 
Esperance  beachhead.  Nearly  all  the  Jap 
troops  got  ashore,  however — probably 
enough  to  balance  the  gain  we  had  made 
by  our  convoy  of  September  18th. 

Clearly,  the  Japs  were  forging  ahead 
in  the  game  which  they  had  played  since 
the  beginning  of  the  war — the  game  of 
accepting  material  loss  to  build  up  a  stra- 
tegically impregnable  position.  Our 
forces  on  Guadal  had  only  enough  teeth 
to  wound  without  killing.  More  violent 
American  intervention  was  necessary. 

Admiral  Ghormley,  back  at  his  base 
with  an  inadequate  staff  and  no  benefit 
of  hindsight,  perceived  as  much  even 
before  the  demonstration  of  the  night  of 
October  3rd.  That  night  as  the  Jap 
soldiers  struggled  ashore  through  the  rain 
of  bombs  to  bed  down  near  Gape  Esper- 
ance, one  of  our  few  remaining  carriers, 
the  Hornet,  was  running  fast,  fast  to  the 
northwest,  parallel  to  the  Solomon  chain, 
with  her  patrols  well  out.  Before  the 
day  of  October  5th  her  attack  group  left 
the  deck;  and  while  the  fliers  of  the  Mac- 
Arthur  command  pinned  down  the  enemy 
bombers  at  Rabaul,  the  Hornefs  men 
swooped  on  the  Bougainville  anchorages.  * 

Buin  was  empty  of  anything  but  anti- 
aircraft fire  and  at  the  supporting  airfield 
of  Kieta  there  was  not  much  to  do  but  pit 
the  runways  and  soak  the  dispersal  areas; 
there  was  no  Jap  air  opposition.  At 
Faisi,  however,  there  was  a  Jap  force  mak- 
ing up  for  the  run  south;  the  Hornefs 
planes  hit  a  cruiser,  a  transport,  a  couple 
of  cargo  ships,  and  a  seaplane  tender, 
besides  burning  up  the  tender's  planes  on 
the  water. 

But  that  night  the  Tokyo  Express  ran 

*  See  lower  left  corner  of  map  facing  page  476. 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


473 


The  Revenge  for  Savo 


as  usual,  the  Guadalcanal  planes  had  a 
fight  with  it,  and  the  next  night  the  Japs 
were  back  with  a  convoy  at  least  as  impor- 
tant as  that  of  the  3rd.  Our  scouts 
spotted  it  in  time  for  a  lovely  co-ordi- 
nated bomb  and  torpedo  attack;  one  of  the 
Jap  Kako-c\ass  cruisers  was  slowed  up  by 
a  fish,  then  was  bombed  till  she  blazed 
for  two  days,  maybe  a  total  loss;  and  one 
of  the  Jap  destroyers  was  sunk  then  or  the 
following  day. 

The  fact  remained  that  the  Jap  plan 
still  worked  and  the  Hornet's  bold  dash 
had  done  little  to  prevent  it.  Putting 
more  carriers  on  permanent  patrol  south 
of  the  islands  would  be  risking  another 
Wasp  tragedy.  Something  else  was  called 
for. 


SOMETHING  else  was  at  hand;  the  Japs 
had  lost  the  first  round  of  their  battle 
with  the  calendar.  On  the  evening  of 
October   11th,   after  dark,   four  six-hun- 


dred-foot gray  shapes  slid  up  out  of  the 
water  south  of  Guadalcanal  and  swung  in 
line  across  Cape  Esperance — San  Francisco, 
Helena,  Boise,  Salt  Lake  City,  cruisers  of  the 
United  States  fleet,  two  heavies  and  two 
lights,  an  assortment  odd  at  any  other 
time  but  not  for  those  close  waters  and 
by  night.  Helena  had  been  in  the  area 
at  least  since  late  August;  it  is  probable 
that  the  others  belonged  to  the  wave  of 
reinforcements.  San  Francisco  led  the  line 
with  the  flag  of  Rear  Admiral  Norman 
Scott;  Boise  was  the  "reluctant  dragon"  of 
the  Java  Sea  that  had  ripped  her  bottom 
or  had  some  other  accident  whenever  ac- 
tion was  imminent  until  now.  A  few 
destroyers  trotted  along  behind. 

"I  can  still  smell  that  heavy,  lush  tropi- 
cal perfume,"  says  a  young  lieutenant  of 
the  Salt  Lake  City.  "The  night  was  clear 
but  dark  and  tense" — and  into  it  the 
cruiser  catapulted  her  planes.  Some- 
thing went  wrong;  one  of  them  exploded 
in  a  burst  of  flame  that  lighted  sea  and  sky 


474 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  the  black  shores,  the  presence  of  our 
cruisers  was  a  secret  no  longer,  and  on  the 
Boise  they  cursed  and  stamped  the  deck 
over  another  opportunity  lost  through 
sheer  mischance. 

But  it  was  not  lost.  The  black  shores  re- 
mained silent — not  a  spark,  not  a  sound; 
either  the  Japs  did  not  care  or  they  failed 
to  notify  the  Tokyo  Express.  For  just  be- 
fore midnight  down  it  came  from  the 
northwest,  more  ships  than  the  Japs  had 
ever  used  before:  destroyers  out  in  front; 
four,  five  cruisers  all  in  line;  and  behind 
them  transports  to  the  number  of  seven 
or  eight.  Admiral  Scott's  line  had  just 
turned  prows  west  at  twenty-five  knots; 
they  were  in  that  book  position  known  as 
crossing  the  T,  with  the  enemy  as  the 
vertical  stroke  of  the  letter,  and  only  the 
leading  ship  able  to  bring  her  guns  to 
bear. 

"Pick  out  the  biggest,"  said  Captain 
"Iron  Mike"  Moran  of  the  Boise,  and  all 
down  the  line  the  captains  said  together, 
"Commence  firing!" 

Forty-nine  heavy  guns  went  ofi*  at  once. 
"I  saw  our  salvos  going  in  like  red  boxcars 
on  a  Jap  heavy  cruiser."  She  burst  out  in 
brilliant  flame  amidships — to  stand  re- 
vealed as  one  of  the  Nachis — before  Helena, 
Boise,  and  Salt  Lake  sent  her  down  in  whirl- 
pools of  flaming  oil,  one  minute  after  the 
first  gun.  The  Jap  ships  plunged  wildly 
in  all  directions  trying  to  escape  the  trap 
of  that  crossed  T,  blobs  of  smoke  from  their 
funnels  mingling  with  that  of  burning  ships 
and  exploding  guns,  in  long  level  stream- 
ers that  alternately  hid  and  revealed  the 
black  charging  shapes  in  the  fitful  glare  of 
star  shell,  searchlight,  and  flame. 

The  first  enemy  shells  were  fragmenta- 
tion, designed  for  the  works  on  Guadal; 
their  destroyers  rushed  to  cover  the  un- 
coiling of  the  confusion  with  a  torpedo  at- 
tack. As  Admiral  Scott  ordered  a  turn  to- 
ward the  enemy  to  avoid  these  missiles, 
Boise  and  Salt  Lake  each  blew  up  one  of  the 
destroyers  at  a  range  of  no  more  than 
fifteen  hundred  yards.  Helena  had  caught 
another  as  it  turned;  "explosions  occurred 
all  over  the  enemy  ship  and  it  disap- 
peared." 

The  Japs  were  shooting  back;  the  Boise 
had  taken  an  8-inch  hit  in  the  captain's 
cabin  amidships.     There  was  a  momen- 


tary lull,  in  a  blackness  complete  after  the 
vivid  illumination;  into  this  darkness  our 
own  destroyers  fired  torpedoes  at  the  mass 
of  the  enemy  and  saw  a  rewarding  tall 
flame  spring  up  beneath  a  waterspout  at 
the  side  of  an  enemy  cruiser  that  was  prob- 
ably the  Kinugasa.  Admiral  Scott  turned 
again  to  close  the  range. 

The  Salt  Lake  had  found  one  of  the  Jap 
transports  and  pumped  seventy  big  shells 
into  her,  sending  the  ship  down  by  the 
head  with  its  propellers  dripping  in  the 
glare  of  the  searchlights.  Splashes  from 
the  Helena's  guns  walked  after  a  Jap  de- 
stroyer, caught  her,  and  stamped  on  her  as 
she  tried  to  run.  Boise  was  just  opening 
fire  on  a  smallish  enemy  cruiser  when, 
from  somewhere  abaft  the  beam,  one  of 
the  Jap  heavy  cruisers  opened  on  her  with 
8-inch  guns,  "shooting  beautifully." 

Too  beautifully:  turrets  1  and  3  on  Boise 
were  hit  and  lost  nearly  all  their  crews;  a 
big  shell  went  through  below  her  water 
line  to  explode  right  in  the  magazine  of 
turret  2;  and  a  mountain  of  fire  sprang 
from  the  ship's  foredeck  as  she  swung  out 
of  action  to  port,  her  rear  guns  still  shoot- 
ing. "I  thought  we  had  lost  her,"  said 
Admiral  Scott.  The  Salt  Lake  leaped  into 
the  position  the  Boise  had  left,  taking  a  hit 
that  started  a  smoky  fire  amidships,  but 
dealing  out  five  quick  salvos  of  which  not  a 
gun  could  have  missed,  for  the  first  si- 
lenced the  Jap  cruiser  and  the  other  four 
sank  her. 

The  disaster  of  Savo  Island  was  paid  for; 
what  was  left  of  the  Japs  had  fled — but  not 
to  safety;  for  the  next  morning  the  dive- 
bombers  from  Guadal  caught  a  cripple  of 
the  Jap  armada  near  New  Georgia  and 
left  her  listing  and  afire,  with  the  crew 
being  taken  off".  Admiral  Scott  hunted 
for  them  a  few  moments,  then  spun  his 
force  on  its  heel  and  steamed  south,  regret- 
ful for  the  loss  of  the  Boise.  He  could 
have  spared  his  sorrow;  for  the  Boise's 
damage  control  parties  had  worked  one  of 
the  miracles  of  naval  history  and  she  came 
through  the  night  to  join  them,  steaming 
at  twenty  knots.  When  the  checkup  was 
made  only  the  destroyer  Duncan  was  miss- 
ing (she  sank  off"  the  island  in  the  morning) 
and  the  Japs  had  lost,  in  addition  to  their 
transport,  at  least  three  cruisers,  maybe 
four,  and  at  least  four  destroyers. 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    lllE    SOLOMONS 


475 


It  was  an  eventful  night  for  more  than 
)nc  reason.  Out  at  the  fleet  base  Admiral 
'ialsey,  our  best  fighting  leader,  had  ar- 
•ived  to  relieve  Ghormley,  bringing  re- 
nforcements.  Out  somewhere  on  the 
:>cean,  approaching  the  Solomons,  was  a 
:onvoy  with  Army  transports  in  it.  They 
were  to  arrive  in  another  twenty-four 
hours  with  more  American  troops  for  the 
relief  of  the  hard-pressed  Marines — in- 
cluding two  hundred  men,  technically 
AWOL  from  units  back  at  base,  who  had 
stowed  away  to  get  into  the  war.  At  the 
borders  of  Sealark  Channel  four  American 
PT's  were  pushing  through  the  dark  to- 
ward Tulagi,  their  crews  watching  the 
gun-lightning  on  the  distant  sky.  As  they 
came  in  "I  remember  one  haggard,  red- 
eyed  youngster  with  a  Jap  knife  in  his  belt 
who  said,  'Just  teach  those  bastards  to 
stay  at  home  in  bed  nights  where  they  be- 
long. Just  do  that  and  we'll  remember 
you  in  our  prayers.'  " 

VI 

THE  Japanese  is  a  fighting  man  of  pe- 
culiar character;  full  of  tricks  and 
inventions,  but  singularly  unwilling  to 
depart  from  a  plan  once  laid  down;  so 
persistent  even  in  his  mistakes  that  they 
sometimes  bring  success.  The  Tokyo  Ex- 
press had  failed?  By  no  means;  it  had 
only  suffered  some  of  the  losses  inevitable 
against  an  active  enemy.  On  the  night  of 
October  14th  it  ran  again,  bigger  and  bet- 
ter than  ever,  with  a  fast  battleship  added 
to  the  cruiser  cover.  It  landed  troops  and 
artillery  and  came  down  the  slot  to  give 
our  men  more  of  that  dreadful  shelling 
which  was  the  worst  thing  they  had  to 
bear. 

As  the  Jap  ships  made  their  turn 
through  the  Channel  the  newly  arrived 
PT'Sj  the  expendables,  jumped  them  and 
sank  one  of  those  big  cruiser-destroyers, 
getting  away  themselves  by  the  ingenious 
device  of  dumping  depth  charges  over 
their  tails,  which  made  pursuing  Jap  des- 
troyers think  they  were  running  into 
a  minefield.  At  dawn  the  Japs  were 
bombed  and  lost  a  transport;  but  they 
treated  the  whole  show  as  an  incident  and 
brought  their  Express  back  on  the  16th5 
18th,  and  20th. 


Had  they  been  checked  in  the  air? 
Not  at  all;  they  came  down  in  bombing 
attacks  heavier  than  ever,  twice  on  the 
14th,  again  on  the  17th  and  on  the  19th. 
Our  new  Lightning  fighters  struck  nine  of 
fifteen  bombers  on  the  first  of  those  days; 
as  the  fragments  rained  down  on  Guadal 
our  people  remarked  that  there  was  no  rust 
around  the  rivet  settings,  which  told  its 
own  story  of  planes  fresh  from  the  factory; 
attrition  had  been  eating  the  enemy  down. 
But  in  exchange  their  torpedo  planes  got 
our  new  destroyer  Meredith  when  she  was 
convoying  in  some  much-needed  aviation 
gasoline,  and  one  of  their  dive-bombers 
blew  the  stern  out  of  our  destroyer-trans- 
port McFarland^  killing  some  wounded 
Marines  who  were  being  taken  home. 

Were  the  Japs  beaten  on  the  ground? 
Their  patrols  pushed  hard  along  the 
Matanikau  on  the  night  of  the  20th. 
From  Kayo  Mountain  their  new  guns  be- 
gan to  shell  our  encampment;  a  single 
piece  that  became  known  as  "Pistol  Pete" 
established  itself  to  take  pot  shots  at  any- 
thing that  moved  in  "Sleepless  Lagoon" 
between  Guadalcanal  and  Tulagi. 

The  fact  was  that  the  Jap  had  spent 
nothing  he  could  not  afford  if  he  got 
Guadalcanal  back.  He  was  working  up 
to  a  grand  climax  of  exchanging  pawn  and 
knight  for  the  winning  position.  All  day 
and  all  night  of  the  21st  and  22nd  there 
was  pressure  and  constant  fighting  along 
our  outpost  lines,  especially  along  the 
Lunga  River  and  in  the  district  known 
as  "Coffin  Corner,"  and  there  were  inci- 
dents like  that  of  the  Marine  who  was  shot 
through  the  groin  as  he  softly  hummed 
"The  St.  Louis  Blues"  on  post  and  had  to 
lie  there  till  his  relief  came  forward.  "If 
I'd  shouted  and  the  boys  came,  they 
would  have  got  it  too,"  he  said  later.  On 
the  23rd  there  came  a  tremendous  slam- 
bang  bombing  raid,  the  heaviest  that 
Guadalcanal  had  seen  since  the  beginning 
of  the  campaign.  That  night  the  Tokyo 
Express  ran  again — successfully,  for  our 
PT's  were  laid  up  with  mechanical  belly- 
aches. 

Just  after  midnight  the  Jap  attack  came. 
It  was  no  patrol  action  this  time  but  the 
main  event,  with  a  furious  artillery  bar- 
rage, tanks  leading  the  assault,  Japanese 
howls  and  barbarity  at  the  south  side  of 


476 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


the  airfield.  The  attack  was  broken  up, 
but  not  until  our  green  Army  troops  had 
gone  in  to  the  last  man,  including  cooks 
and  bakers.  At  dawn,  with  the  stinking 
smoke  of  five  burning  Jap  tanks  drifting 
through  the  jungle,  they  tried  once  more 
and  again  were  repulsed;  but  General 
Vandegrift  had  to  use  all  his  local  planes 
in  support  of  the  troops,  so  there  was  no 
sortie  against  the  concentrations  of  Jap 
shipping  that  day.  The  MacArthur  com- 
mand had  been  appealed  to  in  this  battle 
of  desperation;  while  the  struggle  at  Coffin 
Corner  was  at  its  height,  their  big  bombers 
hit  Rabaul  Harbor,  scoring  on  a  number 
of  Jap  ships. 

This  must  have  been  a  support  com- 
mand that  they  hit,  since  the  big  train  on 
the  Tokyo  Express  was  by  this  time  far  on 
its  way  toward  Guadalcanal.  Lieutenant 
Mario  Sesso  in  an  Army  B17  picked  it  up 
in  the  slot  during  the  afternoon  and  stayed 
with  it,  chased  by  Zeros  till  his  plane  was  a 
sieve  of  machine-gun  holes,  reporting,  re- 
porting the  numerous  battleships,  cruisers, 
destroyers,  and  transports.  They  came 
rumbling  in  after  dark  to  Cape  Esperance, 
landed  any  God's  quantity  of  troops  and 
supplies,  and  pushed  on  to  give  our  beach- 
head the  most  violent  shelling  ever.  "My 
God,  my  God,  will  they  never  stop?"  an 
Army  man  remembers  his  buddy  sobbing. 
They  did  not  stop;  those  guns  were  a  sig- 
nal and  the  first  element  in  an  attack  from 
the  land  side,  where  the  Japs  had  for  the 
first  time  superior  numbers  and  all  the 
planes  that  were  overhead. 

The  Army  men,  who  had  begun  to  think 
themselves  veterans,  had  never  met  any- 
thing like  this.  Some  of  them  gave  way; 
the  Japanese  rush  carried  through  and 
took  part  of  the  airfield.  When  dawn 
woke  on  a  battle  where  little  knots  of  Japs 
and  Americans  were  entangled  in  inextri- 
cable confusion,  the  Jap  planes  came  back, 
and  now  there  was  almost  nothing  to 
stand  them  ofT.  Most  of  our  fighters  had 
been  smashed  in  the  bays  by  the  naval 
bombardments,  all  our  men  were  tired, 
and  some  of  them  were  beginning  to  be 
hopeless. 

But  so  were  the  enemy.  They  had 
spent  too  many  lives  in  getting  that  far. 
On  the  front  occupied  by  our  164th  Regi- 
ment alone  there  were  seventeen  hundred 


Jap  dead.     "You  couldn't  walk  five  feeti 
in  any  direction  without  finding  one  of  i 
them."     And  "the  last  [Jap]  charges  were  i 
almost  pathetic.     Clusters  of  little  men, 
all  huddled  together,  would  rise  up  and 
come  forward,  stooping  over  into  our  ma-  [ 
chine-gun  bullets  and  falling  down  dead." 
To  General  Vandegrift  came  the  report 
that  some  of  those  knots  of  Japs  were  cry- 
ing, "Tojo  make  mistake,  Tojo  make  mis- 
take."    With  the  coming  of  day  he  drew 
tight  his  shattered  lines,  summoned  his 
men  to  one  more  effort,  and  with  the  7th 
Marines  leading,  started  a  counterattack 
that  not  so  much  drove  the  Japs  back  to 
the  edge  of  the  jungle  as  killed  them  wher 
they  lay. 

Yet  our  side  was  still  at  the  lip  of  de 
spair.  The  Jap  troops  that  had  come  inj 
during  the  big  landing  of  the  night  had  not 
yet  fought,  we  were  losing  the  battle  in  thei 
air,  and  down  from  Truk  in  the  north,] 
huge  and  menacing,  the  main  Japanes 
fleet  was  steaming  with  its  carriers  and 
battleships  and  cruisers.  When  they  ar- 
rived— 

vn 

AM  AN  did  not  have  to  be  able  to  see  fa 
into  a  grindstone  to  know  that  some- 
thing like  this  was  due  after  the  Japs  threw! 
the  book  at  us  on  Guadalcanal  on  October] 
23rd.     Since  that  afternoon  Admiral  Hal- 
sey  had  had  PBY's  out  all  across  the  are^ 
north  of  the  Solomons.     Six  of  them  were 
shot  down,  but  not  till  they  had  sent  in] 
their  reports.     The  reports  were  ominous:] 
the  Japs  were  coming  with  the  strongest 
force  since  Midway,  perhaps  stronger  even 
than  that — four  fast  battleships,  any  num-j 
ber  of  cruisers  and  destroyers,  their  carriers 
Shokaku  and  ^uikaku,  the  best  they  had,] 
with  more  on  behind  in  an  endless  pro- 
cession. 

At  the  same  hour  when  the  big  Tokyo] 
Express  was  pulling  out  of  Bougainville, 
Halsey's  own  task  force  was  running  north- 
ward, far  east  of  the  Solomons — the  car-] 
riers  Enterprise  and  Hornet  at  its  center,  the| 
new  battleship  South  Dakota,  the  new  anti-| 
aircraft  cruisers  Atlanta  and  Juneau,  with  a 
retinue  of  other  cruisers  and  destroyers — 
all  the  fast  ships,  the  best  we  had.     The 
whole  fate  of  the  war  was  being  staked  on 
one  single  clash  against  odds. 


> 

H 
H 

r 
rt 

o 

O 

o 

H 
O 
td 
W 
Jd 

K) 

H 

a 


478 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


The  Japs,  as  usual,  were  running  down 
a  region  of  weather  cover;  as  usual  our 
fleet  had  a  region  of  spotty  clouds,  through 
which  now  and  again  came  Japanese 
scouts,  which  were  almost  invariably  shot 
down  but  were  able  to  get  their  messages 
away  in  their  high-pitched  peeping  yap. 
On  the  afternoon  of  October  25th  Mario 
Sesso's  report  was  picked  up;  and  Enter- 
prise  flew  ofl*  an  attack  group  of  planes, 
which  went  a  long  way  out,  decided  to  go 
still  farther  since  they  had  not  made  con- 
tact, and  came  riding  in  on  the  carrier 
with  their  last  drops  of  gas,  some  of  them 
making  water  landings  in  sight  of  the  ship, 
where  all  the  pilots  were  picked  up. 

A  tense  night;  on  the  Hornet  one  of  the 
lieutenants  told  a  correspondent,  "You 
better  hurry  and  eat,  it  looks  like  action." 
Our  ships  were  hurrying  northwest  toward 
the  enemy,  with  the  Santa  Cruz  islands 
260  miles  under  their  lee,  and  all  night 
long  PBY  reports  kept  coming  in  to  be  re- 
peated on  the  ticker  in  the  pilots'  ready 
room.  The  Japs  had  swung  west  and 
away  from  our  fleet — willing  enough  to 
fight,  but  only  after  they  had  retaken 
Guadalcanal;  they  were  now  probably 
pointing  for  the  sea  passage  north  of 
Florida  Island.  But  they  were  not  mov- 
ing fast  enough  to  slip  us  and  they  knew 
it.  Toward  dawn  they  turned  back  to 
fight,  since  fight  they  must;  they  disposed 
their  ships  and  flew  off"  planes  from  the 
carriers. 

In  our  fleet  the  combat  patrols  went  up 
with  the  day.  The  ships  spread,  with 
South  Dakota  and  some  of  the  destroyers 
covering  Enterprise,  while  the  heavies  and 
the  new  anti-aircraft  cruisers  were  as- 
signed to  Hornet.  Sure  information  on 
the  position  of  the  Japs  came  through  the 
tickers;  our  own  attack  groups  took  the 
air  at  8:40.  Less  than  half  an  hour  out 
from  our  ships  they  were  crossed  by  a  Jap 
attack  group  coming  in,  and  the  Zeros  of 
its  escort  shot  down  one  or  two  of  them. 
Then  the  Japs  were  in  on  our  carriers  with 
as  many  planes  as  they  ever  had  in  action, 
135  machines. 

Our  outer  patrols  had  time  to  make 
only  a  pass  or  two.  Our  inner  patrols,  at 
fourteen  thousand  feet,  slashed  at  the  Japs 
as  they  came  by  from  above  and  sent  some 
of  them   spinning   down,    then   snapped 


aside  in  quick  loops  and  wingovers  to 
avoid  the  perfect  wave  of  fire  that  rose 
from  our  dodging  ships  below. 

Over  the  Enterprise  one  flier  heard  an- 
other gasp  into  his  microphone,  "My 
God,  she's  on  fire!"  but  she  was  not; 
neither  was  the  South  Dakota,  similarly 
aureoled  in  flame.  In  the  fire  of  scores  of 
our  guns  the  Jap  attack  on  this  group 
withered  and  collapsed,  one  plane  pitch- 
ing so  close  in  the  water  by  the  battleship's 
side  that  her  Jap  pilot  crawled  on  a  wing 
to  fire  a  pistol  (he  was  cut  to  pieces  by  a 
Filipino  machine-gunner),  and  another 
plane  dropping  in  the  wake,  with  its  tor- 
pedo just  missing  her  stern.  Still  another 
plane,  mortally  hit,  smashed  into  the  fore- 
castle of  the  destroyer  Smith  and  exploded 
there.  The  ammunition  in  the  Smith's 
ready  boxes  went  off*  and  a  column  of 
flame  rose  a  hundred  feet  high,  but  as  the 
volcano  shot  past  his  face.  Lieutenant 
Commander  Hunter  Wood  on  the  bridge 
gave  her  full  speed  and  hard  rudder  into 
the  turbulent  wake  of  the  battleship. 
The  destroyer  pitched  her  nose  under,  a 
white-capped  mass  of  water  boiled  across 
the  foredeck,  the  fire  was  out,  the  Smith 
was  saved. 

The  greatest  fury  of  the  Japanese  attack 
was  reserved  for  the  Hornet — the  carrier 
which,  months  before  this,  had  flown  off" 
the  planes  for  the  bombing  of  Tokyo. 
They  came  in  on  her  from  four  angles, 
bombers  and  torpedo  planes  together,  in 
one  of  the  most  formidably  co-ordinated 
attacks  Japan  ever  made.  Our  men  count 
fifty  planes  shot  down  in  that  attack, 
though  how  any  count  could  be  taken  in 
that  tumult  is  a  mystery.  It  was  not 
enough;  an  armor-piercing  bomb  hit  the 
Hornet  forward;  from  one  of  the  covering 
destroyers  sixteen  torpedo  wakes  toward 
the  carrier  were  counted,  and  two  of  them 
hit,  in  the  engine  rooms.  A  dying  Jap 
bomber  crashed  the  signal  bridge  and 
killed  everyone  on  it,  spreading  fire  across 
the  flight  deck  and  shedding  a  500-pound 
bomb,  which  miraculously  went  down 
through  three  steel  bulkheads  without  ex- 
ploding. Another  plane  hit  the  Hornet's 
side  beneath  the  flight  deck,  sheared  its 
wings  against  the  stanchions,  shot  across 
the  hangar  and  burned  inside,  turning  red- 
hot  the  deck  above  the  gasoline  storeroom. 


HIE    CAMPAlGiN    FOR    Till'     SOLOMONS 


479 


I'lu!  Hornet  had  no  engines  now  and  no 
ire  mains.     A  bucket  brii^ade  was  organ- 
rcd   (the  men  sang  as  they  handled   the 
vaier);    a    destroyer   came    alongside    to 
)ump;    the    cruiser    Northampton    worked 
mder  her  bows  to  take  a  tow.     Above, 
evels  of  overcast  had  blown  in;  an^oii'^^ 
hem  our  fighters  were  wrangling  with  a 
c\v  stray  Jap  planes  which,  for  some  rea- 
on  unknown  to  those  then  present,  did  not 
eem  wishful  to  return  to  their  own  car- 
•iers.     At  12:15  another  attack  group  of 
'  ap  planes  gathered  up  what  strays  were 
eft  and  came  on  in  an  attack  of  the  same 
urious    intensity    as    the    first.     Hornet's 
ires  had  been  gotten  under,  but  the  tow- 
ng  cable  snapped  loose  and  was  lost  as  the 
Northampton  jerked  in  the  renewed  batde. 
From  their  seats  in  the  sky  the  Japs 
:ould  see  how  crippled  the  Hornet  was; 
:hey  were  after  the  Enterprise  now,  and  the 
Dig  black  battleship  covering  her.     The 
:arrier  took  two  bomb  hits  this  time  and 
Dlunged  in  the  fountains  of  near  misses  till 
;he  had  thirty  feet  of  water  in  her  forward 
>paces;    the    destroyer    Porter    was    sunk. 
But  the  Japs  did  not  even  put  Enterprise  out 
Df  action  and   their  attack  on  the  South 
Dakota  was  a  dreadful  failure.     Only  one 
bomb  hit — on  the  roof  of  number  2  turret, 
a  splinter  wounding  Captain  Gatch — and 
for  that  blow  the  battleship  repaid  them 
so  heavily  that  out  of  twenty-four  dive- 
bombers  and  nine  torpedo  planes  in  the 
wave,  only  one  got  away. 

VIII 

THE  reason  why  the  Jap  bombers  were 
so  unwilling  to  go  home  after  using  up 
their  missiles  was  that  they  no  longer  had 
homes  to  go  to.  Like  their  pilots,  ours 
had  been  briefed  for  the  carriers.  On  the 
way  thither  they  passed  a  Jap  batdeship 
division,  then  one  of  cruisers.  One  pilot 
thinks  these  were  decoys,  to  engage  our 
planes  and  save  their  carriers.  It  worked 
to  a  certain  extent;  a  group  of  torpedo  and 
dive-bombers  went  for  a  battleship  of  the 
Kongo  class,  and  it  can  be  taken  that  they 
sent  her  to  dock,  for  they  hit  her  with  two 
big  bombs  and  a  torpedo  that  left  her 
ablaze  and  with  a  list,  though  the  leader  of 
the  planes  found  the  results  "very  disap- 
pointing." 


Lieutenant  Commander  Gus  Widhelm 
was  leading  the  HorneCs  group  as  it 
climbed  to  attack  level  into  "a  cloudful  of 
Zeros."  As  he  noted  how  the  Jap  cruiser- 
destroyer  screen  was  disposed  forty  miles 
— too  far  -from  the  Shokaku  and  ^uikaku 
which  they  were  covering,  Qne  of  the  Zeros 
put  a  bullet  through  his  oil  return  line. 
Pressure  dropped;  Widhelm  shucked  his 
big  bomb  and  went  into  a  glide.  Just 
before  he  hit  he  looked  over  his  shoulder 
to  see  the  Shokaku  smoking  through  holes 
in  her  deck  made  by  a  pair  of  our  500- 
pounders,  ''while  the  other  carrier  was 
making  frantic  turns  to  avoid  my  dive- 
bombing  boys.  I  saw  eleven  of  them  pour 
six  heavy  bombs  into  that  carrier.  Our 
bombs  peeled  the  carrier's  deck  right  back 
and  the  ship  burst  into  flame  from  stem  to 
stern.  I  got  out  my  boat  and  the  radio- 
man and  I  prepared  to  make  the  best  of  a 
tough  situation." 

Somehow  most  of  the  Enterprise  men 
never  reached  the  Jap  carriers  (orders? 
failing  gas?  uncertain  information?)  and 
turned  to  on  the  cruiser  formation.  We 
have  no  account  of  that  attack;  we  know 
only  its  results.  Widhelm  in  his  rubber 
boat,  now  below  the  skyline  from  the 
ruined  enemy  carriers,  saw  those  results— 
a  cruiser  crawling  past  with  one  turret 
blown  right  off,  her  catapult  "fused  into  a 
mess  that  looked  like  a  quart  of  taffy 
spilled  over  a  kitchen  range."  They  were 
steaming  northwest  and  away  now,  away 
from  the  fight  and  away  from  Guadal- 
canal. Every  now  and  then  one  more  of 
their  homeless  planes  would  plash  in  the 
water  beside  an  escaping  ship,  sometimes 
for  the  pilot  to  be  rescued,  sometimes  not. 

These  planes  evidently  had  not  gas 
enough  to  reach  the  other  Jap  carrier, 
probably  a  converted  job,  that  was  some- 
where in  the  rear.  Its  planes  came  over 
in  the  afternoon  to  the  number  of  seven- 
teen (of  which  twelve  were  shot  down)  and 
determined  our  Admiral  to  scuttle  what 
was  left  of  the  Hornet.  Another  effort 
to  tow  having  failed,  the  Hornefs  planes 
had  homed  to  the  deck  of  the  damaged 
Enterprise  and  most  of  them  now  left  that 
refuge  for  Henderson  Field. 

Our  fleet  was  hurt,  no  question,  with 
practically  all  its  carriers  now  out  of  the 
war.     It  had  to  go  home  to  base.     But  it 


480 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


went  victorious  and  nothing  else  mattered. 
The  Jap  carriers  were  out  of  it  too;  their 
big  force  from  the  sea  had  never  fired  a  gun 
at  Guadal. 

All  day  on  that  istand  and  above  it  there 
was  fighting  as  spvage  as  any  the  world 
had  seen,  with  one  Marine  plane  ramming 
a  Jap  plane  and  the  pilots  trying  to  kill 
each  other  in  the  water  as  they  struggled 
with  their  parachutes.     But  the  Hornet's 


planes  came;  they  gave  Guadal  its  air  sup 
port;  and  they  caught  the  Tokyo  Expres 
in  the  slot,  sank  two  of  its  destroyers,  anc 
so  battered  the  pair  of  cruisers  that  thcA 
took  no  more  interest  in  the  proceedings 
Under  the  rapid  red  tropical  twilight  Gen 
eral  Vandegrift's  weary  men  counterat- 
tacked, and  by  another  dawn  the  Stan 
and  Stripes  were  everywhere  going  for- 
ward. 


The  Origin  of  a  Style 

"^  ;  .  by  being  so  long  in  the  lowest  form  [at  Harrow],  I  gained  an 
immense  advantage  over  the  cleverer  boys.  They  all  went  on  to  learn 
Latin  and  Greek  and  splendid  things  like  that.  But  I  was  taught  Eng- 
lish; We  were  considered  such  dunces  that  we  could  learn  only  Eng- 
lish' Mr.  Somervell — a  most  delightful  man,  to  whom  my  debt  is 
great — was  charged  with  the  duty  of  teaching  the  stupidest  boys  the 
most  disregarded  thing — nameb/,  to  write  mere  English.  He  knew 
how  to  do  it.  He  taught  it  as  no  one  else  has  ever  taught  it.  Not  only 
did  we  learn  English  parsing  thoroughly,  but  we  also  practiced  con- 
tinually English  analysis.  Mr.  Somervell  had  a  system  of  his  own. 
He  took  a  fairly  long  sentence  and  broke  it  up  into  its  components  by 
means  of  black,  red,  blue  and  green  inks.  Subject,  verb,  object:  Rela- 
tive Clauses,  Conditional  Clauses,  Conjunctive  and  Disjunctive 
Clauses!  Each  had  its  colour  and  its  bracket.  It  was  a  kind  of  drill. 
We  did  it  almost  daily.  As  I  remained  in  the  Third  Fourth  .  .  .  three 
times  as  long  as  anyone  else,  I  had  three  times  as  much  of  it.  I  learned 
it  thoroughly.  Thus  I  got  into  my  bones  the  essential  structure  of  the 
ordinary  British  sentence — which  is  a  noble  thing.  And  when  in  after 
years  my  schoolfellows  who  had  won  prizes  and  distinction  for  writing 
such  beautiful  Latin  poetry  and  pithy  Greek  epigrams  had  to  come 
down  again  to  common  English,  to  earn  their  living  or  make  their 
way,  I  did  not  feel  myself  at  any  disadvantage.  Naturally  I  am  bi- 
assed in  favor  of  boys  learning  English;  I  would  make  them  all  learn 
English:  and  then  I  would  let  the  clever  ones  learn  Latin  as  an  honour, 
and  Greek  as  a  treat.  But  the  only  thing  I  would  whip  them  for  is  not 
knowing  English.  I  would  whip  them  hard  for  that."  -^  Winston 
Churchill,  in  Roving  Commission;  My  Early  Life 


A  I. i:tter  to  the  editors 


FROM    WENDELL    WILLKIE 


'Ifw  following  letter  is  in  reply  to  an  article  about  Mr.  Willkie  by  Fred  Rodell  which  was 
published  in  the  March  issue  oj  Harper's.  The  letter  arrived  just  as  we  were  going  to 
press,  and  there  has  therefore  been  no  opportunity  to  get  Mr.  RodeWs  comments  on  it  in  time 
for  this  issue. — The  Editors 


ro  THE  Editors  of  Harper's  Magazine: 
Two    interpretations   of  my   life   have 
'cently  been  offered  to  the  pubUc,  One  Man— 

\'ndell  Willkie  by  C.  Nelson  Sparks,  and 
Wendell  Willkie:  Man  of  Words"  by  Fred 

odell. 

The  first  is  a  smear;  the  second  a  distortion. 

The  author  of  the  first,  an  organizer  of 
Qti-labor  vigilante  committees,  is  one  of  a 
nail  group  of  Republicans  who,  as  ardent 
3-workers  with  Colonel  McCormick,  believe 
lat  America  should  pursue  a  policy  of  ex- 
eme  economic  conservatism  and  narrow 
ationalism. 

The  author  of  the  second  represents  that 
ult  of  thinking  which  finds  excuse  or  artifi- 
ial  rationalization  for  the  many  illiberal 
cts,  both  foreign  and  domestic,  of  the  present 
ational  Administration  or  is  sure  that  there 
;  a  patent  on  liberalism  and  insists  that  any- 
ne  who  opposes  the  Administration  or  the 
atent  is  either  of  illiberal  mind  or  insincere. 

Since  I  have  opposed  the  schools  of  thought 
^presented  by  both  authors,  each  seeks  to 
estroy  such  public  influence  as  I  may  possess 
y  misinterpretation  of  my  life  and  principles, 
rom  his  study  of  my  life,  Mr.  Sparks  draws 
le  conclusion  that  I  am  a  "completely  suc- 
essful  lawyer"  of  "superlative  talents"  de- 
oting  my  energies  to  sinister  purposes.  Mr. 
Lodell's  theme  is  that  I  am  a  man  of  nothing 
ut  words,  my  career  to  date  adding  up  to 
a  series  of  brilliant  failures" — ^as  a  lawyer, 


most  ordinary;  as  a  businessman,  naive;  as  a 
public  figure,  insincere. 

Subsidized  smears  I  never  bother  to  answer. 

Mr.  Rodell's  article,  however,  appears  in 
the  March  issue  of  Harper's,  a  responsible 
magazine  of  high  repute.  In  addition,  it 
reiterates  cliches  of  misinformation,  some 
dating  back  to  the  campaign  of  1940,  and 
others  of  more  recent  vintage. 

I  am  therefore  availing  myself  of  the  cour- 
teous permission  of  the  editors  of  Harper's 
Magazine  to  clarify  the  record  where  Mr. 
Rodell  has  misrepresented  and  distorted  it. 

It  is  of  course  not  for  me  to  say  whether  my 
life  has  been  a  success  or  not.  Nor  am  I  con- 
cerned with  Mr.  Rodell's  conclusion  that  it 
has  been  a  failure.  But  I  am  concerned  that 
instances  from  my  boyhood,  my  professional 
and  my  business  career,  upon  which  Mr. 
Rodell  relies  to  prove  his  thesis,  should  be 
stated  correctly. 

For  whatever  it  is  worth,  it  is  true  that  I 
taught  history  in  the  high  school  at  Coffey- 
ville,  Kansas,  for  one  year.  However,  I  had 
no  intention  of  making  teaching  a  profession; 
nor  did  I  give  it  up  because  of  any  tempera- 
mental dislike  of  scholarship  and  its  processes, 
as  Mr.  Rodell  says  for  whatever  that  is  worth. 
I  went  into  it  to  make  some  money  with  which 
to  continue  my  law  course.  I  left  it  because 
I  was  ofTered  a  higher-paying  job  which 
enabled  me  with  one  more  year's  work  to 
return  to  my  law  course. 


A    LETTER    FROM    WENDELL  WILLKIE 


Throughout  the  World  War  I  was  a  line 
officer.  It  is  true,  however,  that  after  the 
Armistice  I  voluntarily  defended  before  courts 
martial  in  France  boys  mostly  from  my  own 
regiment,  who,  the  fighting  being  over,  re- 
laxed their  respect  for  some  of  the  military 
regulations  and  saw  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  slip  off  now  and  then  for  a  night 
in  Paris.  But  this  activity  won  for  me  no 
recommendation  of  promotion  from  my  su- 
perior officer,  as  Mr.  Rodell  suggests.  On 
the  contrary,  my  immediate  superior  sug- 
gested that  on  account  of  it  I  was  a  nuisance 
and  should  be  demoted. 

Shortly  after  the  war  was  over,  as  a  restless 
young  man  I  left  Elwood  and  my  father's 
law  office  and  went  to  Akron,  Ohio,  where 
I  landed  without  capital  or  acquaintance. 
At  the  Akron  bar,  from  the  age  of  twenty-six 
to  thirty-seven,  I  spent  eleven  exceedingly 
busy  years,  the  last  nine  of  them  devoted 
largely  to  the  trial  of  cases  in  the  Federal  and 
State  courts.  I  represented  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  people — -individuals,  corporations, 
and  partnerships,  involving  every  kind  of 
problem — 'all  those  types  of  business  that  a 
lawyer  in  general  practice  in  a  city  of  200,000 
normally  handles.  The  representation  of  the 
local  utility,  despite  Mr.  Rodell's  statement 
that  it  was  "most"  of  my  work  and  involved 
Congressional  matters,  constituted  only  about 
a  fourth  of  my  business  and  income  and  had 
nothing  whatsoever  to  do  with  legislative 
or  Congressional  matters.  My  work  was 
almost  entirely  with  the  court  cases  of  the 
company.  It  is  true,  however,  as  Mr.  Rodell 
points  out,  that  none  of  my  cases  was  of 
national  importance  or  made  news  in  the 
New  York  Times,  apparently  his  sole  criterion 
of  success.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were 
no  cases  of  national  importance  in  Akron  and 
I  doubt  if  any  made  the  New  York  Times. 
I  did,  however,  get  on  well  enough  at  the 
bar  to  keep  me  busy  night  and  day,  \p  ac- 
cumulate a  modest  competence,  and  to  win 
the  respect  of  my  fellow  practitioners.  At 
least  they  elected  me  president  of  their  bar 
association.  , 

Mr.  Rodell  with  diligence  did  find  one 
reference  to  me  in  the  New  York  Times  during 
my  Ohio  days:  my  name  was  listed  among  the 
delegates  to  the  national  Democratic  Con- 
vention of  1924.  He  did  not^  however,  learn 
the  reason  for  my  membership  in  that  delega- 
tion— -at  least  he  does  not  mention  it.  If  he 
had  searched  the  newspapers  of  Ohio,  where 


I   was  then  living,   instead  of  confining  hisji 
efforts  to  the  New  York  Times,  he  would  have 
discovered  that  I  went  to  that  convention  as 
a  lieutenant  of  Newton  D.  Baker,  mainly  for 
two   purposes:   first,   to   put  the  Democratic! 
Party  on  record  against  the  Ku  Klux  Klanj 
(Mr.    Rodell    somewhat    grudgingly    admits' 
that   I    "loathed"   and   fought   the   Klan  in 
Ohio);  and,  second,  to  secure  a  straight-out j 
plank  in  the  platform  endorsing  the  League  I 
of  Nations.     The  fight  against  intolerance  we 
won;  the  fight  for  international  co-operation 
we  lost,   and  lost  largely   because  the  New' 
York    delegation,    under    the    leadership   of 
Franklin  Roosevelt  and  others,  voted  two  to 
one  against  it. 

As  Mr.  Rodell  says,  in  the  fall  of  1929,  just  i 
before  the  panic,  I  came  to  the  financial  dis-  ' 
trict  in  New  York  as  a  member  of  Weadock 
&  Willkie,  with  offices,  as  Mr.  Rodell  does  not 
say,  across  the  street  from  Roosevelt  &  O'Con-  i 
nor.     I    have    never,    however,    thought    of 
either   Mr.   Roosevelt  or  myself  as,   in  Mr. 
Rodell's  words,  a  "kept"  lawyer,  even  though 
both  our  firms  were  engaged  in  representing 
business   interests   and   both   did   a   material 
amount  of  utility  representation. 

My  work  for  Commonwealth  &  Southern, 
before  I  became  its  president,  was  almost 
exclusively  in  supervising  litigation  of  the 
operating  companies  of  the  systern.  I  was  out 
of  New  York,  for  the  most  part,  helping  law- 
yers in  the  field  with  their  more  important  r 
briefs  and  in  the  trial  of  what  we,  at  least,  i 
deemed  our  more  important  litigation.  But  , 
in  saying  that  I  helped  to  put  through  "the 
final  stages  of  the  formation  of  Common- 
wealth &  Southern,"  Mr.  Rodell  misses  a 
trick.  I  was  not  important  enough  for  that. 
After  I  was  president  of  the  company,  I  was, 
of  course,  in  charge  of  its  financial  and  general 
business.  Also,  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  I 
made  many  arguments  before  committees  of 
Congress  and  frequently  testified  before  them 
on  legislation  affecting  utilities — always  in 
open  and  public  hearings. 

Mr.  Rodell's  suggestion  that  as  president 
of  Commonwealth  &  Southern  I  did  not 
manage  the  system  would  strike  as  exceedingly 
humorous  those  then  connected  with  the 
company.  It  is  true,  however,  that  I  did  all 
I  could  to  build  up  my  subordinates  by  del- 
egating authority  and  placing  responsibility, 
by  giving  credit,  by  making  clear  the  lines  of 
authority.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  frequently 
said  publicly  and  privately  that  no  chief  ^x- 


imee  in  a  Ijfetinw 


\\\  was  just  a  little  fellow  a  dozen  years 
ago. 

JO  little  to  know  —  or  care  —  that  even  as 
,'  slept,  General  Motors  men  in  a  distant 
boratory  were  putting  the  finishing  touches 
1  a  special  new  refrigerant  later  given  the 
ade-mark,  'Treori/'^ 

[uch  too  little  to  understand  that  the  real 
?ason  for  developing  this  new  compound  was 
le  safety  of  just  such  sleeping  youngsters  as 
imself. 

'hat  it  was  important  because  it  provided  the 
ist  link  in  perfect  safety  for  home  or  hospital 
efrigeration,  ending  even  the  remote  risk  of 
Dxic  harm  in  the  unlikely  event  of  leaks  in 
he  cooling  system. 

le  is  grown  now,  and  off  fighting  for  his 
ountry  on  a  South  Pacific  island.  He  is  old 
•nough  to  know  that  one  of  his  deadliest 
nemies  there  is  the  mosquito,  carrier  of 
nalaria. 

rhe  interesting  thing  is  that  it  is  '^Freon'*  that 
low  comes  to  his  aid.  Twice  in  his  lifetime, 
his  one  result  of  General  Motors  research  is 


Trsde-mark  registered.   "Freon"  is  made  and  sold 
by  Kioetic  Chemicals,(lnc. 


paying  off  in  personal  protection  for  him  and 
his  kind. 

For  when  mixed  with  chemicals  to  kill  mos- 
quitoes, this  compound  makes  a  new  and  bet- 
ter kind  of  insect  spray.  Unlike  heavier  sprays 
that  fall  to  the  ground,  it  evaporates  almost 
instantly,  leaving  the  mosquito-killing  com- 
pounds floating  suspended  in  the  air. 

''Freon"  was  not  developed  as  a  war  product. 
It  came  about  because  General  Motors,  seek- 
ing to  provide  more  and  better  things  for 
more  people,  never  stopped  trying  to  make 
better  refrigerators  for  American  households. 

But  because  it  was  known  and  familiar,  it  was 
available  when  the  war  need  appeared  —  just 
as  it  remains  at  hand  for  future  peacetime  de- 
velopments. 

The  idea  that  built  America  —  the  idea  that 
men  accomplish  most  when  they  can  win  a  just 
reward  for  doing  great  things  —  has  served 
the  country  well  in  war. 

And  the  same  idea  will  keep  on  providing 
more  and  better  things  for  more  people  in  a 
world  restored  to  lasting  Peace. 

General  Motors 

"VICTORY  IS  OUR  BUSINESS" 

CHEVROLET    •     PONTIAC    •     OLDSMOBILE 

BUICK  •    CADILLAC    •    BODY  BY  FISHER 

FRIGIDAIRE  •  CMC  TRUCK  AND  COACH 

KEEP   AMERICA   STRONG    •    BUY  WAR  BONDS 


A    LETTER    FROM    WENDELL   WILLKIE 


ecutive  was  worthy  of  his  job  who  did  not 
develop  men  who  could  succeed  him  and  who 
didn't  have  the  courage  to  be  surrounded  by 
men  who  knew  more  than  he  did.  But  the 
policies  I  determined,  and  the  company  I 
administered.  • -* 

With  the  usual  soohistry  of  his  cult  of 
thinking,  Mr.  Rodell  finds  it  a  matter  for 
criticism  that  I  fought  with  all  my  energies  to 
prevent  the  value  of  my  company's  property 
from  being  injured  by  governmental  sub- 
sidized competition.  Certainly  when  I  saw 
that  the  government  was  intent  on  its  course, 
I  did  all  I  legitimately  could  to  secure  the 
best  possible  price  for  the  property  for  which 
I  was  a  trustee.  The  government,  ably 
represented,  was  trying  to  get  it  at  the  lowest 
possible  price.  Even  Mr.  Rodell  feels  that  I 
"made  a  good  job  of  it."  Perhaps  it  was  the 
frequent  references  to  the  settlement  in  the 
New  York  newspapers  that  makes  him  con- 
sider it  the  "one  real  success  of  my  career." 

When  I  became  president  of  Common- 
wealth &  Southern  the  domestic  electric  rates 
of  the  system  were  far  from  the  lowest  among 
the  major  systems,  and  the  use  was  far  from 
the  highest.  When  I  retired,  after  seven  years 
with  the  company,  the  rates  were  the  lowest, 
and  the  use  was  the  highest  of  any  major  pri- 
vate system  in  the  country.  Furthermore, 
though  this  may  be  upsetting  to  Mr.  Rodell's 
conception  that  this  condition  was  brought 
about  by  TVA  competition,  the  decrease  in 
rates  and  the  increase  in  use  were  greater  in 
the  Northern  companies  of  the  system,  un- 
affected by  TVA  competition,  than  in  the 
Southern  companies. 

That  these  accomplishments  were  in  part 
due  to  my  predecessor  and  were  made  pos- 
sible by  the  great  abiUties  of  my  associates  in 
the  company,  I  publicly  pointed  out  many 
times.  Mr.  Rodell  finds  in  my  appreciation 
proof  of  my  own  inability. 

He  has  chosen  an  unfortunate  instance  by 
which  to  illustrate  my  "naivete  in  the  field  of 
finance."  He  says  that  I  often  cited  as  an 
example  of  magnanimous  dealing  the  follow- 
ing transaction:  Commonwealth  &  Southern, 
with  the  approval  of  the  regulatory  authori- 
ties of  Illinois,  purchased  a  bond  issue  of 
Central  Illinois  Light  Co.,  one  of  its  operating 
units,  of  which  it  owned  practically  all  of  the 
common  stock.  It  was  at  a  time  when  the 
operating  company  needed  money  for  con- 
struction and,  because  of  market  conditions, 
could  not  sell  its  issue  at  a  reasonable  price 


elsewhere.  Later,  when  market  conditions 
improved.  Commonwealth  &  Southern  was^ 
able  to  sell  those  bonds  in  open  market 
for  $700,000  profit.  Instead  of  keeping  the 
$700,000,  as  it  would  have  been  entitled  to' 
do,  it  turned  the  whole  profit  over  to  the 
Central  Illinois  Light  Co. 

I  did  indeed  cite  this  and  similar  transac- 
tions in  testimony  before  committees  of  Con- 
gress and  elsewhere.  But  Mr.  Rodell  seems 
to  have  missed  the  point.  I  cited  them  not 
as  examples  of  magnanimous  dealing.  That 
would  have  been  the  height  of  naivete.  I 
cited  them  as  obvious  examples  of  good  busi 
ness  and  as  an  answer  to  the  charge  frequently, 
and  sometimes  justly,  made  at  that  time  that 
holding  companies  milked  their  operating 
companies. 

It  is  obviously  impossible  to  take  up  all  of 
Mr.  Rodell's  distortions  of  fact  connected 
with  the  period  when  I  was  in  the  utility 
business.  The  examples  I  have  cited  illus- 
trate his  inaccuracies  and  misrepresentations. 

As  he  has  revived  much  misinformation 
from  the  battles  of  those  days  so  he  has 
warmed  over  some  of  the  canards  of  1940 
political  disputation.  I  am  surprised,  how- 
ever, to  find  a  law-school  professor  who  ad- 
mires so  much  the  "exacting  and  painstaking" 
tasks  of  legal  practice  failing  in  the  simplest 
task  of  research.  If  Mr.  Rodell  had  turned 
to  the  Congressional  Record  for  my  Lend- 
Lease  testimony,  or  the  official  stenographic 
notes  of  the  same,  he  would  have  known  how 
dishonest  is  his  charge  that  I  ever  charac- 
terized either  the  principles  or  the  policies  or 
the  pledges  I  made  in  the  campaign  of  1940 
as  "campaign  oratory." 

He  would  likewise  have  learned  frorii  ex- 
amining the  Congressional  Record  of  the  motion- 
picture  investigation  to  which  he  refers — and 
which,  incidentally,  was  not  conducted  by 
Senator  Wheeler,  as  he  suggests — that  a 
United  States  Senator  making  the  same 
charge  as  does  Mr.  Rodell,  on  my  challenge 
consulted  the  record  and  had  the  good  grace 
publicly  to  apologize. 

The  facts  are:  When  I  was  advocating 
Lend-Lease  before  a  Senate  committee,  in 
answer  to  questions  about  speeches  I  had 
made  during  the  1940  campaign,  I  specifically 
reiterated  my  belief  in  every  principle,  policy, 
and  pledge  which  I  had  made  during  the 
course  of  the  campaign.  Senator  Nye  then 
asked  one  final  question.  I  quote  from  the 
record: 


// 


^^    /^UZ^6 


THEY  KNEW  .  ..  THESE  TWO!  One  had  the  long- 
eat  commercial  broadcastinn  career  of  any  Hinder 
in  the  world.  The  other  had  directed  great  radio 
musical  shows  for  nearly  twenty  years;  had  been 
head  of  a  leading  music  recording  company. 

Their  combined  knowledge  of  the  radio-phono- 
graph field  was  unexcelled.  Yet,  in  all  their  experi- 
ence, Jessica  Dragonette  and  Gus  Huenschen  had 
never  heard  anythinK  like  this  .  .  . 


THE  music  had  stopped.  Swiftly,  a  metallic 
hand  moved,  deftly  picked  up  the  record, 
safely  deposited  it  into  velvety  softness.  Even 
then,  it  was  a  moment  before  the  words  came 
tumbling  forth. 

"Wonderful!  Marvelous!"  exclaimed  the 
golden-haired  Jessica. 

"Perfect — the  finest  reproduction  I  have  ever 
heard,"  said  Gus  Haenschen.  "More  came  out  of 
that  record  just  now  than  I  ever  thought  could 
be  put  into  one." 

Jessica  Dragonette  and  Gus  Haenschen  had 

just  heard  the  only  Meissner  electronic  radio- 
phonograpli  in  existence^ the  final  laboratory 
model  perfected  just  before  war  turned  all  of 
Meissner's  skill  and  knowledge  to  the  manufac- 
ture of  electronic  war  equipment.  This  "instru- 
ment-beyond-price"  today  is  providing  wartime 
musical  inspiration  for  the  high  school  pupils 


^^^H^^Ht^tt/ - 


A  JVEW   WORLD    OP  SO 
AT   YOUR    PIWGER    T 


of  Meissner's  home  community,  Mt.  Carmel,  111 

Flying  fast  on  the  wings  of  peace,  however,  the 
experience  now  limited  to  so  few  will  soon  be 
shared  and  enjoyed  by  many.  Then  you,  too,  will 
know  the  utter  purity  and  clarity  of  Meissner  re- 
production. No  longer  will  you  be  irritated  by  the 
"missing  elements"  in  much  of  today's  recorded 
music.  And  you'll  join  with  Jessica  Dragonette 
and  Gus  Haenschen  in  welcoming  these  and 
many   other   important   Meissner    advantages: 

AUTOMATIC  RECORD  CHANGER  — plays  both  sides  of  a  record 
in  sequence,  one  side  only,  or  repeats  a  record  just  played 
.  .  .  avoids  record  breakage.  Provides  2  hours  or  more  of 
music  without  your  touching  a  record. 

FREQUENCY  MODULATION  —  plus  advanced  electronic  fea- 
tures for  fidelity  and  tonal  range  greatly  surpassing  such 
qualities  in  home  radio-phonographs  now  in  use. 
SUPER  SHORTWAVE  .  .  .  DISTINGUISHED  CABINETS  .  . .  NEW  IDEAS 
in  a  host  of  other  advancements  already  being  engineered 
into  Meissner  electronic  equipment  for  our  armed  forces 
around  the  world. 


EISSMER 


MANUFACTURING  COMPANY  •  MT,  CARMEL,  ILL. 

ADVANCED  ELECTRONIC  RESEARCH  AMD  MANUFACTURE 


A    LETTER    FROM    WENDELL   WILLKIE 


Senator  Nye  [quoting  from  a  speech  I  made  at 
Baltimore  during  the  last  week  of  the  campaign  in 
which  I  was  discussing  the  long  list  of  the  Presi- 
dent's broken  promises]:  "On  the  basis  of  his  [that 
is  Roosevelt's]  past  performance  with  pledges  to 
the  people,  you  may  expect  we  will  be  at  war  by 
April,  1941,  if  he  is  elected?" 

Mr.  Willkie:  You  ask  me  whether  or  not  I 
said  that? 

Senator  Nye:  Do  you  still  agree  that  that 
might  be  the  case? 

Mr.  Willkie:  It  might  be.  It  was  a  bit  of 
campaign  oratory. 

This  statement  to  which  Senator  Nye  re- 
ferred was  nothing  more  than  an  illustrative 
example  of  the  logical  expectancy  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  promises  in  the  1940  campaign 
might  prove  to  be  no  more  dependable  than 
many  of  his  promises  in  previous  campaigns 
had  proved  to  be.  It  had  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  any  pledge,  policy,  or  principle  of 
my  own. 

Since  Mr.  Rodell  did  not  take  the  trouble 
to  go  to  the  source  for  his  information,  1  can 
see  how  he  may  have  been  misled.  For  those 
opposed  to  Lend-Lease,  to  aid  for  England, 
and  to  any  form  of  international  co-operation 
have  conducted  over  the  past  three  years  a 
systematic  effort  on  a  national  scale  to  mis- 
represent what  I  said  at  the  Lend-Lease 
hearing. 

I  had  advance  warning.  At  Trinidad,  on 
my  return  flight  from  England  to  testify  for 
Lend-Lease,  I  received  a  cabled  message 
from  a  man  who  became  one  of  the  heads  of 
America  First  that  my  reputation  would  be 
the  subject  of  debasement  in  every  town  in 
America  if  I  carried  out  my  intention  of 
testifying. 

Every  effort  has  been  made  to  fulfill  that 
threat  and  many  people,  like  Mr.  Rodell, 
who  undoubtedly  abhor  the  principles  of 
those  who  have  conducted  this  systematic 
campaign  have  unwittingly  aided  it. 

It  is  easy  for  Mr.  Rodell  without  any 
knowledge  to  suggest  that  I  am  a  mere  figure- 
head in  my  law  firm  and  likewise  with  the 
Twentieth  Century-Fox  Film  Corporation. 
The  facts  are,  as  he  could  have  learned  from 
consulting  any  one  of  my  partners,  that  I  am 
active  in  the  firm  and  that  I  have  earned  fees 


much  greater  in  amount  than  I  have  ever. 
drawn  from  the  firm. 

He  could  likewise  have  learned  that  I  sold 
the  rights  to  One  World  to  Twentieth  Century 
after  competitive  bidding — not  for  $250,000 
as  he  says,  though  that  figure  was  offered  by 
more  than  one  company,  but  at  a  lower  price 
than  any  of  the  bids  I  received.  Further- 
more, he  might  have  learned  that  to  eliminate 
any  element  of  personal  political  advantage, 
on  my  stipulation  the  picture  is  not  to  be 
shown  until  after  the  fall  election.  A  little 
research  would  also  have  shown  that  I  never 
said  I  was  "at  heart  a  Southern  Democrat." 
What  I  did  say  at  one  time  was  that  I  was  "at 
heart  a  Woodrow  Wilson  Democrat." 

There  is  undoubtedly  an  end  to  the  pa- 
tience of  the  editors  of  Harper's  Magazine  and, 
under  paper  rationing,  to  their  space.  So  let 
this  suffice  for  the  present  by  way  of  correct- 
ing the  record. 

I  agree  with  Mr.  Rodell  that  words  are  not 
enough.  In  1940  I  did  my  best  to  get  into  the 
field  of  action.  Not  having  succeeded,  I  have 
tried  with  words  to  help  make  action  possible 
in  matters  that  seemed  to  me  important — 
matters  such  as  Selective  Service,  the  de- 
stroyers for  England,  Lend-Lease,  adequate 
taxation,  international  co-operation. 

Mr.  Rodell  opens  and  closes  his  article 
with  a  question  about  me  posed  by  William 
Allen  White  in  the  spring  of  1940.  Is  Wen- 
dell Willkie  "just  a  pretty  smooth  guy  or  has 
he  really  got  something  on  the  ball?"  When 
Mr.  White  put  that  question  we  did  not  know 
each  other.  In  the  subsequent  years  we  grew 
to  know  each  other  well  and  fought  together 
in  many  causes.  And  I  was  proud  to  have  in 
him  a  warm  friend  and  enthusiastic  political 
supporter. 

A  short  time  before  his  last  illness  he  sent 
me  some  personal,  intimate  advice  from 
which,  with  permission  of  his  family,  I  quote: 

"And  please  don't  take  too  seriously  the 
insults  of  the  cowardly  and  solemn  asses  who 
never  have  the  courage  to  really  fight  for  any- 
thing worth  while  but  find  pleasure  and  pre- 
tense of  liberalism  in  maligning  others  who 
do  have  the  courage  to  fight." 

Wendell  Willkie 


For  information  concerning  the  contributors  to  this  issue, 
see  Personal  and  Otherwise  among  the  following  pages. 


Harper^ 


VOL    188     No    l\28     May    1944 


DEWEY:    THE    MAN    IN    THE    BLUE 

SERGE    SUIT 


RICHARD    H.     ROVERE 


J  Mr.  Rovere  is  a  New  York  free-lance  journalist  who  for'  ) 
(^  merly  held  positions  on  The  Nation  and  Common  Sense,  j 


n  MONO  one  group  of  Republican  states- 
/_\  men  close  to  Thomas  Edmund 
A.  jJl.  Dewey,  it  is  said  with  assurance 
that  the  Governor  of  New  York,  if  he 
moves  to  Washington  next  January,  will 
rely  chiefly  upon  Herbert  Hoover  for  ad- 
vice on  the  conduct  of  foreign  relationsJ 
The  Great  Engineer,  they  say,  may  even 
turn  up  as  Secretary  of  State.  Another 
school,  equally  intimate  and  au  courant, 
maintains  that  Dewey  is  most  likely  to  ap- 
point John  Foster  Dulles,  a  prominent 
New  York  attorney,  to  that  office  and  that 
Dulles  would  set  the  direction  of  Dewey's 
foreign  policy.  Since  caution  is  a  watch- 
word with  Dewey,  the  chances  are  that  no 
one  can  yet  speak  with  authority  of  his 
plans.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  that  his 
friends  mention  both  Hoover  and  Dulles 
as  likely  heads  of  the  State  Department 

Copyright.  1944,  by  Harper  & 


speaks  volumes  about  Tom  Dewey. 
Hoover  is  a  hard-bitten  mercantile  na- 
tionalist who  before  Pearl  Harbor  took  the 
America  First  point  of  view.  John  Foster 
Dulles  is  a  pious  Wilsonian,  full  of  in- 
ternational amity,  and  was  a  guiding  spirit 
in  the  Committee  to  Aid  the  Allies. 

Whatever  his  cabinet  plans  may  be, 
Dewey  today  frequently  consults  Hoover 
and  Dulles,  and  both  are  among  his  ardent 
party  supporters.  In  current  terminol- 
ogy, one  is  an  isolationist,  the  other  an  in- 
ternationalist. Which,  then,  represents, 
or  comes  closer  to,  Dewey's  own  position? 
The  answer,  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  gleaned 
from  a  diligent  study  of  Dewey's  record, 
is:  neither.  Dewey  stands  four-square 
and  flat-footed  in  the  middle.  Protected 
aft  by  Hoover  and  afore  by  Dulles,  he  sails 
along  in  the  lee  of  Walter  Lippniann  and^ 


Brothers.     All  Rights  Reserved. 


.   .  n  n  A  O  V 


482 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


to  the  windward  of  Colonel  McCormlck. 
After  twelve  years  in  public  life,  with  his 
sights  on  the  Presidency  for  at  least  seven 
of  them,  Dewey  has  yet  to  make  anything 
resembling  a  full  and  coherent  statement 
of  his  views  on  worlJ  affairs.  He  has,  to 
be  sure,  made  a  great  many  speeches  on 
the  subject,  but  to  the  citizen  eager  to 
learn  what  he  actually  believes  they  yield 
almost  nothing.  Last  November,  at  the 
annual  forum  conducted  by  the  New  York 
Herald  Tribune,  he  spoke  eloquently  of  the 
many  problems  we  shall  face  at  the  war's 
end.  After  listing  several  posers,  and  sug- 
gesting what  sterling  qualities  of  leadership 
will  be  needed  to  solve  them,  he  reached 
the  point  at  which  some  program,  some- 
thing definite,  was  to  be  expected.  But 
right  there  Dewey  brought  his  speech  to  a 
quick  conclusion  with  this  message  of  hope: 
"We  need  not  be  afraid  of  the  future,  for 
the  future  will  be  in  our  own  hands." 

Somewhat  earlier,  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Institute  for  Human  Relations  at  Williams 
College  in  Massachusetts,  he  addressed  his 
audience  on  "The  World  Tomorrow." 
After  assaulting  several  of  the  world's  ac- 
knowledged evils,  he  passed  lightly  over 
some  American  problems,  such  as  the  need 
to  teach  more  civics  in  high  schools,  then 
ended  with  these  words:  "We  shall  have 
our  freedom  so  long  as  we  are  all  free!" 

BROMIDES  of  this  sort,  if  they  came  from 
I  other  men,  would  be  spotted  at  once 
and  pickled  for  preservation.  But  Dewey 
has  a  way  of  putting  them  over.  He  piles 
up  platitudes  so  neatly  and  with  such 
roundness  of  phrase  that  the  listener  or 
reader  is  sometimes  deluded  into  thinking 
that  he  is  following  a  weighty  argument. 
Dewey's  trained  baritone  voice  and  his 
courtroom  manner  of  presentation  also 
help.  The  screaming  eagle  plays  no  part 
in  his  refined  oratory.  He  is  not  a  spell- 
binder but  a  master  of  the  great  American 
art  called  elocution.  Then,  too,  his 
speeches  have  literary  quality  of  a  kind. 
Warren  Gamaliel  Harding  used  to  give 
voice  to  commonplaces  strikingly  similar  to 
Dewey's,  but  when  Harding  spoke  his 
sentences,  as  Mencken  said,  were  like  a 
string  of  wet  sponges.  No  one  could  say 
that  of  Dewey.  His  speeches,  which  are 
written  for  him  by  a  battery  of  experienced 


newspapermen  and  have  been  said  to 
cost  as  much  as  $3,000  apiece,  say  nothing 
in  crisp  and  rhythmical  prose. 

Dewey  dodges  issues  whenever  he  can 
and  tries  to  hedge  what  he  cannot  com- 
pletely ignore.  Any  public  man,  how- 
ever, must  sometimes  come  to  grips  with 
issues  that  agitate  the  public.  When 
Dewey  feels  that  the  time  may  have  come 
to  say  something  unequivocal,  he  makes 
certain  beforehand  that  his  statement  will 
be,  as  the  clubhouse  workers  put  it,  "a 
sure  thing."  This  ancient  political  prac- 
tice is  known  variously  as  sniffing  the 
breeze,  playing  it  safe,  tapping  the  grass 
roots,  or  keeping  the  ear  to  the  ground. 
In  the  past,  politicos  have  done  it  by 
correlating  reports  sent  in  by  advisers  who 
make  it  their  business  to  move  around  the 
city  wards  or  perch  on  cracker  barrels  in 
the  country  stores.  If  these  worthies 
agreed  that  a  certain  position  was  popular 
with  the  masses,  the  leaders  proceeded  to 
state  that  position,  even  if  it  had  never 
occurred  to  them  before. 

Times  change.  Dewey,  who  has  pro- 
claimed his  pride  in  being  "a  child  of  the 
twentieth  century,"  has  streamlined  the 
old  technique  and  reduced  it  to  something 
approaching  exact  science.  For  example, 
when  he  sought  the  Republican  nomina- 
tion in  1940,  he  was  aided  by  a  stafi*  of  pro- 
fessional poll-takers.  These  men  were 
regularly  employed  at  buttonholing  the 
public  for  one  of  the  large  opinion-gather- 
ing agencies.  But  in  off  hours  they  worked 
for  Dewey,  their  services  paid  for  by  one  of 
his  wealthy  campaign  contributors.  When 
Dewey  felt  that  he  had  to  speak  out  on 
some  question,  he  carefully  phrased  a 
statement  and  gave  copies  of  it  to  the 
opinion-samplers.  They  tested  it  on  rep- 
resentatives of  many  classes,  sections,  and 
special-interest  groups.  If  response  was 
good,  Dewey  released  the  statement.  If 
response  was  poor,  he  withheld  it  or  re- 
vised it  to  meet  the  objections  reported  in 
the  survey.  In  each  of  his  campaigns  he 
has  had  the  same  poll-takers  assay  in  ad- 
vance his  chances  of  nomination  and  elec- 
tion. 

The  Governor's  famous  statement  at  the 
Mackinac  Island  conference  last  Septem- 
ber will  also  serve  to  show  how  he  operates. 
As  reported  by  the  press,  Dewey  declared 


DEWEY:    THE    MAN    IN    THE    BLUE    SERGE    SUIT 


483 


in  favor  of  a  postwar  military  alliance  with 
Great  Britain  as  a  desirable  step  toward 
world  peace.  Here  was  a  definite  decla- 
ration of  policy;  coming  from  him,  it  was 
sensational.  He  was  set  upon  terribly  for 
it  by  Anglophobes  and  by  those  who  think 
that  such  arrangements  will  be  meaning- 
less if  they  exclude  our  other  allies.  But 
it  was  not  Dewey's  fault.  He  got  his 
signals  crossed. 

The  surrounding  circumstances  were 
these:  Winston  Churchill  was  in  Washing- 
ton at  the  time,  and  on  that  visit  he  paid 
particular  attention  to  improving  Anglo- 
American  relations.  He  spoke  of  the  two 
nations  as  "one  family"  and  at  Harvard 
advocated  the  worldwide  use  of  Basic 
English.  Prior  to  Churchill's  arrival,  the 
Gallup  Poll  had  conducted  a  survey  which 
showed  that  sixty-one  per  cent  of  the 
American  people  would  favor  a  postwar 
military  alliance  with  the  English.  The 
poll  was  not  released  until  three  days  after 
Dewey  made  his  statement,  but  advance 
copies  are  on  many  desks  often  as  much  as 
a  week  before  publication.  If  Dewey  did 
not  know  about  it  he  was  slipping.  At 
any  rate,  just  before  his  press  conference, 
someone  read  him  a  story  about  the  Roose- 
velt-Churchill meeting  just  off  the  wire 
from  the  Washington  correspondent  of  a 
Detroit  newspaper.  As  it  happened,  this 
story  was  not  a  report  of  actual  agreements 
made  by  the  two  leaders  but  a  speculative 
essay  on  what  the  writer  thought  might 
come  of  the  meeting.  But  it  was  pre- 
sented to  Dewey  as  news.  ^The  writer 
listed  several  points,  of  which  the  first  was 
military  alliance.  After  hearing  it,  Dewey 
hurried  along  to  his  press  conference  and 
said  that  for  his  part  he  favored  a  military 
alliance  with  the  British.  So  far  as  he 
knew,  it  was  as  safe  as  a  denunciation  of 
the  man-eating  shark.  (Later  he  was 
asked  if  he  thought  that  a  place  might  be 
found  for  Russia  and  China  in  the  scheme 
he  envisaged.  He  replied  that  he  cer- 
tainly hoped  so,  and,  for  that  matter,  he 
also  hoped  that  a  place  might  eventually 
be  found  for  Czechoslovakia  and  several 
other  United  Nations.) 

DEWEY  has  been  only  slightly  bolder  in 
discussing  his  views  of  domestic  pol- 
icy.    When,  in  1938,  he  sought  the  Gov- 


ernorship for  the  first  time,  he  told  his 
fellow  candidates  on  the  state  ticket  that 
they  were  not,  in  their  campaign  speeches, 
to  discuss  the  New  Deal  or  Roosevelt  un- 
der any  provocation.  Since  the  New  Deal 
was  not  a  state  issue,  this  was  all  right  for 
Dewey,  but  it  was  hard  for  the  Congres- 
sional candidates  to  swallow.  If  they 
were  not  to  be  anti-New  Dealers,  what 
could  they  be?  But  Dewey,  realizing  that 
the  New  Deal  was  popular  at  the  time, 
did  not  wish  to  be  associated  with  oppo- 
sition to  an  Administration  that  two  years 
earlier  had  been  re-elected  by  the  greatest 
majority  in  history.  He  even  let  himself 
be  called  a  "New  Deal  Republican." 
Since  that  time,  however,  he  has  become 
increasingly  outspoken  in  his  opposition  to 
Roosevelt,  more  and  more  so  as  each  year 
has  revealed  new  areas  of  public  disen- 
chantment. He  is  now  a  confirmed  en- 
emy of  the  Administration,  but  he  has  yet 
to  give  the  country  an  adequate  picture  of 
what  he  proposes  to  do  about  the  social 
and  economic  system.  One  gets  the  gen- 
eral impression  that  he  is  an  orthodox  Re- 
publican who  would  like  to  reverse  as 
many  of  Roosevelt's  policies  as  is  politically 
and  economically  feasible.  Bat  he  him- 
self has  never  said  even  that  much.  When 
he  does  speak  out  on  domestic  issues,  he  is 
almost  as  coy  as  he  is  on  foreign  affairs: 
"Put  experience,  ability,  and  fair  play  in 
the  SEC  and  other  regulatory  bodies. 
.  .  .  Establish  a  fair  parity  between  agri- 
cultural prices  and  industrial  prices.  .  .  . 
Improve  the  credit  facilities  for  small  busi- 
ness. .  .  .  Establish  sound  and  consistent 
national  policies." 

II 

FROM  all  this,  it  might  be  concluded 
that  Dewey  has  no  thoughts  of  his  own 
and  perhaps  that  he  lacks  the  mental 
equipment  to  make  up  his  own  mind. 
Neither  is  true.  Though  he  never  says 
anything  that  has  not  been  double-checked 
for  safety  and  propriety,  he  has  an  alert, 
highly  disciplined  mind.  He  is  cautious, 
but  never  slow.  In  conversation  he  is 
generally  two  or  three  steps  ahead  of  his 
companions,  and  he  can,  when  he  wishes, 
express  himself  with  vigor.  When  he  was 
prosecuting    industrial    rackets    in    New 


484 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


York  City,  he  commanded  the  respect  of 
other  trial  lawyers  for  his  resourcefulness 
in  court.  Many  of  his  briefs  remain  as 
models  of  organization  and  legal  exposi- 
tion. He  is  as  humorle'^s  as  a  man  can  be, 
and  he  once  boasted  that  he  kept  abreast  of 
literature  by  reading  specially  prepared 
condensations  of  current  books,  but  he 
can  absorb  information  rapidly  and  to 
good  effect.  He  has  no  apparent  interest 
in  general  ideas,  but  within  the  limits  of 
practicality  his  mind  works  shrewdly  and 
quickly.  He  is,  in  fine,  an  excellent 
politician. 

Politics  is  a  simple  game  once  you  get 
the  hang  of  it,  and  politicians,  as  a  class, 
are  simple  men.  Most  of  them  are  ex- 
troverts who  could  never  lead  the  public 
life  if  they  were  beset  by  doubts  and  inner 
conflicts.  It  is  unlikely,  however,  that 
any  other  man  in  American  life  today  is  as 
devastatingly  simple  in  character  and 
motivation  as  Tom  Dewey.  Anyone,  for 
example,  seeking  to  understand  Franklin 
D.  Roosevelt  is  at  once  confronted  with 
several  Roosevelts:  the  lazy  young  patri- 
cian and  the  headstrong  leader  of  the 
early  New  Deal;  the  uninspired  New  York 
politician  and  the  militant  liberal;  the 
liberal  of  ten  years  ago  and  the  conserva- 
tive of  today;  the  humanitarian  and  the 
militarist;  the  master  organizer  and  the 
bumbling  administrator;  the  stubborn 
fugleman  and  the  smiling  compromiser. 
Similarly  with  Wendell  Willkie:  one  must 
contend  with  Willkie  the  young  socialist; 
Willkie  the  corporation  lawyer;  Willkie 
the  reconstructed  liberal. 

No  such  opposites  must  be  reconciled  in 
Dewey.  Search  through  his  life  and  you 
will  find  no  part  that  is  not  consonant  with 
every  other  part.  He  has  wasted  no 
years,  sowed  no  political  wild  oats.  He 
abandoned  his  only  youthful  enthusiasm, 
singing,  when  he  was  forced  to  perform 
with  a  sore  throat;  according  to  his 
mother,  the  thought  then  dawned  on  him 
that  his  earning  power  would  always  be 
dependent  on  two  fragile  vocal  cords.  If 
any  profitless  cause,  wise  or  foolish,  has 
ever  lured  him  from  the  pursuit  of  his  own 
career,  the  record  does  not  show  it.  He 
had  to  be  entreated  for  months  before  he 
would  take  up  the  lance  against  crime;  he 
was  making,  at  thirty,  more  than  $25,000 


a  year  and  was  troubled  at  the  prospect  of 
having  to  scale  down  to  $16,995.  Once 
he  was  won  over  to  the  crusade,  however, 
he  fell  to  with  utter  concentration.  This 
single-mindedness,  this  refusal  to  be  side- 
tracked, accounts  for  his  phenomenally 
rapid  rise  in  politics.  He  is  no  prodigy 
but  an  immensely  hard  worker  who  works 
for  himself.  When  a  man's  life  reveals 
only  this — and  no  guiding  principles,  no 
ideas  except  strategic  ones,  no  deep  com- 
pulsions of  any  sort — it  is  impossible  to 
conclude  that  the  mainspring  of  his  life  has 
not  been  personal  ambition. 

Men  of  untempered  ambition  are  sel- 
dom appealing  human  beings.  It  is  no 
secret  that  Dewey  does  not  get  along  well 
with  people.  His  own  boosters  scarcely 
try  to  deny  it.  When  an  inquiring  re- 
porter goes  to  Albany  these  days,  he  is 
likely  to  be  greeted  by  a  Dewey  aide  who 
says,  "You  haven't  seen  Mr.  Dewey  in 
two  years?  Well,  well,  you're  going  to  be 
surprised  at  how  much  he  has  changed." 
This  must  be  taken  to  mean  that  the  Gov- 
ernor has  improved  his  manner  with  the 
press. 

Many  facets  of  a  politician's  character 
show  up  in  his  relations  with  newspaper- 
men. Stories  of  the  friction  between 
Dewey  and  the  journalists  assigned  to  him 
are  legion.  When  he  began  his  prose- 
cuting career  in  New  York,  he  set  up  al- 
most impossible  restrictions  for  handling 
the  news.  He  wanted  to  try  his  cases  in 
the  newspapers  but  he  would  not  play  ball 
with  the  press.  When  he  had  a  story  on 
which  he  wanted  to  impale  some  racketeer, 
he  would  call  in  the  reporters,  give  them 
the  details,  and  then  issue  strict  instruc- 
tions that  no  one  could  use  him,  or  his 
office,  as  a  source.  The  newspapermen 
could  hardly  afford  to  pass  up  the  news, 
but  if  they  used  it,  they  were  forced  to 
employ  some  transparent  device  like  "It 
was  learned  today  .  .  ."to  give  authority 
to  their  revelations.  They  were  forced  to 
use  Dewey's  handouts  on  their  own  re- 
sponsibility, but  they  were  stopped  from 
using  anything  that  they  might  find  out 
for  themselves.  Dewey  blanketed  courts 
and  prisons  with  censorship;  employees 
were  threatened  with  the  loss  of  their  jobs 
if  they  talked  to  reporters ;  police  sealed  up 
doors  and  passages  in  the  county  offices. 


DEWEY:    THE    MAN    IN    THE    BLUE    SERGE    SUIT 


485 


Expediency  may  have  justified  some  of 
this,  but  Dcvvcy  seemed  to  delight  in 
making  things  as  diflicult  as  possible. 
Few  reporters  ever  saw  him  without  cool- 
ing their  lieels  interminably  in  one  of  his 
anterooms. 

This  practice,  repeated  several  times,  led 
to  a  temporary  break  between  Dewey  and 
S.  Burton  Heath,  a  New  York  World-Tele- 
i^ram  reporter  who  had  done  much  to  make 
Dewey  a  public  figure  and  had  given  him 
important  evidence  for  two  of  his  most  im- 
pressive cases.  When  reporters  finally 
stormed  the  outer  defenses,  they  generally 
found  him  so  absorbed  in  papers  on  his 
desk  that  he  would  not  look  up  for  what 
seemed  like  several  minutes.  He  tried  this 
just  once  on  a  fellow  politician  and  got 
back  a  dose  of  his  own  medicine.  The 
man  entered  Dewey's  office,  pulled  out  a 
magazine,  and  began  to  read.  This  so 
infuriated  Dewey  that  he  looked  up  im- 
mediately. But  his  visitor  continued  to 
read  until  he  was  ready  to  talk. 

A  national  magazine  once  published  a 
highly  favorable  series  of  articles  about 
Dewey.  The  author  was  surprised  to 
learn  that  Dewey  was  outraged.  In- 
quiry proved  that  his  displeasure  was 
caused  by  the  writer's  statement  that 
Dewey  had  not  been  invited  to  join  a  fra- 
ternity at  Ann  Arbor  while  a  student 
there.  In  November,  1942,  the  New  Tork 
Times  reported  quite  innocently  that  the 
Governor-elect,  before  entering  upon  his 
arduous  duties  at  the  State  House,  would 
take  his  family  on  a  two  weeks'  vacation  at 
Sea  Island,  Georgia.  Dewey  did  not  want 
it  said  of  so  devoted  a  public  servant  that 
he  was  taking  a  rest.  He  called  in  the  re- 
porters and  showed  them  a  stack  of  books 
and  papers  on  his  desk.  "I'm  taking  these 
along  on  my  so-called  vacation,"  he  said. 

MONO  newspaper  photographers, 
Dewey  is  known  as  a  man  who  will 
step  out  of  a  group  about  to  be  snapped, 
take  his  stance  beside  the  camera,  and  de- 
cide whether  or  not  he  likes  the  arrange- 
ment. If  he  does  not  like  it,  he  will 
change  it.  Acutely  self-conscious  about 
his  physical  stature — he  is  really  of  aver- 
age height,  slightly  more  than  five  feet 
eight — he  does  not  like  to  be  posed  along- 
side a  noticeably  taller  man.     Indeed,  he 


never  permits  any  unposcd  photographs. 
He  will  not  be  pictured  smoking;  he  says 
it  sets  a  bad  example.  Nor  will  he  be 
photographed  in  his  shirtsleeves.  If  he 
is  nominated  this  year,  the  country  will 
have  at  least  one  cause  for  rejoicing;  it  will 
be  spared  any  large  number  of  the  usual 
pictures  of  the  candidate  helping  his  wife 
in  the  kitchen,  chatting  with  farmers,  or 
umpiring  baseball  games.  Dewey  dislikes 
such  pictures  not  because  they  are  syn- 
thetic but  because  he  is  incapable  of  letting 
down  his  hair,  even  for  a  photograph. 
He  will  not  allow  himself  to  be  caught 
in  a  state  of  relative  or  affected  relaxation. 
The  postmaster's  son  from  Owosso,  Michi- 
gan, has  become  a  man  who  is  at  home 
only  in  a  blue  serge  suit. 

Five  years  ago,  at  the  height  of  the 
Hines  trial,  courthouse  photographers  be- 
came so  annoyed  by  his  attitude  that  they 
voted  to  go  on  strike  against  him.  He  got 
the  silent  treatment.  For  some  time  no 
pictures  of  the  fighting  District  Attorney, 
a  staple  of  the  period,  appeared  in  the 
papers.  In  their  place  were  dozens  of 
flattering  shots  of  the  amiable  Jimmy 
Hines  and  his  majestic  lawyer,  Lloyd  Paul 
Stryker.  Times- Wide  World  finally  broke 
the  boycott,  but  for  weeks  thereafter 
the  photographers  seemed  to  see  Dewey 
only  when  he  was  mugging,  scowling,  or 
popping  his  large  brown  eyes.  In  one  of 
the  few  extant  pictures  of  Dewey  on  a 
farm,  he  shares  the  foreground  with  the 
nether  end  of  a  large  draft  horse. 

It  is  a  tribute  to  Dewey's  own  abilities 
that  he  has  risen  so  far  and  so  fast  without 
any  real  personal  following.  New  York- 
ers never  cared  much  for  him.  They  ad- 
mired him  for  his  battle  against  the  gang- 
sters, and  small  fry  of  the  Junior  G-Man 
variety  idolized  him.  But  before  long  the 
mass  of  the  citizenry,  who  like  their  poli- 
ticians warm,  came  to  find  the  Dewey  chill 
oppressive.  They  voted  for  him  in  rec- 
ognition of  his  sanitary  value,  but  they  re- 
garded him  as  an  ingenue  bluenose.  They 
called  him  Buster,  Plucky  Tom,  the  Boy 
Scout,  often  just  the  Boy.  When  Jimmy 
Hines  and  Al  Marinelli,  Tammany  leaders 
with  unsavory  business  connections,  were 
cornered  by  Dewey,  they  reached  the 
peak  of  their  popularity  among  the  un- 
regenerate.     This  may  testify  to  the  city's 


486 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


sometimes  inexact  concepts  of  morality, 
but  even  among  the  solid  upstate  farmers 
who  elected  Dewey  Governor,  there  is 
little  evidence  of  personal  appeal.  He 
ran  behind  the  rest  of  the  ticket  in  a  great 
Republican  year.  The  polls  and  observ- 
ers' reports  that  attest  to  his  high  stand- 
ing throughout  the  country  today  are 
not  so  much  a  measure  of  his  charm  as 
of  his  reputation  for  getting  things  done; 
that  is  the  side  that  his  managers  have 
wisely  publicized. 

in 

Dewey's  candidacy  for  the  Republican 
nomination  in  1940  started  as  a 
political  maneuver  and  became  a  serious 
threat.  The  original  plan  was  to  use  him 
as  a  stalking-horse  and  trade  him  off  later. 
But  Dewey  wouldn't  be  stopped.  "We 
drafted  this  monkey,"  said  one  lowly  Re- 
publican, "and  by  Jesus,  he  took  us  seri- 
ous." Dewey  certainly  did  take  them 
serious,  and  he  might  even  have  won  the 
nomination  if  he  had  not  alienated,  some 
months  earlier,  one  of  his  most  powerful 
supporters.  He  entered  the  convention 
with  a  large  plurality  of  delegates;  he 
would  have  had  far  more  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  campaign  of  open  sabotage  carried 
on  by  the  late  Kenneth  Simpson. 

As  National  Committeeman  from  New 
York,  Simpson  was  the  smartest  Republi- 
can leader  in  the  state  since  Boss  Piatt. 
He  was  responsible  for  the  Republican 
renaissance  that  re-elected  Fiorello  La 
Guardia's  reform  administration  against 
great  odds  and  made  Dewey  the  first 
Republican  District  Attorney  in  decades. 
Whenever  Simpson,  ordinarily  a  modest 
man,  claimed  a  share  of  the  credit — and 
some  of  the  perquisites — which  accom- 
panied this  feat,  Dewey  assured  him  that 
he  could  have  been  elected  without  the 
help  of  Simpson  or  anyone  else.  Simp- 
son became  furious;  Mrs.  Simpson  icily 
told  the  world,  "You  have  to  know  Mr. 
Dewey  very  well  in  order  to  dislike  him." 
Finally  Dewey  began  to  talk  about  "purg- 
ing" Simpson.  After  pondering  the  mat- 
ter for  some  time,  Simpson  decided  to  be 
put  upon  no  longer.  He  took  off  for  the 
provinces  and  began  to  break  up  the 
Dewey  delegations  then  forming  every- 


where. He  split  the  New  York  delegation 
in  two,  moving  his  part  into  the  Willkie 
camp,  and  sowed  disaffection  from  the 
Atlantic  Coast  to  the  Mississippi.  Her- 
bert Hoover,  Ruth  Hanna  McCormick 
Simms,  and  Edwin  F.  Jaeckle,  a  former 
back-tax  collector  from  Buffalo  who  now 
runs  the  Dewey  machine,  came  to  their 
candidate's  aid,  but  too  late.  If  Simpson 
had  not  come  to  an  untimely  death  in 
1941,  Dewey  might  be  out  of  the  running 
today. 

But  all  that  is  in  the  past,  and  the  word 
out  of  Albany  is  that  Dewey  has  changed. 
"In  the  four  years  between  1940  and 
1944,"  begins  one  magazine  writer,  in  a 
pre-convention  puff  for  the  Governor, 
"Thomas  E.  Dewey  has  grown  up.  He 
has  passed  out  of  his  political  adolescence. 
He  has  abandoned  the  young-man-in-a- 
hurry  attitude  for  an  air  of  tremendous, 
earnest  patience,  and  has  developed  a 
suave  proficiency  in  handling  the  press 
and  photographers." 

So  far  as  the  press  is  concerned,  rela- 
tions have  certainly  improved  somewhat. 
Dewey  has  accomplished  this  not  so  much 
by  developing  a  suave  proficiency,  greatly 
to  his  credit,  as  by  developing  an  Ex- 
ecutive Assistant  named  James  C.  Hag- 
erty.  Hagerty,  former  Albany  corre- 
spondent for  the  New  Tork  Times,  serves  his 
employer  and  his  fellow  newspapermen 
by  keeping  the  two  apart  as  much  as  possi- 
ble and  by  coaching  the  Governor  for  the 
occasions  when  he  must  see  the  press  him- 
self. But  the  newspapermen  have  not 
warmed  to  Dewey.  They  were  on  the 
verge  of  open  revolt  a  few  months  ago 
when  he  tried  to  institute  the  practice  of 
forbidding  them  to  quote  even  the  ques- 
tions, their  own  questions,  which  he  de- 
clined to  answer.  Thanks  to  Hagerty's 
diplomatic  intervention,  such  near-explo- 
sions occur  less  frequently  now. 

In  his  1940  campaign,  Dewey's  backers 
capitalized  on  his  youth.  Rupert  Hughes, 
who  once  debunked  George  Washington, 
wrote  an  authorized  biography  comparing 
Dewey  with  Alexander  the  Great  and 
William  Pitt,  who  also  did  great  deeds  at 
tender  ages.  Dewey,  as  a  youthful  op- 
timist; played  on  the  theme  that  the  New 
Deal  was  "defeatist."  "But  I  deny  that 
the  American  people  are  finished.     Amer- 


DEWEY:    THE    MAN    IN 

\ 

ica  is  at  the  morning  of  her  destiny."  He 
was  the  young  man  with  a  vision  who 
would  be  up  and  doing  at  the  break  of 
day.  For  the  present  campaign  the  hne 
has  changed.  Dewey  has  "grown  up" — 
from  thirty-eight  to  forty-two — and,  after 
two  years  as  Governor,  has  become  a  man 
of  soHd  achievement.  The  campaign  ht- 
crature  points  out  that  on  January  20, 
1945,  he  will  be  only  twenty-one  days 
younger  than  Theodore  Roosevelt  was  at 
his  inauguration.  Besides,  he  has  become 
a  figure  of  "tremendous,  earnest  patience," 
something  they  could  never  say  about 
Teddy.  ! 


THE    BLUE    SERGE    SUIT 


487 


THE  issue  of  age,  as  measured  by  years, 
is  always  false.  Mental  vigor,  a  qual- 
ity associated  with  youth,  and  breadth  of 
sympathy,  an  attribute  of  maturity,  may 
be  found  together  in  men  of  almost  any 
age.  To  lead  a  great  nation  in  a  period 
like  this,  Dewey  should  have  both. 

Mental  vigor  he  assuredly  has,  but 
within  narrow  limits.  In  matters  of  law 
and  politics  he  has  a  quick  and  flexible 
mind;  but  these  are  means,  not  ends.  In 
the  field  of  general  ideas  and  broad  policy, 
he  has  brought  nothing  new  to  the  public 
forum,  nor  has  he  restated  old  ideas  with 
new  strength  or  faith.  Like  a  third-rate 
Congressman,  he  has  said  only  what  will 
keep  him  out  of  trouble  with  the  voters. 
He  has  refused  even  to  face  up  to  the  real 
issues  of  our  time.  In  terms  of  broad 
human  sympathy,  the  record  is  no  more  in- 
spiring. When  the  need-  for  human 
brotherhood  has  been  great,  he  has  shown 
no  comprehension  of  humility.  He  has 
divided  saints  and  sinners  with  the  rigor- 
ous prissiness  of  a  Fundamentalist  divine. 
His  proposed  solution  to  the  Aurelio  affair, 
for  example,  was  to  impose  one  set  of  elec- 
toral rules  on  New  York  City,  another  on 
the  rest  of  the  state. 

Generosity  sometimes  finds  its  way  even 
into  the  world  of  ambitious  politicians. 
When  Dewey  was  Special  Rackets  Prose- 
cutor, reporters  asked  him  if  he  had  any 
comment  on  some  action,  altogether  cred- 
itable, taken  by  William  C.  Dodge,  then 
the  District  Attorney.  By  a  not  alto- 
gether phony  political  custom,  he  was  ex- 
pected to  say  something  pleasant;  Dewey 
pursed  his  lips  and  said,  "I  wouldn't  wipe 


my  feet  on  him."  Fortunately  for  Dewey, 
the  reporters  would  not  accept  the  state- 
ment. He  has  lived,  as  Hamilton  Basso 
once  said,  through  an  enormous  period  in 
history,  but  "he  has  missed  not  only  the 
significance  but  the  very  emotion  of  the 
past  thirty  years." 


IV 

Dewey's  big  reputation  is  based  chiefly 
on  his  record  as  a  doer,  an  able  and 
scientific  administrator.  The  times  may 
demand  more  than  this  in  a  leader,  but 
many  of  our  better  Presidents  have  had 
little  more  than  executive  ability  to  rec- 
ommend them. 

The  record  consists  of  ten  years  pros- 
ecuting rackets  in  New  York  City  and 
seventeen  months  as  Governor  of  the  state. 
Of  his  exploits  as  a  prosecutor,  a  great  deal 
has  been  written,  and  it  would  be  tiresome 
to  repeat  the  story  at  length  here.  Judged 
by  the  results,  it  was  a  conspicuously  im- 
pressive performance,  though  not  in  every 
sense  as  dazzling  as  the  publicity  office 
claimed.  It  required  enormous  drive  and 
pertinacity — qualities  with  which  Dewey 
is  amply  blessed.  It  required  self-confi- 
dence, for  failure  would  have  ended  his 
career;  indeed,  the  fear  of  failure  was 
what  led  so  many  other  lawyers  to  turn 
down  the  job,  thus  leaving  the  field  open 
to  Dewey.  It  demanded  the  kind  of 
courage  necessary  to  meet  the  gangsters  on 
their  own  ground,  and  although  news- 
papers may  have  overdramatized  the  per- 
sonal dangers  which  Dewey  faced,  gun- 
men like  Lepke  and  Gurrah  do  play  the 
game  the  hard  way.  Dewey  did  not 
abolish  the  rackets,  for  most  of  them  still 
flourish  and  are  enjoying  the  war  boom, 
but  he  did  rid  the  community  of  many  of 
its  more  homicidal  and  larcenous  mem- 
bers. He  scrubbed  up  some  labor  unions 
and  employers'  associations  that  had  long 
stood  in  need  of  thorough  cleansing.  By 
trading  immunity  for  testimony,  he  set 
free  more  crooks  than  he  ever  jailed,  but 
he  landed  most  of  the  larger  fish. 

In  doing  so,  he  made  dexterous  use  of 
the  law.  But  the  law  is  something  more 
than  an  instrument  for  tripping  up  arti- 
choke swindlers.  It  is  intended  to  pro- 
tect the  rights  of  the  accused  as  well  as  the 


488 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


life  and  property  of  the  accusers.  Of 
civil  rights,  of  the  law  as  a  guarantee  of 
justice  even  for  the  unworthy,  Dewey 
showed  scant  appreciation.  Even  those 
attorneys  who  admire. his  handiwork  the 
most  admit  that  he  was,  in  his  high- 
minded  way,  as  high-handed  a  District 
Attorney  as  New  York  has  ever  had,  which 
is  saying  a  great  deal.  His  office  fre- 
quently used  unauthorized  Grand  Jury  sub- 
poenas to  bring  in  witnesses  he  wanted. 
When  witnesses  were  corralled,  they  were 
held  in  "protective  custody"  in  city  pris- 
ons or  picturesque  hideouts  which  Dewey 
had  commandeered.  There  they  often 
languished  for  months,  held  incommu- 
nicado and  deprived  of  benefit  of  counsel. 

Wire-tapping,  then  illegal,  was  used 
extensively.  Recalcitrant  witnesses  were 
either  frightened  or  bribed  into  testifying. 
The  prostitutes  whose  testimony  convict- 
ed Lucky  Luciano  received  such  favors 
as  fine  clothes,  elegant  living  quarters, 
trips  to  Europe,  and  handsome  fees  for 
recounting  their  memoirs  in  magazines. 
Some  of  them  later  said  that  they  had 
never  heard  of  Luciano  before  the  nice 
men  from  the  D.A.'s  office  told  them 
about  him;  many  authorities  on  the  New 
York  underworld  believed  that  Luciano, 
a  master  of  many  rackets,  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  small  and  risky  prostitution 
business  for  which  he  was  convicted. 

Dewey  made  frequent  use  of  "conspir- 
acy" charges  and  the  "joinder  indict- 
ment," a  technique  for  which  he  put  up 
a  long  legislative  battle.  The  joinder  in- 
dictment permits  several  men  to  be  tried 
together  on  the  same  charge.  Its  poten- 
tialities for  injustice  are  great.  For  ex- 
ample, jurors  who  have  been  properly 
convinced  of  the  criminal  enormity  of  a 
Lepke  Buchalter  will  find  it  easy  to  believe 
that  a  man  like  Emmanuel  Weiss,  proven 
to  be  an  aide  of  Lepke's,  was  guilty  of 
precisely  the  same  crimes.  Arthur  Gar- 
field Hays,  the  distinguished  civil  liberties 
lawyer,  was  convinced  that  Weiss  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  crime  for  which  he 
died  two  months  ago.  He  argued,  as  a 
protest  against  the  technique  developed 
by  Dewey,  that  the  convicting  jury  had 
been  poisoned  against  Weiss  by  the  evi- 
dence against  Lepke. 

The  President  of  the  United  States  is 


not  charged  with  running  down  gangsters, 
but  he  is  responsible  for  administering  the 
laws  of  the  nation.  Dewey,  who  seeks 
that  office,  has  demonstrated  mainly  the 
familiar  legal  philosophy  of  the  trial  lawyer 
who  is  out  to  get  his  man — or  save  him — 
right  or  wrong. 

HERBERT  H.  Lehman,  whom  Dewey 
succeeded  as  Governor  of  New  York, 
was  in  office  from  1932  to  1942.  Im- 
partial students  of  state  government  rate 
Lehman  as  the  best  administrator  New 
York  has  had  for  twenty-five  years.  He 
was  less  popular,  and  less  imaginative, 
than  Al  Smith  or  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt, 
but  he  was  a  better  executive  than  either. 
During  three  of  his  four  terms  he  worked 
against  the  opposition  of  a  Republican 
legislature.  But  he  managed  the  state's 
affairs  with  efficiency  and  economy  through- 
out a  long  period  of  depression.  Roose- 
velt had  left  Albany  with  the  state  $100,- 
000,000  in  debt,  and  the  figure  threatened 
to  grow  as  relief  needs  mounted  in  the 
early  thirties.  Lehman  put  relief  opera- 
tions on  a  current  basis  and  stopped  the 
ruinous  policy  of  issuing  bonds  to  meet 
the  new  and  unprecedented  expenses. 
At  the  bottom  of  the  depression,  he  had  to 
raise  close  to  $750,000,000  in  taxes.  He 
managed  to  do  so  without  incurring  any 
serious  public  criticism  of  his  demands  or 
his  methods. 

The  country  has  recently  been  treated 
to  a  flood  of  ballyhoo  to  the  effect  that 
Dewey,  in  his  management  of  New  York's 
affairs,  has  shown  himself  to  be  a  financial 
wizard.  This  is  pure  poppycock.  Al- 
most a  third  of  the  $140,000,000  surplus 
which  Dewey  announced  on  January  1st 
of  this  year  was  in  the  bank  before  he  took 
office.  When  Lehman  resigned,  two 
months  before  the  end  of  his  term,  the 
state  was  solvent  and  in  the  black  about 
$40,000,000.  Lehman  deserves  credit  for 
the  solvency  but  not  for  the  surplus.  War 
conditions  had  brought  tax  receipts  up  and 
expenditures  down.  If  Lehman  had  served 
to  the  end  of  the  last  fiscal  year  in  which 
he  held  office,  the  surplus  would  have 
risen  to  about  $90,000,000.  Dewey,  in 
the  interests  of  "scientific  financial  pol- 
icies," moved  the  start  of  the  fiscal  year 
back  from  July  1st  to  April  1st  and  thus 


DEWEY:    THE    MAN    IN    THE    BLUE    SERGE    SUIT 


489 


ncidcntally  whittled  down  the  size  of  his 
)rcdeccssor's  savings.  Even  so,  on  April 
,  1943,  when  no  Dewey  policies  had 
(one  into  efTcct,  there  was  a  favorable 
)alance  of  $70,000,000. 

Under  Dewey  it  has  risen  to  $148,000,- 
)00.  Unusually  high  tax  returns  have 
)cen  supplemented  by  undreamed-of  wind- 
alls.  Unexpected  stock  market  activity 
wrought  in  $2,000,000  in  transfer  levies 
n  the  period  of  a  few  weeks  last  year. 
When,  early  in  1943,  the  OPA  announced 
that  no  gasoline  rations  would  go  to  those 
^vho  let  their  licenses  lapse,  flivvers  long 
3verdue  for  the  junk  pile  were  registered 
with  the  state.  The  revenue  was  a  cool 
$9,000,000  more  than  had  been  previously 
anticipated.  At  one  New  York  race  track 
last  year,  pari-mutuel  betting  averaged 
$89  for  every  person  who  attended  the  races 
during  the  season.  The  government's  take 
on  all  race-track  betting  was  some  $11,- 
000,000.  Money  rolls  in  from  all  sources, 
and  there  is  little  to  spend  it  on  compared 
with  what  there  was  before  the  boom. 
Relief  has  been  unnecessary;  new  con- 
struction and  repairs  have  been  impos- 
sible. The  money  will  be  "locked  up"  in 
a  Postwar  Reconstruction  Fund,  presum- 
ably to  be  spent  for  improvement  of  state 
properties,  rehabilitation  of  returning  serv- 
ice men,  and  encouragement  of  new 
enterprise.     This  is  a  praiseworthy  plan. 

State  revenues  under  Dewey  have  been 
accumulated  with  basically  the  same  tax 
structure  as  preceding  administrations 
used.  Someone  in  his  office  ^has  coined 
the  fine  phrase,  "humanization  of  taxes," 
to  describe  the  new  deductions,  for  medical 
expenses  and  such,  now  allowed  on  state 
income  taxes.  These  are  distinct  im- 
provements, but  they  are  all  revisions  of 
proposals  that  Governor  Lehman  was 
forced  to  veto  in  the  lean  years  before  the 
boom.  Nothing  new  has  been  added. 
Dewey  has  cleaned  up  a  few  bad  spots  in 
state  mental  hospitals.  He  has  had  the 
cash  to  raise  the  wages  of  many  state 
employees.  He  has  worked  out  a  new 
system  to  end  some  patronage  problems, 
whereby  every  applicant  for  a  job  paying 
more  than  $2,500  is  investigated  by  the 
state  police.  Its  value  cannot  yet  be 
tested.  So  far  there  have  been  no  patron- 
age   scandals.     On    the    whole,    his    ap- 


pointments seem  good  enough,  no  better 
or  worse  than  those  made  by  Smith, 
Roosevelt,  or  Lehman.  All  important 
jobs  but  two  have  gone  to  Republicans. 
He  has  retained  Lehman's  Commissioners 
of  Health  and  Correction.  These  two 
departments  have  been  headaches  for 
years.  There  is  almost  no  patronage  in 
them,  since  subordinate  jobs  are  regulated 
by  civil  service. 

In  Albany  Dewey  is  regarded  as  an 
industrious  and  generally  efficient  ad- 
ministrator of  the  state's  eighteen  execu- 
tive departments.  He  has  been  anything 
but  statesmanlike,  however,  in  his  dealings 
with  the  legislative  branch.  If  he  runs 
against  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt  this  year, 
he  will  undoubtedly  continue  to  argue 
that  the  President  has  usurped  legislative 
power  and  attempted  to  make  the  Con- 
gress a  subsidiary  of  the  executive.  That 
is  potent  Republican  ammunition,  but  in 
Dewey's  hands  it  may  backfire.  In  less 
than  two  years  as  Governor,  Dewey  has 
managed  to  antagonize  his  party  col- 
leagues as  well  as  the  Democratic  oppo- 
sition in  the  State  Legislature.  It  is 
certainly  significant  that  the  Dewey  cam- 
paign, now  running  full  blast  throughout 
the  country,  has  not  yet  reached  the  floor 
of  his  own  Legislature,  where  the  buildup 
for  a  Governor  generally  begins. 

To  some  degree,  Dewey's  trouble  with 
the  Legislature  is  part  of  the  trend  toward 
the  centralization  of  power  in  the  execu- 
tive on  all  political  levels.  In  greater 
degree,  however,  it  is  due  to  Dewey's 
attempts  to  make  himself  an  ex-officio 
member  of  the  Legislature  and  to  dictate 
action  on  all  bills.  No  Republican  bill 
is  ever  submitted  before  it  has  gone  to 
the  Governor's  office  for  approval  and, 
as  often  as  not,  drastic  revision.  This 
is  true  even  of  bills  that  have  no  bear- 
ing on  state  policy  and  of  those  routine 
proposals  that  are  submitted  simply  to 
cadge  a  little  publicity  for  their  sponsors. 
A  Republican  assemblyman  recently  drew^ 
up  a  bill  for  local  improvements  that  he 
thought  might  please  the  folks  at  home, 
even  though  it  had  slim  chance  of  becom- 
ing law.  It  went  down  to  the  Executive 
Chamber,  where  it  was  review^ed  and  re- 
vised. It  was  then  returned  to  the  proper 
committee  with  instructions  that  that  chair- 


490 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


man  and  not  the  original  sponsor  was  to 
introduce  it.  At  least  one  Republican 
resignation  is  credited  to  dislike  of  Dewey, 
and  criticism  of  his  way  with  "must 
legislation"  has  been'frequent  and  public. 
On  the  closing  day  of  the  1944  session  a 
bill  for  which  only  Dewey,  among  Albany 
Republicans,  was  enthusiastic  came  to  the 
floor.  It  passed  by  a  small  majority,  but 
the  New  Tork  Times  reported  that  one 
Republican  crawled  down  behind  his  desk 
to  avoid  voting  for  it  and  another  held  his 
nose  while  he  got  out  a  high-pitched  af- 
firmative. The  incident  marked  the  close 
of  the  session. 

BEFORE  his  election,  Dewey  pledged  him- 
I  self  to  break  up  the  O'Connell  ma- 
chine, which  has  kept  Albany  County  in 
Democratic  thrall  since  the  end  of  the  last 
war.  Although  it  operates  on  a  small- 
town basis,  Dewey  has  made  it  sound  as 
sinister  as  the  gangster  politicians  he 
bested  in  New  York.  For  the  moment, 
however,  not  much  is  heard  of  the  matter. 
Dewey  started  to  investigate  the  O'Con- 
nells'  control  of  Albany,  and  the  O'Con- 
nells  ordered  the  Albany  District  At- 
torney to  investigate  the  State  Legisla- 
ture. This  was  a  foxy  move  on  their 
part. 

For  many  years  the  State  Legislature 
has  been  the  only  stronghold  of  the  New 
York    Republican    party.     Deprived    of 


plums  under  a  long  succession  of  Demo- 
cratic governors,  and  mayors  in  the  larger 
cities,  they  have  kept  the  party's  spirits 
up  by  appropriating  funds  for  innumer- 
able   legislative   investigations.     The   in- 
vestigating   committees    have    had    large 
payrolls,  but  their  employees  have  had  a 
very  easy  time  of  it.     In  fact,  few  of  them 
have   ever   been   known   to   show   up   in 
Albany,    but   they   have   contracted    un- 
usually  large   expenses,   all   of  them   re- 
corded   in    state   ledgers.     The    mess   in 
those  ledgers  is  of  a  kind  that  no  one — not 
even  the  Democrats  in  the  Legislature, 
the  Democratic  governors,  or  the  present 
arch-foe  of  corruption — has  ever  cared  t( 
contemplate  for  long.     The  books  hav< 
remained  closed  for  years  and  are  now  i] 
the   Governor's  safe.     But  when   Dewe^ 
began    poking   into   the   O'Connells'  ta: 
assessments,  the  O'Connells  went  after  th< 
books.     Dewey    quickly    superseded    thi 
Albany  District  Attorney  with  a  special 
prosecutor  of  his  own.     In  apprehensiv( 
haste  the  Legislature  appointed  a  com- 
mittee to  investigate  itself.     And  so  mat- 
ters now  stand.     Ail  four  investigation^ 
are  checkmated,  and  none  is  likely  to  d< 
more    than    the    investigations    they   arc 
investigating  ever  did. 

But  in  Washington  it  might  be  different, 
Recently  Dewey  said,  "I'd  like  just  si: 
months  to  look  into  the  Department  oj 
Justice." 


[  A  Scotchman,  D.   W.  Brogan  ts  a  Cambridge 

professor,   an   adviser  to  the   B.B.C.,    and  an 

[  authority  on  both  French  and  American  history. 


THE    AMERICAN    WAY    IN    WAR 


A  British  Estimate 


D.    W.    BROGAN 


M 


osT  American  towns,  big  and  little, 
are  well  provided  with  public 
statuary.  There  are  the  usual 
frock-coated  philanthropists  and  politi- 
cians; there  are  monuments  to  record- 
breaking  cows;  to  long  dead  and  therefore 
safely  admired  Indian  chiefs;  there  is 
even  a  monument  to  the  boll  weevil, 
which  by  killing  the  cotton  crop  forced 
one  Southern  region  into  diversified  farm- 
ing. But  the  typical  monument  of  an 
American  town,  north  of  the  Mason  and 
Dixon  line  and  east  of  the  Missouri,  is  a 
cast-iron  statue  to  the  heroes  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  most  American  of  American 
wars.  There  they  stand,  with  their  little 
French  kepis  over  their  ears,  with  their 
muskets  or  sabers,  products  of  the  main 
industry  of  a  small  New  England  town 
that  made  a  corner  in  the  business.  In 
bigger  cities  generals  ride  on  bronze  horses; 
even  generals  whose  public  and  private 
record  was  far  from  brilliant  are  thus 
honored.  And  in  Washington,  city  of 
monuments,  there  are  enough  statues  to 
soldiers,  more  or  less  distinguished,  to 
make  a  Prussian  paradise. 

But  there  is  one  American  soldier  who 
has  few  monuments  and  little  popular 
fame.  Nevertheless,  it  is  George  Brinton 
McClellan,  at  thirty-four  General  in  Chief 
of  the  Union  armies  and  a  year  later  un- 
employed, in  personal  and  political  dis- 


grace, who  is  the  typical  American  suc- 
cessful soldier;  his  way  of  war  is  the  Ameri- 
can way  of  war  and  even  if  he  did  not  win 
the  Civil  War,  it  was  won  in  his  spirit  and 
by  his  methods. 

And  that  way  of  war  was  General 
Washington's  way  of  war,  was  the  way  in 
which  the  American  continent  was  con- 
quered and  held,  the  way  taught  the 
Americans  by  their  own  history,  imposed 
on  them  by  their  own  needs  and  suggested 
by  their  own  resources.  It  is  a  war  of 
lines  of  communication,  of  supply,  of 
material.  Long  before  the  term  "logis- 
tics" became  fashionable,  the  science  was 
practiced  by  the  organizers  of  little  ex- 
peditions against  the  Indians,  by  the 
leaders  of  expeditions,  peaceful  in  intent, 
across  the  plains  to  California,  down  to 
Santa  Fe.  Space  determined  the  American 
way  in  war,  space  and  the  means  to  con- 
quer space.  Into  empty  land  the  pioneers 
moved,  feeling  their  way  slowly,  carefully, 
timidly  if  you  like.  The  reckless  lost  their 
scalps;  the  careful,  the  prudent,  the  ra- 
tionally courageous  survived  and  by  logis- 
tics, by  superiority  in  resources,  in  te- 
nacity, in  numbers.  Americans  who  did 
not  learn  these  lessons  were  not  much  use 
in  the  conquest  of  the  West. 

For  from  the  beginning  of  their  settle- 
ment, the  colonists  were  faced  with  ene- 
mies who,  once  they  had  got  guns  and 


492 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


gunpowder,  had  the  advantage  over  them; 
They  knew  the  million  square  miles  of 
forest  better  than  the  white  newcomers. 
They  knew  all  its  possibilities  and  dangers, 
its  trails,  its  swamps^  its  snakes,  its  poison 
oak  and  its  poison  ivy,  its  salt  licks,  its 
portages  on  the  rivers,  its  passes  in  the 
mountains,  knew  them  as  well  as  a  good 
German  staff  officer  knows  the  country 
behind  the  Westwall. 

Some  of  these  tribes,  above  all  the  Iro- 
quois, were  as  militarized,  were  as  much 
an  army  possessing  a  state,  as  modern 
Prussia  or  Paraguay  or  ancient  Sparta. 
They  could  be  fought,  they  could  be  con- 
quered, only  by  patience,  prudence,  the 
massing  of  superior  resources,  the  ignoring 
of  opportunities  for  brilliant  action  till 
the  time  came.  As  Frontenac  broke  the 
threat  of  the  Iroquois  to  the  existence  of 
New  France,  so,  nearly  a  century  later, 
General  Sullivan  cleared  upstate  New 
York  for  the  settlement  which  has  given 
that  state  Rome  and  Syracuse  and  Troy, 
Gate  and  Utica,  where  the  Six  Nations 
once  ruled  like  the  Spartiates  or  Ghaka's 
Zulus. 

But  it  was  not  only  General  Sullivan 
who  learned,  for  the  young  George  Wash- 
ington began  his  military  career  with  the 
humiliating  experience  of  being  forced  to 
surrender  by  starvation  to  more  forest-wise 
French  and  he  saw,  with  his  own  eyes, 
the  limitations  of  British  military  methods 
when  that  admirable  parade-ground  gen- 
eral, Braddock,  marched  straight  ahead 
into  the  French  and  Indian  country  to 
death  and  the  practical  annihilation  of 
his  army.  Other  British  generals  have 
done  the  same;  courage  can  work  wonders 
but  not  all  wonders,  and  the  Virginians 
were  not  won  to  respect  by  the  courage 
as  much  as  to  horror  or  irony  at  the  irrele- 
vance of  parade-ground  virtues.  For 
Americans,  then  and  now,  the  battle  is 
always  the  payoff,  to  borrow  Major  In- 
gersoll's  phrase.  Victory  is  the  aim  and 
the  elegance  of  the  means  is  a  European 
irrelevance,  recalling  the  days  when  war 
was  the  sport  of  kings.  War,  to  Ameri- 
cans, is  not  the  sport  of  kings  but  the  most 
serious  national  and  personal  concern, 
which  they  like  to  fight  in  their  own  way 
and  which,  when  they  do  fight  it  in  their 
own  way,  they  win. 


II 


THIS,  of  course,  is  concealed  by  school- 
boy romanticism.  It  is  far  more  en- 
couraging to  daydreams  to  think  of  the 
West  as  being  won  by  a  handful  of  totally 
reckless  scouts  and  pioneers,  hoping  for  an 
Indian  war  rather  than  fearing  it  and  ready 
to  plunge  into  the  trackless  wilderness  at 
the  drop  of  the  hat.  There  were  people  j 
like  that,  reckless  of  their  own  and  their  j 
fellows'  lives.  But  they  are  not  heroes] 
to  be  remembered  but  horrible  examples  ] 
to  be  digested  and  then  forgotten.  Even  'I 
the  great  romantic  figures,  Daniel  Boone, 
Simon  Kenton,  even  Bridger  and  Fr^-  ' 
mont,  were  heroes  because  they  were  ■ 
pathfinders,  men  who  did  not  get  lost,  did  ' 
not  venture  into  trackless  places  with  no 
knowledge  of  where  they  were  going. 
They  were  pathfinders  for  the  solid,  sober, 
cautious,  anxious-to-live  pioneers.  With- 
out the  maps,  without  the  oral  or  written 
instructions  that  these  men  provided,  more 
parties  of  western-moving  settlers  would 
have  suffered  the  fate  of  the  Donner  party 
— starvation,  cannibalism,  death,  in  the 
high  Sierra  or,  like  many  less  famous 
victims,  on  the  high  plains  or  the  grassy 
sea  of  the  prairie.  And  behind  the  Boones 
and  Kentons,  Bridgers  and  Fr^monts  were 
the  business  men,  George  Washington  and 
Leland  Stanford.  Matter-of-fact  men, 
some  of  them  rascals;  all  of  them  with 
a  clear  head  for  bookkeeping.  They 
wanted  to  settle  men  and  women  and 
cattle  peacefully;  they  wanted  to  do  it 
cheaply;  they  knew  that  distance  was  the 
enemy,  the  great  weapon  of  the  Indian  and 
of  his  allies,  hunger  and  thirst.  So  trails 
and  roads,  rivers  that  would  float  rafts 
and  canoes  and  keelboats,  salt  licks  where 
the  cattle  could  restore  their  health,  ma- 
laria-free ground  where  camps  could  be 
made,  these  were  the  elements  of  the 
problem  of  opening  up  the  perpetual 
second  front  of  the  West. 

These  provided  for,  the  Indians  could  be 
conquered,  perhaps  without  fighting.  So 
the  commander  of  Virginian  riflemen 
under  General  Washington  who  had  won 
the  name  of  Mad  Anthony  Wayne  was 
the  general  who,  under  President  Wash- 
ington, carefully  prepared  to  avenge  the 
defeats  of  his  predecessor,  defeats  caused 


I 


THE    AMERICAN    WAY    IN    WAR 


493 


by  bad  and  inadequate  preparation.     Gen- 
eral Wayne  did  not  rush  on  the  Indians 
IS  if  they  had  been  British  regulars  of  the 
old  school;  he  prepared,  with  unsporting 
thoroughness,  to  move,  safely  and  in  over- 
.  whelming  force.     Long  before  he  won  the 
[  Battle    of   Fallen    Timbers,    Wayne    had 
won  the  war  and  the  prize  of  war,   the 
J    Ohio  country,  won  it  from  the  Indians  and 
j   from  their  British  backers  in  the  old  French 
ort  of  Detroit. 

As  mad  (in  the  American  sense)  as 
Anthony  Wayne  was  that  passionate  pio- 
L  neer,  Andrew  Jackson,  favorite  hero  of 
'  his  successor  in  the  White  House  and  in 
the  leadership  of  the  Democratic  party, 
Mr.  Roosevelt.  But  when  Jackson  fought 
the  Cherokees  he  was  as  prudent,  up  to 
the  last  decisive  moment  of  battle,  as 
Wayne  or  Washington.  He  was  as  cau- 
tious then,  he  the  duelist  and  political 
gambler,  as  he  was  a  few  months  later, 
waiting  for  the  Peninsular  veterans  of 
General  Pakenham  to  march  up  to  his 
breastworks  outside  New  Orleans  and  be 
shot  down  in  row^s,  as  if  they  had  been 
confronting  German  machine  guns  and 
not  merely  the  rifles  of  well-hidden  and 
practically  safe  frontiersmen. 

THE  instances  could  be  multiplied  al- 
most indefinitely.  American  history 
has  some  equivalents  of  the  charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade  or  of  the  French  cavalry  at 
Reichshoffen  or  the  German  cavalry  at 
Mars  la  Tour.  But  not  many,  and  even 
the  few  there  are  illustrate  the  American 
way  in  war.  Pickett's  famous  charge  at 
Gettysburg,  the  destruction  of  the  ^'flower 
of  Virginia/'  is  very  famous,  but  it  was 
very  futile;  it  was  a  gesture  regretted  by 
Lee  and  condemned  by  Longstreet,  that 
unamiable,  overcautious,  selfish  soldier, 
more  trusted  by  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
Army  of  Northern  Virginia  than  either  of 
the  great  twin  brethren  of  brilliant  battle, 
Lee  and  Jackson.  The  real  American 
charge  into  the  deadly  breach  was  ex- 
emplified a  few^  months  later  at  Chatta- 
nooga when  Philip  Sheridan  led  his  men 
racing  up  the  mountain  (waving  them  on, 
so  one  tradition  has  it,  with  a  whisky 
bottle  for  a  sword)  and  swept  away  the 
army  of  Braxton  Bragg,  And  that  dra- 
matic "battle  above  the  clouds"'   was  a 


mere  finale  to  a  long  play  whose  de- 
nouement had  been  decided  weeks  before 
when  the  drab  figure  of  General  Grant 
appeared  to  take  over  from  the  brilliant 
Rosecrans,  and  Grant  got  a  line  of  sup- 
plies opened  into  Chattanooga — a  line 
down  which  poured  the  endless  resources 
of  the  North  to  be  launched  suddenly, 
when  the  issue  was  beyond  all  doubt, 
like  an  avalanche  pouring  uphill  on  the 
gallant,  outnumbered,  under-equipped 
Southern  army. 

Once  the  way  was  opened  for  the  fields 
and  factories  of  the  North  to  supply 
Chattanooga,  the  campaign  was  over. 
The  South  could  not  exploit  its  victories; 
it  could  pick  up  tricks  but  not  win  a 
rubber.  It  had  defeated  Rosecrans  but 
it  could  not  break  that  tenacious  Vir- 
ginian serving  the  North,  George  Thomas. 
He  was  the  rock  of  Chickamauga  on 
which  Grant  built.  And  Thomas,  a  year 
later,  waited  even  more  patiently  than 
Washington  and  Wayne  while  the  bril- 
liant thruster,  Hood,  fought  and  ma- 
neuvered and  displayed  initiative  and 
fighting  spirit.  Thomas,  indeed,  waited 
so  long  that  the  impatient  civilian  Sec- 
retary of  War,  Stanton,  wanted  to  re- 
move him;  but  when  the  due  time  came, 
Thomas  struck,  and  on  Christmas  Day, 
1864,  in  the  Battle  of  Nashville,  he  de- 
stroyed forever  the  Southern  army  in  a 
victory  "'without  a  morrow,"  a  victory  as 
complete  as  Cannae  or  Sedan.  But  that 
victory  had  been  made  easy  more  than  a 
year  before,  when  Thomas  had  held  the 
railway  and  river  nodal  point  of  Chatta- 
nooga. It  w*as  a  problem  in  statistics,  in 
organization,  in  patience,  an  engineering 
problem.  It  is  fitting  that  one  of  the 
greatest  dams  of  the  Tennessee  Valley 
Authority  should  bear  the  name  of  Chick- 
amauga, the  name  of  one  of  those  batdes 
which  decided  that  for  nearly  three  thou- 
sand miles  the  Mississippi  should  "flow 
unvexed  to  the  sea"  through  a  nation 
united  by  arms. 

BUT,  as  has  been  said,  there  is  in  Amer- 
I  ica,  as  elsewhere,  the  legend  of  cam- 
paigns much  more  like  sporting  events 
than  these  drab  accumulations  of  over- 
whelming material  resources.  There  have 
been    such    campaigns.     While    General 


494 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


flii 


Nathan  Bedford  Forrest  *  did  not  say 
that  his  scheme  of  war  consisted  in  "get- 
ting there  fustest  with  the  mostest,"  some 
such  poHcy  was  imposed  on  the  South. 
They  could  only  have  "force  in  terms  of 
time.  The  North  could  have  force  in 
terms  of  space  which  they  could  com- 
mand— as  no  one  can  command  time.  So 
Lee  was  forced  to  attempt  miracles  of 
movement,  miracles  that,  with  his  inferior 
resources  in  men,  railways,  resources  of 
transport,  even  of  food,  he  did  not  always 
work.  He  asked  far  too  much  of  his 
troops,  of  his  staff,  of  his  second-in-com- 
mand, in  the  campaign  of  the  Seven  Days 
where  he  had,  facing  Jackson  and  him- 
self, the  cautious,  the  fearful,  the  egoistic, 
the  neurotic,  the  beloved  and  trusted  and 
competent  maker  and  leader  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  General  McClellan.  He 
asked  too  much  in  the  concentration  be- 
fore Gettysburg;  he  did  not  ask  too  much 
when  he  exploited  the  fears  of  Hooker  and 
the  unknown  trails  of  the  Wilderness,  or 
when  in  that  scrub  country  he  used  all 
the  arts  of  a  great  defensive  general  who 
had  been  trained  as  a  tamer  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, maker  of  locks  and  dams,  to  force 
General  Grant  to  "fight  it  out  on  that  line 
if  it  took  all  summer."  Grant  lost  more 
men  in  that  campaign  than  there  were  in 
Lee's  whole  army,  but  he  was  stronger  at 
the  end  of  it  than  he  was  at  the  beginning. 
He  was  strong  enough  not  to  continue  to 
fight  it  out  on  that  line,  except  morally; 
strong  enough  to  shift  his  whole  army  to 
new  bases,  supplied  by  sea,  invulnerable 
to  Southern  attack,  shift  it  to  the  position 
chosen  two  years  before  by  General  Mc- 
Clellan. And  from  that  position  he  was 
able  to  send  out  Sheridan  to  destroy  the 
Valley  of  Virginia  as  thoroughly  and  as 
ruthlessly  as  the  R.A.F.  and  the  American 
Air  Force  are  destroying  the  power  of 
movement  and  of  supply  of  the  Reichs- 
wehr.  Sheridan  had  to  gallop  twenty 
miles  to  rally  his  surprised  troops,  but  a 
defeat  at  Winchester  would  have  been 
only  a  minor  inconvenience.  A  few 
months  later,  when  Lee's  army  was  des- 
perately lunging  south  to  find  food  and 
space  to  move  in,  Sheridan  by  his  bril- 

*  Thanks  to  the  vigilance  of  the  Baltimore  Sun,  I 
now  know  better  than  to  disfigure  General  For- 
rest's grammar. 


liant  improvisation  ended  the  war,  but  he 
only  ended  it  a  few  days  sooner  than  it 
would  have  ended  anyway.  The  decision 
that  it  would  end — and  end  one  way — was 
made  when  Sherman  seized  and  burned 
the  great  railroad  center  of  Atlanta  and 
left  Thomas  to  deal  with  the  Southern 
army  while  he  marched  to  the  sea,  almost 
unopposed,  but  breaking  the  will  and  the 
power  of  the  South  to  resist. 

This  march  through  Georgia  of  the 
young  men  of  Sherman's  army  was,  for 
them,  a  kind  of  picnic.  They  ran  hardly 
more  risk  (except  from  an  occasional 
Scarlett  O'Hara)  than  the  young  men  of 
the  Luftwaffe  did  in  the  pleasant  early 
summer  of  1940  in  the  empty  skies  of 
France.  But  they  had  waiting  for  them, 
on  the  coast,  the  new  Northern  fleet 
created  out  of  next  to  nothing  in  two  or 
three  years — there  was  food  and  supplies 
and  news  and  security.  They  were  not 
like  the  unfortunate  British  and  German 
soldiers  of  Gentleman  Johnny  Burgoyne 
marching  to  a  new  Saratoga.  They  were 
serving  not  George  HI  and  Lord  George 
Germaine,  but  a  patient  Illinois  lawyer, 
Lincoln,  who  knew  the  West;  a  detestable 
railway  lawyer,  Stanton,  who  knew  busi- 
ness; and  that  unromantic,  imperturbable, 
undignified  commander,  General  Grant. 

That  fleet  itself  was  a  highly  rational, 
functional  creation.  Its  most  bold  tech- 
nical innovation  in  the  war  was  the 
Monitor,  the  "cheese  box  on  a  raft,"  the 
ancestor  of  the  modern  heavily  armored, 
turreted  gun  platform  that  is  the  battle- 
ship. The  Confederate  Virginia  (n6c  Mer- 
rimac)  was  a  plated  man  of  war  of  the  old 
type,  far  nearer  to  Nelson's  Victory  than  to 
a  modern  battleship.  But  the  real  Union 
navy,  created  out  of  nothing,  was  the 
utilitarian  fleet  of  gunboats  and  fast  light- 
draft  cruisers  that  caught  the  blockade 
runners,  the  equivalent  of  the  Coastal 
Command.  That  fleet  went  wherever 
the  ground  was  a  little  damp — as  Lincoln 
put  it.  It  learned  all  the  arts  of  amphib- 
ious operations  on  the  high  seas  and  in  the 
great  rivers.  How  many  who  were,  for  a 
day  or  two,  overanxious  about  Salerno, 
remembered  Pittsburgh  Landing,  better 
known  as  Shiloh?  It  was  an  operation, 
bloody  and  bitterly  fought,  of  the  Salerno 
type,   but  on  a  greater  scale.     Admiral 


ii 


THE    AMERICAN    WAY    IN    WAR 


495 


s.imucl  Dupont  (of  the  great  munitions 
iinily)  ofT  Charleston,  Admiral  David 
I'ortcr  in  the  Mississippi,  these  arc  not  as 
li  imatic  figures  as  that  great  Catalan- 
\iuerican  sailor,  Farragut,  forcing  the 
mined  and  fortified  approaches  of  New 
Orleans  or  Mobile,  having  himself  tied 
to  his  mainmast  like  a  new  Ulysses  and 
giving  the  famous  order,  "Damn  the  tor- 
pedoes" {i.e.,  mines);  but  they  are  all 
representative  officers  of  a  service  that 
until  1942  had  never  fought  a  really 
^reat  sea  battle,  but  not  only  had  had  a 
brilliant  series  of  single-ship  actions  to  its 
(  rcdit  but  had  learned  to  work  with  an 
army  over  four  long  and  grim  years,  had 
helped  to  secure  for  the  North  the  time  to 
turn  one  of  the  least  armed  and  most 
pacific  nations  of  modern  times  into  the 
greatest  military  power  on  the  globe. 

For  even  more  in  1861  than  in  1917  or 
1941,  the  United  States  entered  a  great 
war  in  a  state  of  non-preparation  that  re- 
calls the  inadequacy  of  Irish  military 
methods  when  the  Danes  came  or  of 
Mexican  military  methods  when  Cortes 
came  armed  with  the  apparently  divine 
weapons  of  gunpowder  and  horses. 

Americans  have  long  been  accustomed 
to  jest  at  this  repeated  state  of  military 
nakedness.  "God  looks  after  children, 
drunkards,  and  the  United  States."  There 
is  a  truth  in  that;  space,  remoteness,  have 
given  a  little  time  to  prepare — and  the 
American  people  needs  very  little  time. 
Hitherto  it  has  had  just  enough,  provided 
by  accident,  distance,  or  allies. 

HI 

So  we  return  to  General  McClellan, 
the  brilliant  product  of  West  Point 
who  had  been  sent  to  the  Crimea  to  see 
how  the  great  European  nations  made 
war  and  who  had  learned,  at  least,  what 
not  to  do.  He  reported;  he  secured  the 
adoption  of  a  new  saddle  (still,  I  am  told, 
an  excellent  saddle);  and  he  retired  to 
run  great  railroads.  It  was  an  excellent 
and  typical  training.  Here  were  the 
problems  of  planning,  of  personnel  man- 
agement, of  technical  adaptation,  of  im- 
provisation; for  an  American  railroad  in 
those  days  required  as  much  elasticity  in 
making  and  operating  as  an  army  on  the 


march  in  hostile  country.  He  learned  to 
know  the  West,  the  growing,  precedent- 
free,  elastic  country  where  anything  was 
possible — if  you  knew  how.  It  was  a 
world  very  difTcrent  from  the  narrow 
coastal  plain,  long  settled,  thickly  peopled, 
a  country  where  it  was  natural  to  try 
to  imitate  such  brilliant  maneuvers,  such 
magnificent  achievements  of  the  pre-ma- 
chine  age  as  Marlborough's  march  to  the 
Danube  in  1704  or  Napoleon's  march  to 
the  Danube  in  1805. 

But  before  he  could  succumb  to  or 
resist  the  temptation  to  imitate  the  pre- 
railway  art  of  war,  he  had  to  get  an  army. 
The  Army  of  the  United  States  in  1861, 
when  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  was  16,000 
strong,  scattered  in  tiny  posts  all  over  the 
Indian  country.  Few  officers  (apart  from 
those  who  had  served  in  the  Mexican 
War)  had  ever  seen  a  thousand  soldiers 
together.  The  new  armies  had  to  be 
created  out  of  nothing;  they  were  created. 
A  few  years  before,  McClellan  had  seen 
in  the  Crimea  the  slow  and  moderately 
efTective  creation  of  an  efficient  British 
army  helping  the  French  to  besiege  Sebas- 
topol.  Within  six  months  after  he  took 
over  the  command  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  (an  army  whose  first  martial  ex- 
perience had  been  Bull  Run — a  disastrous 
defeat  followed  by  a  humiliating  rout)  an 
admirably  equipped,  well-disciplined,  co- 
herent army  of  one  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  men  was  learning  how  to  fight, 
the  hard  way,  in  desperate  drawn  or  lost 
battles.  What  was  done  in  the  East  was 
being  done  in  the  West,  too. 

Yet  the  political  head  of  the  War  De- 
partment was  a  most  representative  Penn- 
sylvania politician  of  an  age  when,  even 
more  than  now,  Philadelphia  was  "cor- 
rupt and  contented."  The  military  head 
of  the  army  at  the  beginning  of  the  war 
was  a  venerable  and  almost  immovable 
corpulent  veteran  who  had  been  a  bril- 
liant success  in  the  War  of  1812  and,  as  an 
elderly  general,  had  captured  Mexico 
City,  fourteen  years  before.  Hardly  any- 
body in  the  United  States  had  taken 
military  matters  seriously  except  the  more 
energetic  members  of  the  tiny  corps  of 
professional  officers — whose  ablest  leaders, 
Lee,  Joe  Johnston,  and  Albert  Sidney 
Johnston,  had  gone  over  to  the  other  side. 


496 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Yet  there  were  no  breakdowns  in  supply 
such  as  made  the  British  army  in  the 
Crimea  almost  unusable  for  months. 
Lincoln  can  hardly  be  described  as  stamp- 
ing on  the  ground,  but  armies  sprang  out 
of  it  all  the  same  and  the  task  of  conquer- 
ing eight  hundred  thousand  square  miles 
was  undertaken.  Brilliant  shortcut  plans, 
straight  marches  on  the  Southern  capital, 
raids  and  flanking  maneuvers  were  at- 
tempted, with  pretty  uniformly  disastrous 
results.  The  war  was  fought  for  four 
years  by  accumulating  slowly  but  inexo- 
rably every  kind  of  material  resource,  by 
laboriously  teaching  troops  the  very  ele- 
ments of  their  trade — the  pupils  being  all 
ranks  of  officers  as  well  as  men. 

The  American  soldier  was  as  critical  as 
the  civilian.  He  despised  a  good  many 
of  his  generals,  for  pretty  good  reasons. 
When  Grant  obstinately  renewed  futile 
attacks,  his  troops  pinned  to  their  tunics 
letters  to  their  kinsfolk,  since  they  knew 
that  many  would  fall  outside  the  Con- 
federate entrenchments  and  never  would 
cross  them.  When  Sherman  sternly  re- 
buked a  plundering  soldier  he  was  told, 
"You  can't  expect  all  the  cardinal  virtues 
for  thirteen  dollars  a  month." 

Behind  the  front,  there  was  profiteering; 
there  was  the  evasion  of  military  ser\'ice 
by  buying  substitutes  who,  in  turn,  often 
earned  more  than  one  bounty  by  enlisting 
over  and  over  again — deserting  as  soon  as 
they  could.  There  was  bitter  dispute 
about  the  higher  conduct  of  the  war; 
there  were  complaints  that  the  West  was 
being  neglected  in  favor  of  an  equivalent 
of  the  modem  "island-hopping"  strategy 
in  the  East.  But  by  1865,  with  an  army 
two  million  strong,  the  United  States  was 
the  greatest  military  power  in  the  world 
and  one  of  the  most  formidable  naval 
powers.  Within  fifteen  years  of  the  end 
of  the  war,  she  had  again  barely  enough 
troops  to  keep  the  Indians  in  order  and 
was  reasonably  doubtful  of  her  ability  to 
fight  a  successful  naval  war  with  Chile.  * 


*  The  record  of  American  improvisation  in  the 
Civil  War  is  so  astonishing  that  it  is  with  a  shock 
that  one  realizes  its  technical  Hnaitations.  Although 
there  were  experiments  vnth  very  novel  weapons 
like  repeating  rifles  on  the  Northern  side  and  sub- 
marines on  the  Southern  side,  there  was  remarkable 
conservatism  in  equipment.  When  General  Sheri- 
dan watched  the  Franco-Prussian  war  of  1870,  he 


IV 


THE  Spanish  War  of  1898  lasted  so 
short  a  time  and  the  Spaniards  were 
so  feeble  that  nothing  more  was  learned 
than  that  the  American  army  was  ill  and 
the  navy  well  prepared  to  fight.  When 
the  next  testing  time  came,  many  of  the 
lessons  of  the  Civil  War  had  been  learned 
— on  paper.  But  in  1917,  the  army  of  a 
little  more  than  one  hundred  thousand 
men,  short  in  all  modern  equipment, 
tanks,  airplanes,  modern  artillery,  had  to 
be  turned — and  was  turned — in  a  year  or 
so  into  an  army  of  millions.  It  was  sent 
overseas  in  numbers  unprecedented  in  the 
history  of  the  world  and  those  fresh,  raw 
troops  broke  the  heart  of  the  Germans. 
The  very  reverses  shook  the  temporary 
victors.  As  the  Confederate  army  lived 
off  captured  Union  stores  and  then  sank 
into  nakedness  and  weariness  as  that 
source  failed  with  the  cessation  of  victories, 
so  the  Germans  were  profoundly  depressed 
by  the  lavish  equipment  of  the  Americans 
and  the  Allies  they  supplied.  With  re- 
sources far  beyond  the  dreams  of  1861, 
the  United  States  of  1917-18  swamped  the 
victorious  armies  of  the  Second  Reich  and 
broke  their  spirit. 

Today  the  same  process  is  under  way. 
The  professional  leaders  of  the  American 
army  are  men  trained  to  work  in  obscurity 
and  often  for  basically  civilian  objects. 
They  learn  to  make  great  dams,  to  build 
and  operate  civil  projects  like  the  Panama 
Canal,  to  organize  the  unemployed. 
They  enter  West  Point  as  the  necessary 
preparation  for  what,  in  all  probability, 
is  an  obscure  and  dull  life.  Their  pro- 
motion in  all  the  higher  ranks  depends 
on  the  good  will  of  the  Senate,  which  has 
the  right  to  refuse  confirmation  of  Presi- 
dential nominations.  So  the  professional 
soldier  learns  either  to  avoid  politics  like 
the  plague  or,  in  rarer  cases,  to  play  that 
dangerous  game.  Whether  he  enters  the 
army  at  all  often  depends  on  a  political 

had  plenty  of  critical  material  provided  for  him, 
but  he  was  seeing  two  armies  which,  very  inferior 
in  batde  experience  and  batde  sense  to  his  own 
troops,  were  better  armed.  Both  had  good  breech- 
loading  rifles;  the  Germans  had  a  good  breech- 
loading  field  gun  and  the  French  a  promising  an- 
cestor of  the  machine  gun,  American  use  of  tech- 
nical originality  in  the  sixties  was  far  below  its 
present  level. 


THE    AMERICAN    WAY    IN    WAR 


497 


accident,  for  the  candidates  for  the  en- 
trance cxaminalion  are  nominated  by 
Congressmen  and  a  would-be  soldier 
whose  family  is  Democratic  but  who  lives 
in  a  Republican  district  is  usually  out  of 
luck,  his  military  dreams  shattered  for- 
ever—unless, like  General  Marshall,  he 
has  the  tenacity  to  enter  from  one  of  the 
scmiollicial  military  schools,  in  General 
Marshall's  case  the  Virginia  Military  In- 
stitute. And  inside  this  officer  corps  re- 
cruited from  men  who  won  commissions 
in  the  last  war  or  entered  from  VMI  or 
the  Citadel  of  Charleston,  the  West  Point- 
ers, wearing  their  rings,  are  an  inner 
caste,  cut  off  from  the  outside  world. 
They  do  not  even  have  that  training  in 
dealing  with  civilians  that  a  high  British 
officer  gets  from  his  War  Office  experience, 
for  there  are  (the  political  chiefs  apart) 
almost  no  high  civilian  officials  in  the 
American  War  Department;  all  senior 
officers  get  a  turn  of  duty  in  purely  ad- 
ministrative jobs. 

And  this  small,  almost  anonymous  body, 
serving  in  widely  scattered  posts,  have  to 
deal  with  the  elected  representatives  of  a 
profoundly  unmilitary  people  that  only 
becomes  warlike  under  great  provocation. 
In  peacetime  they  have  to  prepare  elab- 
orate plans  for  calling  on  the  immense 
untapped  resources  of  the  United  States 
in  a  future  wartime  for  which  no  spiritual 
preparation  can  be  made.  They  know 
that  they  can  never  be  ready  for  war; 
that  they  must  always  have  time  given 
them  in  order  that  they  may  use  space  and 
the  resources  of  space.  They  know,  too, 
that  their  countrymen,  brought  up  like 
all  peoples  to  believe  in  a  gilded  version  of 
their  own  history,  forget  that  all  American 
wars,  like  this  one,  have  begun  with  dis- 
asters, not  victories.  They  know  that 
their  countrymen  are  temperamental  and 
versatile,  easily  bored  with  theory  and  all 
of  them  from  Missouri  in  that  they  have 
to  be  shown,  not  simply  told. 

The  American  officer,  then,  must  think 
in  terms  of  material  resources,  existing 
but  not  organized  in  peacetime  and  taking 
much  time  and  thought  and  experiment  by 
trial  and  error  to  make  available  in  war- 
time. He  finds  that  his  best  peacetime 
plans  are  inadequate  for  one  basic  reason: 
that  any  plan  that  in  peacetime  really  tried 


to  draw  adequately  on  American  resources 
would  have  its  author  written  off  as  a 
madman.  And  in  wartime,  it  would 
prove  to  have  been  inadequate,  pessimis- 
tic, not  allowing  enough  for  the  practically 
limitless  resources  of  the  American  people 
— limitless  once  the  American  people 
get  ready  to  let  them  be  used.  And  only 
war  can  get  them  ready  for  that. 

Then,  but  not  before,  the  American 
soldiers  can  draw  on  an  experience  in 
economic  improvisation  and  in  technical 
adaptation  which  no  other  country  can 
equal.  They  can  draw,  too,  on  a  health- 
ily unprofessional  attitude.  Men  will 
think,  with  their  civilian  and  very  unmili- 
tary ways  of  doing  things,  of  new  and  effi- 
cient ways  of  doing  military  things.  They 
will  build  airfields  in  a  week  and  ford 
rivers  under  fire  in  tractors  and  bulldozers 
as  part  of  their  new  day's  work — all  the 
more  efficiently  because  it  was  not  their 
old  day's  work. 

So  they  used  and  made  and  unmade 
railways  in  the  Civil  War,  the  only  modern 
war  before  1914.  They  improvised  rail- 
way bridges  like  that  "beanpole  and  corn- 
stalk" bridge  that  was  built  in  nine  days 
over  Potomac  Run  and  took  the  rail  traf- 
fic of  an  army.  So  they  created  the 
great  rail  and  shipping  organization  in 
France  in  1918  which  would  have  enabled 
Foch,  in  1919,  to  deliver  that  "blow  that 
cannot  be  parried"  of  which  he  had 
dreamed  for  forty  years  and  which  the 
Americans  gave  him  the  means  to  deliver. 
But,  like  the  Negro  playing  possum  in  the 
American  story,  the  Germans  surrendered 
— "Don't  shoot,  Colonel,  I'll  come  down." 

WARS  are  not  won  by  generals  or 
by  plans  alone;  they  are  won  by 
men.  And  the  tradition  of  the  American 
soldier  is  a  practical,  almost  excessively 
humorously  practical  one.  He  has  never 
had  much  use  or  perhaps  any  use  for  the 
virtues  of  the  parade  ground.  When  the 
victorious  Northern  armies  paraded 
through  the  streets  of  the  long-beleaguered 
city  of  Washington  in  1865,  the  spectators 
saw  with  a  natural  special  affection  the 
much-enduring  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
veterans  of  so  many  unsuccessful,  bloody, 
exhausting  campaigns  fought  over  the 
short  hundred  miles  between  Washington 


498 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


I 


and  Richmond.  These  were  their  o\vn 
men,  finally  victorious.  But  the  real  curi- 
osity was  Sherman's  Western  army.  They 
had  not  driven  to  and  fro  through  the 
Virginia  Wilderness  or  bogged  in  the 
swamps  of  the  James  River.  They  had 
fought  and  marched  and  fought  and 
marched  down  the  Mississippi,  across  Ten- 
nessee, "from  Atlanta  to  the  sea,"  and  up 
to  the  rear  of  Lee's  army.  And  what  the 
spectators  saw  was  an  army  of  boys — not 
boys  in  the  modern  American  sense,  e.g.^ 
men  just  short  of  middle  age,  but  boys  in 
their  teens  and  young  men  in  their  early 
twenties.  Grant's  army  was  hardly  more 
dressy  than  its  shabby  commander,  but 
Sherman's  army  loping  along,  with  open 
necks  and  hardly  any  standard  equipment, 
hardened  and  lithe,  confident  and  brash, 
this  was  an  American  army,  formidable, 
enterprising,  humane,  and  ribald. 

Nothing  could  have  been  less  like  the 
armies  of  Europe  than  that,  and  the  world 
was  not  to  see  a  comparable  sight  again 
till  the  British  Eighth  Army  emerged  from 
the  desert,  clad  as  its  fancy  and  its  re- 
sources dictated,  living  by  its  own  battle- 
learned  discipline,  and — as  any  American 
in  Tunis  with  the  necessary  historical 
imagination  could  have  seen — spiritual 
descendant  of  the  American  armies  that  in 
four  years  had  fought  through  from  the 
great  central  valley  to  the  Atlantic  Coast. 

But  the  American  troops  in  Tunis  were 
like  the  American  troops  in  any  war, 
needing  to  learn,  ready  to  learn — after 
the  need  had  been  brought  home  to  them. 
As  Sheridan  was  told  in  1870  by  a  phil- 
osophical Prussian  general  who  saw  his 
troops  running  away  under  murderous 
French  fire,  all  troops  "need  to  be  a  little 
shooted."  So  it  was  in  1776  and  1812 
and  1861  and  1918.  The  adjustment 
will  be  made,  has  been  made,  but  in  an 
American  way.  The  heirs  of  Morgan's 
riflemen  cannot  be  made  the  equivalent  of 
the  Brigade  of  Guards,  not  at  any  rate 
without  great  risk  of  losing  what  Morgan's 
riflemen  had — which  the  Guards  found 
was  plenty.  The  American  who  in  peace- 
time is  a  national  figure  if  he  is  ready  to 
walk  a  mile — for  anything  but  a  Camel 
— is  in  wartime  fond  of  riding  to  the 
front  in  a  jeep.  But  it  was  already  said 
of  eighteenth-century    Virginia    that    its 


poor  people  would  walk  five  miles  to 
steal  a  horse  to  ride  one.  In  a  friendly 
country  like  the  United  States,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  breed  soldiers  who  will  automat- 
ically forget  that  an  officer  is  a  human 
being.  And  in  a  ribald  and  irreverent 
country  it  is  hard  to  get  officers  to  insist, 
with  British  self-confidence,  on  their  su- 
periority to  human  weakness.  There 
must  be  more  give  and  take,  more  ignor- 
ing of  unessentials,  more  confidence  that 
in  the  hour  of  battle  human  virtues  and 
common  sense  will  do  as  much  as  auto- 
matic discipline  of  the  old  eighteenth- 
century  type,  as  exemplified  at  Bunker 
Hill  and  New  Orleans. 


V 

A  COUNTRY  has  the  kind  of  army  its  total 
ethos,  its  institutions,  resources,  hab- 
its of  peaceful  life,  make  possible  to  it. 
The  American  army  is  the  army  of  a 
country  which  is  law-respecting  without 
being  law-abiding.  It  is  the  army  of  a 
country  which,  having  lavish  natural 
wealth  provided  for  it  and  lavish  artificial 
wealth  created  by  its  own  efforts,  is  ex- 
travasfant  and  wasteful.  It  is  the  armv  of 
a  country  in  which  melodramatic  pes- 
simism is  often  on  the  surface  but  below 
it  is  the  permanent  optimism  of  a  people 
that  has  licked  a  more  formidable  enemy 
than  Germany  or  Japan,  primitive  North 
America.  It  is  the  army  of  a  countr\- 
whose  national  motto  was  "Root,  hog,  or 
die."  When  convinced  that  death  is  the 
alternative,  the  hog  roots.  It  is  the  army 
of  an  untidy  country  which  has  neither 
the  time,  the  temperament,  nor  the  need 
for  economy.  It  is  the  army  of  a  country 
in  which  great  economic  power  is  often 
piled  up  for  sudden  use;  a  final  decisive 
military  blow  is  merely  a  special  variety 
of  corner.  It  is  the  army  of  a  country 
of  gamblers  who  are  more  or  less  phleg- 
matic in  taking  and  calculating  their  losses, 
but  who  feel  with  all  their  instincts  that 
they  can  never  go  wrong  over  a  reasonable 
period  of  time  in  refusing  to  sell  America 
short. 


% 


It 


o  the  American  way  of  war  is  bound 

to  be  like  the  American  way  of  life. 

is  bound  to  be  mechanized  like  the 


I 


THE    AMERICAN    WAY    IN    WAR 


499 


\incrican  farm  and  kitchen  (the  farms 
.ind  kitchens  of  a  hizy  people  who  want 
washing  machines  and  bulldozers  to  do 
tlic  job  for  them).  It  is  the  army  of  a 
nation  of  colossal  business  enterprises, 
olicn  wastefully  run  in  detail,  but  winning 
1)V  their  mere  scale  and  by  their  ability 
lo  wait  until  that  scale  tells.  It  is  the 
army  of  a  country  where  less  attention  is 
{)aid  to  formal  dignity,  of  persons  or  oc- 
nipations,  than  in  any  other  society,  where 
re  suits  count,  where  being  a  good  loser  is 
not  thought  nearly  as  important  as  being 
a  winner,  good  or  bad.  It  is  the  country 
where  you  try  anything  once,  especially  if 
it  has  not  been  tried  before.  It  is  a  coun- 
try which  naturally  infuriates  the  Germans 
with  their  pedantry  and  their  pathological 
conception  of  "honor."  It  is  a  country 
that  irritates  the  English  with  their  pas- 
sion for  surface  fidelity  to  tradition  and 
good  form.  It  is  the  country  of  such 
gadget-minded  originals  as  Jefferson  and 
Ford.  It  is  a  country  whose  navy,  fight- 
ing its  first  great  battles  a  century  and  a 
half  after  it  could  boast  of  Paul  Jones, 
recovered  from  a  great  initial  disaster  and 
taught  the  heirs  of  Togo  with  what  speed 
the  heirs  of  Decatur  and  Farragut  could 
back  out  of  their  corners,  fighting.  The 
Coral  Sea,  Midway,  these  are  dates  for 
the  world  to  remember  along  with  the 
new  Thermopylae  of  the  Marines  at  Wake 
Island  or  the  new  Bloody  Angle  of  Ta- 
rawa. It  is  a  country — and  so  an  army 
— used  to  long  periods  of  incubation  of 
great  railroads  and  great  victories.  It  is 
the  army  of  a  people  that  took  a  long  time 
to  get  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  and 
found  the  French  and  the  Spaniards  and 
the  Russians  before  them.  But  they  got 
there  and  stayed.  The  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  from  Virginia  to  California, 
like  the  four  years  from  Washington  to 
Richmond,  must  be  remembered  by  us — 
and  the  Germans.  The  memory  of  Gen- 
eral Washington,  after  six  years  of  barely 


holding  his  own,  combining  with  the 
French  fleet  to  capture  a  British  army  as 
easily  as  taking  a  rabbit  in  a  snare — 
that  is  to  be  remembered  too;  for  it  was 
not  a  matter  of  fighting  but  of  careful 
timing,  of  logistics. 

That  typical  Western  soldier  and  adv^en- 
turer,  Sam  Houston,  waiting  patiently 
until  the  Mexicans  had  rushed  on  to 
deliver  themselves  into  his  hands  at  San 
Jacinto — he  is  to  be  remembered.  It  is 
not  Custer,  foolhardy  and  dramatic  with 
his  long  hair  and  his  beard,  who  is  the 
typical  Indian  fighter,  but  great  soldiers 
like  Sherman  and  Sheridan  planning  from 
St.  Louis  or  Chicago  the  supplying  of 
frontier  posts,  the  concentration  of  ade- 
quate force.  The  Indian  chiefs,  Joseph, 
Rain-in-the-Face,  were  often  artists  in 
war  at  least  on  a  level  with  Rommel,  but 
war  to  the  American  is  a  business,  not 
an  art.  The  American  is  not  interested 
in  moral  victories  but  in  victory;  no  great 
corporation  ever  successfully  excused  itself 
on  moral  grounds  to  its  stockholders  for 
being  in  the  red.  The  United  States  is  a 
great,  a  very  great  corporation  whose 
stockholders  expect  (with  all  their  history 
to  justify  the  expectation)  that  it  will  be 
in  the  black. 

Other  countries,  less  fortunate  in  posi- 
tion and  resources,  more  burdened  with 
feudal  and  gentlemanly  traditions,  richer 
in  national  reverence  and  discipline,  can 
and  must  wage  w-ar  in  a  very  diff'erent 
spirit.  But  look  again  at  the  cast-iron 
soldier  of  the  Civil  War  memorial.  A 
few  years  before,  he  was  a  civilian  in  an 
overwhelmingly  civil  society;  a  few  years 
later,  he  was  a  civilian  again  in  a  socie- 
ty as  civilian  as  ever.  Such  a  nation 
cannot  "get  there  fustest  with  the  mostest." 
It  must  wait  and  plan  till  it  can  get  there 
with  the  mostest.  This  recipe  has  never 
yet  failed;  and  Berlin  and  Tokyo  realize, 
belatedly,  that  it  is  not  going  to  fail  this 
time. 


(  Like  Woollcott  himself,  David  H.  Beetle  is  an  alum-  ] 
\  nus  of  Hamilton  College.  At  present  he  is  teaching  > 
(  English  there  and  editing  the  College  alumni  magazine,  j 


f-, 


LAVENDER   AND    OLD    TORSOS 

A  Report  on  the  Woollcott  Library 
DAVID    H.    BEETLE 


WHEN  Alexander  Woollcott  died  on 
January  23,  1943,  there  were  left 
eddying  around  in  his  personal 
library  1,174  bound  and  212  unbound 
volumes.  These,  packed  in  open  defiance 
of  the  Dewey  Decimal  System,  arrived 
recently  in  a  score  or  more  of  boxes  and 
cartons  at  Woollcott's  alma  mater,  Ham- 
ilton College,  where,  pending  cataloguing, 
they  were  hastily  yet  reverently  shelved. 

In  general,  the  collection  doesn't  seem 
so  much  like  a  library  as  it  does  an  assort- 
ment of  books  that  happened  to  get  to- 
gether. There  is  a  strong  theme  of  senti- 
ment and  a  stronger  theme  of  murder,  but 
for  the  most  part  Woollcott  as  a  book  col- 
lector appears  to  have  dug  in  his  spurs 
and  ridden  off  madly  in  all  directions. 

Nestling  together,  for  instance,  are  The 
Trial  of  Ruth  Snyder  and  Judd  Gray,  Louisa 
May  Alcott's  Under  the  Lilacs,  Unsolved 
Poison  Murders,  The  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
two  books  on  werewolves,  Jackanapes, 
Ibsen  in  six  volumes,  a  definitive  work  on 
homing  pigeons.  The  Ladies  Letter  Writer, 
a  biography  of  Burgoyne,  and  bound 
volumes  of  both  the  New  York  Mirror 
and  St.  Nicholas  Magazine. 

The  crime  collection  (except  for  one 
S.  S.  Van  Dine,  it's  all  non-fiction)  is 
something  wonderful  to  behold.  It  is  an 
obscure  and  sorry  murder-defendant  in- 
deed that  failed  to  make  the  Woollcott 


library.'  Landau,  Loeb  and  Leopold,  Liz- ' 
zie  Borden,  the  Borgias — they're  all  there. 
If  the  material  came  to  Woollcott  in  pam- 
phlet form,  he  had  it  bound.  If  one  book 
didn't  cover  the  subject  down  to  the  last 
microscopic  bits  of  flesh  under  the  finger- 
nails, it  was  supplemented.  A  book  on 
the  Loeb-Leopold  case  arrived  at  Hamil- 
ton sheltering  a  typewritten  first-hand 
account  written  especially  for  Woollcott 
by  a  Chicago  police  reporter. 

The  collection  doesn't  pull  any  punches. 
"Narrative  and  Confession  of  Lucretia 
P.  Cannon,  who  was  tried,  convicted,  and 
sentenced  to  be  hung  at  Georgetown, 
Del.,  with  2  of  her  accomplices,  contain- 
ing an  account  of  some  of  the  most  horrible 
and  shocking  murders,  and  daring  rob- 
beries ever  committed  by  one  of  the  female 
sex,"  shouts  a  typical  pamphlet. 

From  outright  murder  the  library  drifts 
into  kidnapping,  ways  of  defrauding  life 
insurance  companies  (the  last  word  on  this 
subject  in  two  big  volumes),  inheritance 
cases  (including  a  fat  decision  by  Judge 
Henry  Horner  of  the  Cook  County  Pro- 
bate Court  quashing  an  effort  by  Gaston 

B.  Means  and  others  to  acquire  three  and 
a  half  million  at  the  expense  of  the  James 

C.  King  Home  for  Aged  Men),  and  major 
trials  generally  (a  British  series  runs 
through  41  volumes). 

Rounding  out  the  collection   arc    The 


LAVENDER    AND    OLD    TORSOS 


501 


Trial  and  Death  of  Socrates,  two  anemic 
pamphlets  on  old  New  England  Blue 
.aws,  five  husky  legal  tomes,  Wigmore  on 
Evidence,  Some  Distinguished  Victims  of  the 
Scaffold,  and  a  highly  technical  work, 
'::orpus  Delicti:  An  Enquiry  Into  the  Various 
Methods  by  Which  Famous  Murderers  Have 
Disposed  oj  the  Bodies  oj  Their  Victims. 

Outside  of  the  letlial  field,  the  most  in- 
teresting items  in  the  Woollcott  library 
are  the  autographed  volumes.  Few  au- 
thors stopped  at  signing  their  names; 
most  expressed  gratitude,  apprehension, 
admiration,  or  afTection.  "For  Alec,  who 
fed,  clothed,  sheltered,  and  soothed  the  dis- 
tressed author  of  this  importunate  vol- 
ume during  most  of  the  period  of  its 
composition,"  writes  Joseph  Alsop  on  the 
flyleaf  of  his  co-authored  story  of  Roose- 
velt's Supreme  Court  fight,  The  168  Days. 
"For  Alexander  Woollcott,  most  grate- 
fully (in  particular  for  a  motored  excursion 
to  an  ocular  invalid),"  acknowledges  Booth 
Tarkington  in  The  World  Does  Move. 
"To  'Uncle'  Alec  Woollcott  from  the 
'lil  massa'  of  long  ago  who  used  to  climb 
on  your  friendly  knees  and  listen  to  won- 
derful stories  of  your  slavery  days  until  I 
fell  asleep.  God  Bless  you,"  writes  Marc 
Connelly  in  Green  Pastures. 

For  the  apprehensive,  the  case  is  put 
best  by  Russel  Crouse  in  his  Mr.  Currier 
and  Mr.  Ives:  "For  Alexander  Woollcott 
with  my  very  best  fear  and  trembling." 
The  affectionate  are  the  most  numerous. 
There  is  Franklin  P.  Adams's  recollective: 

The  Army  Makes  Strange  Bedfellows 

One  Night  I  Slept  on  a 

Terribly  Full  Cot 
My  Partner  Being 

Alexander  Woollcott, 

There  is  Noel  Coward's  "For  Ackie,  With 
my  usual  addled  hero  worship,"  and  there 
is  a  flyleaf  of  Death  and  Taxes  devoted  to 
the  words  "Dear  Mr.  Woollcott"  at  the 
top  followed  by  a  blank  page  and,  at  the 
bottom,  "Yours  Respectfully,  Dorothy 
Parker."  And  there  are  a  score  of  other 
books  avowing  all  grades  of  afTection  from 
Alice  Duer  Miller's  "Alex  Dear"  to  Rebecca 
West's  "I  have  appended  my  married 
name  (Cicely  Andrews)  to  remind  us  both 
to  keep  our  passion  within  bounds." 


When  the  cataloguers  get  through,  there 
will  also  be  other  little  nests  of  books. 
Woollcott  had  scraped  together  all  he 
could  find  on  Mr.  Justice  Holmes,  on 
whom  he  used  to  lecture  lyrically.  He 
had  a  half-dozen  portfolios,  mostly  bulky, 
of  pictures  of  stage  folk  long  since  dead. 
He  had  both  The  Romance  oj  Tea  and 
Cojfee,  the  Epic  oj  a  Commodity^  pretty  well 
covering  the  field.  And  he  had  a  48-page 
book  on  croquet  which  would  seem  to  be 
definitive,  since  it  is  written  by  a  man  who 
tides  himself  "Captain." 

The  collection  is  particularly  strong, 
though  haphazard,  in  history,  religion, 
boys'  books,  nature  in  its  more  terrifying 
aspects,  and  biography  (containing  as  it 
does  assorted  profiles  of  Voltaire,  Count 
Tolstoy,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  William 
Allen  White,  Oscar  Wilde,  Edward  Bok, 
Cardinal  Richelieu,  G.  K.  Chesterton, 
Elihu  Root,  Richard  Wagner,  Henry  J. 
Raymond,  Count  Talleyrand,  and  Ilka 
Chase).  Treatises  on  polite  letter- writ- 
ing, too,  are  present  in  force.  Modern 
novels,  though,  are  so  few  that  Sinclair 
Lewis's  Arrowsmith  has  a  lonesome  look. 
The  so-called  classics  have  been  equally 
rebuffed.  Of  Shakespeare,  there  is  only 
Henry  IV.  Of  Hardy,  Galsworthy,  Chau- 
cer, Meredith,  Keats,  Milton,  Shelley 
(there's  plenty  on  Mrs.  Shelley),  Emerson, 
Addison,  Steele,  Browning,  nothing. 

There  is,  though,  quite  a  lot  of  Dickens. 
Out  from  among  the  lavender  and  old 
torsos  tumbled  a  thousand  dollars'  worth 
of  first  editions  of  Bleak  House,  Our  Mutual 
Friend,  David  Copperjield,  and  The  Mystery 
oj  Edwin  Drood,  which  alert  librarians 
packed  off  to  the  Hamilton  Library's 
treasure  room. 

For  the  Library,  of  course,  the  thousand- 
odd  volumes  fill  a  lot  of  chinks,  the  biggest 
one  being  probably  in  the  how-to-murder- 
your-grandmother  field.  The  College  is, 
of  course,  delighted.  It  is  pleased,  too, 
that  the  books,  as  stipulated  in  the  will, 
came  directly  to  Hamilton  College  at  Clin- 
ton, New  York.  Woollcott's  own  ashes, 
now  buried  in  the  College  cemetery,  first 
came  to  Colgate  University  at  Hamilton, 
N.  Y.,  and  had  to  be  readdressed.  He 
had  spent  a  lifetime  trying  to  straighten 
people  out  on  the  difference,  but  it  hadn't 
been  quite  enough. 


(  John  Bartlow  Martin,  who  used  to  be  a  Chicago  \ 
<  newspaperman,  is  now  a  magazine  writer.  Much  > 
I  of  his  writing  deals  with  crime  and  criminals.  \ 


A  NEW  ATTACK  ON  DELINQUENCY 

How  the  Chicago  Area  Project  Works 
JOHN    BARTLOW    MARTIN 


Wi 


HAT  are  the  cities  going  to  do 
about  delinquency?  Scarcely  a 
week  goes  by  without  a  blast  or  a 
whimper  from  some  mayor  or  police  chief 
or  commissioner  of  correction  about  the 
problem.  The  war  is  popularly  supposed 
to  have  aggravated  it;  it  is  a  favorite  bone 
gnawed  at  round  tables  and  conferences 
for  social  welfare.  For  the  most  part 
harassed  officials  seem  able  to  apply  only 
the  methods  of  the  past,  however  un- 
satisfactory those  methods  have  been. 
Under  the  circumstances,  the  work  now 
being  pursued  in  Chicago  in  what  is 
called  the  Chicago  Area  Project  is  of 
interest  to  every  urban  dweller  in  the  land. 

This  Project,  organized  by  Clifford  R. 
Shaw  and  his  associated  sociologists  at  the 
Illinois  State  Department  of  Public  Wel- 
fare, is  designed  to  help  the  residents  of 
slums  to  improve  their  own  communities. 
It  operates  through  Community  Com- 
mittees in  six  low-income  areas  in  Chi- 
cago. Behind  it  is  Shaw's  belief  that 
most  efforts  to  abate  adult  and  juvenile  de- 
linquency have  inevitably  failed  because 
the  approach  has  been  wrong. 

Shaw,  a  graying  middle-aged  man  with 
a  tolerant  and  practical  cast  of  mind, 
came  to  this  conclusion  about  fifteen  years 
ago,  after  several  years  of  research  for  the 
Wickersham  Committee  on  the  causes  of 
crime.     He    was    convinced    that    delin- 


quency, both  juvenile  and  adult,  is  a 
product  of  social,  or  community,  or  mass 
forces — that  it  is  a  normal  part  of  the 
ordinary  life  of  low-income  areas.  This 
meant  that  the  whole  pattern  of  life-in- 
mass  must  be  changed.  Therefore  the 
individual  approach  of  probation  and 
truant  officers  must  fail.  Further,  Shaw 
believes  that  most  mass-approaches  so  far 
attempted  by  various  outside  charitable, 
character-building,  and  welfare  or  settle- 
ment groups  have  failed  because  they  were 
efforts  to  force  reform  on  slum  people 
from  the  top  down. 

In  seeking  a  new  approach,  Shaw  deter- 
mined to  try  to  work  from  the  bottom  up: 
to  enlist  the  aid  of  the  delinquents  them- 
selves, and  of  their  neighbors,  in  com- 
bating delinquency.  It  was  his  belief 
that  they,  and  they  alone,  could  change 
the  pattern  of  their  own  lives. 

Shaw  himself  has  moved  into  the  back- 
ground. Many  of  his  workers,  originally 
chosen  because  they  knew  the  districts  in 
question,  now  have  become  more  closely 
attached  to  the  local  neighborhood  Com- 
mittees than  to  the  headquarters  of  the 
state  Department  of  Public  Welfare  which 
employs  them.  Some  men  have  joined 
the  state  staff  after  first  becoming  active 
on  the  local  Committees;  most  of  these 
are  without  academic  background,  and  at 
least  one  has  a  criminal  record.     The  six 


A    NEW    ATTACK    ON    DELINQUENCY 


503 


ommittccs  employ  their  own  full-time 

afT  men,  and  some  of  these  were  them- 

ives  delinquent  juveniles. 

Shaw  fights  Institutionalization  like  the 

ague.     He  insists  on  a  loose  organiza- 

on    constantly    in    flux,    amorphous    in 

irm,  and  unconventional  in  method,  for 

c  considers  this  pattern  more  alive  and 

lore  closely  in  conformity  with  the  ordi- 

ary  life  of  the  disorganized  communities 

lan  a  more  formalized  one.     (Actually, 

\c  "Chicago  Area  Project"  is  only  an  ad- 

linistrative  convenience,  set  up  to  receive 

mds.) 

Inevitably  the  work  of  the  six  Com- 
littees  includes  most  of  the  frayed  though 
/holesome  activities  long  familiar  to  the 
keptical  objects  of  do-gooders'  efforts — 
ummer  camps,  canoe  trips,  boys'  clubs, 
»ing-pong-and-checker  centers,  money- 
aising  dances  and  carnivals,  church  so- 
ials.  But  any  similarity  between  the 
^rea  Project  and  ordinary  settlement  work 
5  only  apparent,  not  real.  This  is  the 
lifference:  here  the  people  themselves, 
lot  outsiders,  run  the  show. 

II 

IN  1932  Shaw  selected  for  his  first  project 
the  Russell  Square  community  on  the 
50uth  Side,  for  it  was  relatively  sm^all 
[15,000  people — mostly  Poles)  and  it  was 
lomogeneous  and  self-contained.  The 
district  is  bounded  on  three  sides  by 
aatural  barriers  (on  the  south  and  west 
by  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  and  the  Illinois 
Central  tracks,  and  on  the  east  by  the 
Carnegie-Illinois  steel  mills)  and  on  the 
north  side  by  a  cultural  barrier  (79th 
Street,  which  divides,  broadly  speaking, 
the  Poles  from  the  non-Poles  of  the  South 
Side,  and  beyond  which  lies  the  South 
Shore  Gold  Coast).  The  Russell  Square 
juvenile  delinquency  rate  was  lower  than 
that  of  other  sections  of  the  city  which 
Shaw  tackled  later,  nor  was  adult  crime 
so  common  here. 

But  the  kids  of  Russell  Square  are  a 
problem  nevertheless.  They  are  among 
the  toughest  in  town,  even  though  their 
homes  are  not  the  ramshackle  tenements 
of  the  more  poverty-stricken  slums. 
Many  of  their  fathers  earn  good  money  in 
the  mills;  the  kids  go  in  for  crime  less 


because  of  poverty,  it  seems,  than  as  a 
result  of  the  normal  human  longings  for 
recognition  and  adventure  which  happen 
to  be  satisfied  here  by  delinquent  be- 
havior. A  child  grows  Into  petty  thievery 
naturally,  as  children  a  few  blocks  up  the 
lake  shore  grow  into  dancing  school. 
Crime  is  simply  a  tradition,  something 
you  do  when  you're  out  with  the  other 
kids  in  the  block.  Before  1932  little  had 
been  attempted  here  to  curb  delinquency. 
There  had  been  a  park  since  1901  and, 
since  1924,  a  "neighborhood  house"  where 
some  of  the  smaller  children  played  games; 
but  as  soon  as  they  grew  into  their  teens 
they  quit  and  became  delinquents,  and 
many  of  the  kids  never  went  there  at  all. 
The  Boy  Scout  troops  of  the  area  were  not 
large,  and  most  of  the  kids  considered  Boy 
Scouts  sissies  and  enjoyed  dragging  them 
into  alleys  and  stripping  them  of  their 
short-pants  uniforms. 

Shaw  sent  James  F.  McDonald,  one  of 
his  staff  members,  into  the  area  alone. 
McDonald  had  grown  up  on  the  South 
Side  and  knew  the  Russell  Square  com- 
munity well.  Quiet,  twenty-seven  years 
old,  smallish,  studious-looking,  he  went 
from  alley  to  alley,  mingling  with  the 
kids.  They  ranged  from  nine  to  eighteen 
years.  Each  vacant  lot  and  corner  and 
each  section  of  the  public  park  was  ruled 
by  its  own  gang — the  Tigers,  the  To- 
matoes, the  Bush  Walkers,  the  Baker 
Bears,  and  so  on.  The  first  time  Mc- 
Donald approached  one  gang,  one  of  its 
graduates  recalls,  he  bore  a  softball  and  a 
bat.  At  first  the  boys  refused  his  invita- 
tion to  play  ball — "it  was  too  easy,  this 
guy  bringin'  us  a  ball  an'  bat" — but  after 
a  time  he  talked  them  into  playing. 
Nevertheless,  they  regarded  him  with  sus- 
picion. "He's  lookin'  for  my  brudder," 
one  said.  Many  thought  he  was  a  truant 
officer,  or  a  plain-clothes  detective,  some- 
body connected  somehow  with  hated  au- 
thority; and  however  much  he  protested 
his  unofficial  status  and  his  desire  to  be 
friends,  the  boys  probably  never  would 
have  trusted  him  but  for  one  thing:  he 
never  squealed  on  them. 

They  wouldn't  take  him  along  when 
they  went  across  the  tracks  to  pick  a  fight 
with  the  Mexicans,  or  when  they  went 
out  on  their  jobs — robbing  or  junking  or 


N  n 


AM  fT 


504 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


stealing  the  copper  gutters  off  the  school. 
But  they  suffered  him  to  hang  with  them 
because  he  was  a  good  guy,  and  so  before 
long  he  knew  who  was  stealing  what,  and 
they  knew  that  he^  knew,  and  they  saw 
that  he  didn't  tell  on  them.  He  didn't 
know  how  to  shoot  crap  or  play  poker 
with  them  on  the  street  corner  and  he 
didn't  even  want  to  go  along  when  they 
went  purse-snatching  on  the  87th  Street 
pedestrian  bridge  or  when  they  figured 
out  the  new  fruit  racket  that  ultimately 
forced  shippers  to  reroute  their  trucks 
(one  boy  would  hop  atop  a  speeding 
truck  and  toss  off  cases  of  fruit  to  his 
confederates  who  raced  behind  on  foot). 
But  the  boys  liked  Mac,  and  once  they 
offered  him  a  crate  of  stolen  tomatoes  and 
a  crate  of  stolen  grapes.  He  never  lec- 
tured them  on  the  moral  or  legal  aspects 
of  their  enterprises.  This  tolerance  was 
unorthodox  welfare  work,  perhaps,  but  it 
endeared  him  to  the  boys.  He  encour- 
aged them  to  form  baseball  teams  and  to 
organize  into  leagues  (but  they  had  to  do 
the  organizing  themselves),  and  if  they 
wanted  to  go  swimming  he  arranged  for 
the  "Y"  pool. 

However,  McDonald  was  not  able  to 
do  much  with  the  older  boys,  who  were 
almost  as  old  as  he.  Their  most  power- 
ful gang  was  the  Brandon  Speed  Boys, 
which  persisted  for  some  thirty  years. 
One  of  its  graduates,  Steve  Bubacz,  who 
now  is  on  the  Welfare  Department  staff, 
says,  "When  we'd  give  a  dance  the  cop'd 
stand  in  the  corner  to  see  how  many 
heads  hit  the  dance  floor,  and  next  day 
the  firemen'd  come  around  to  drill  holes 
in  the  floor  to  drain  the  blood."  The 
Brandon  Speed  Boys  paid  little  attention 
to  McDonald;  they  didn't  care  if  he 
fooled  around  with  the  young  punks. 
But  sometimes  in  the  park  they'd  see  him 
umpiring  a  baseball  game  among  the 
punks  and  one  of  them  would  say,  "What's 
the  matter — you  blind?"  and  McDonald 
would  say,  "All  right,  damn  it,  referee  it 
yourself."  The  fellow  would,  and  before 
long  he  was  drawn  into  McDonald's  work. 
Aside  from  such  episodes,  McDonald  finds 
difficulty  in  recalling  at  this  late  date  the 
precise  way  in  which  he  won  the  confi- 
dence of  the  kids,  and  both  he  and  Shaw 
insist  that  methods  are   not  important. 


The  thing  that  matters  is  personnel 
Either  a  sociologist  can  go  into  a  slum  an( 
get  along  with  the  kids,  or  he  can't.  Fev 
rules  apply. 

A  LL  this  time  McDonald  had  been  form 
J\^  ing  a  local  organization.  He  hac 
been  talking  to  some  business  men  in  thi 
community  about  what  he  wanted  to  do^ 
and  they,  encouraged  by  the  pastor  of  St 
Michael's  Church,  formed  the  Russel 
Square  Community  Committee  and  toot 
over  an  abandoned  parochial  school.  The 
basement  became  a  clubroom  for  a  boys' 
club  which  was  organized.  People  heard 
about  the  program  from  their  neighbors 
or  their  children.  Gradually  the  Com- 
mittee grew  until  today  it  includes  about 
125  active  adults  and  about  700  contrib- 
uting members.  The  Committee  meets 
regularly,  guided  by  its  board  of  directors. 
McDonald  and  Shaw's  other  staff  menr 
rarely  meet  with  it  and  only  offer  advice. 
The  local  residents  run  the  show. 

Significantly,  a  number  of  the  more 
prosperous  residents  of  the  community 
dropped  out  soon  after  the  Committee 
was  formed  and  were  replaced  by  work- 
ingmen.  This  has  happened  in  every  one 
of  the  six  communities  where  the  Area  j 
Project  has  operated.  One  leader  has ' 
said,  "Some  people  are  interested  only  in 
how  delinquency  affects  their  business. 
Besides,  they  want  to  institutionalize  the 
program.  A  program  goes  stiff  and  dead 
when  it  goes  formal." 

About  1936  the  local  pastor  and  the 
Community  Committee  and  other  in- 
terested local  groups  raised  nearly  $40,000 
(roughly  $7  for  each  family  in  this  steel- 
workers'  community)  to  rebuild  the  sec- 
ond floor  of  the  clubhouse  into  a  modern 
gymnasium.  Perhaps  more  significant 
was  the  creation  of  the  summer  camp. 
First  the  people  bought  for  $25  an  old 
portable  school  building  and  moved  it  to 
a  leased  lakefront  site.  Pretty  soon  they 
wanted  a  bigger  camp  on  their  own  land. 
So  by  bus  and  by  private  cars,  on  Sun- 
days, about  forty  of  them  went  out  and 
inspected  perhaps  fifty  tracts  of  land. 
Finally  they  bought  twenty-six  acres  near 
Michigan  City,  Indiana,  at  $100  per 
acre.  They  raised  the  money.  On  this 
land  they  constructed  their  own  buildings, 


A    NEW    ATTACK    ON    DELINQUENCY 


505 


lor  („,  the  Coiiiiniili-*'  "f  roursc  were 
carpciilcrs,  plmiibcrs,  pUistcrcrs,  inacliin- 
ists,  wurkiiiKmcn  of  all  sorts.  Shaw's 
An  a  Project  paid  the  operating  expenses 
lor  a  year.  (Tliis  plan  of  inatcliing  serv- 
ices or  money  raised  Icjcally  with  Project 
money  was  pursued  consistently.)  Three 
thousand  people  hom  the  neii^diborliood 
attended  the  dedication  July  4,  1938,  and 
Shaw,  an  iiiteresled  visitor  in  the  crowd, 
was  t^ratified  to  hear  people  tell  how  their 
own  help  had  made  the  camp  possible. 
^'We  got  participation  and  concern,  not 
iiidiflerence,"  Shaw  points  out. 

STEVE  BuBACZ  becamc  a  leader  in  the 
Russell  Square  Community  Commit- 
tee; today  all  the  work  with  both  adult 
and  juvenile  delinquents  clears  through 
liim.  He  is  a  big,  jovial,  sympathetic 
man  of  about  thirty,  a  lifelong  resident  of 
the  Russell  Square  area.  He  has  been  on 
the  state  payroll  two  years.  Prior  to  that 
he  was  for  five  years  program  director  for 
the  local  Committee,  to  which  he  came 
from  the  Brandon  Speed  Boys.  He  has 
been  called  "alley-wise."  Frequently  the 
police  come  to  him  for  aid  in  recovering 
stolen  property;  he  helps,  on  a  "no  ques- 
tions asked"  basis.  If  Steve  hears  that 
a  boy  is  going  wrong,  either  he  or  some 
other  member  of  the  Committee  talks  to 
the  boy  and  consults  with  his  parents. 
Not  once  have  these  Committee  members 
been  told  to  mind  their  own  business,  for 
the  man  assigned  to  a  case  always  has 
entree  to  the  home,  since  he  is  a  neighbor 
or  a  close  friend  of  the  family. 

Steve  speaks  the  kids'  language.  They 
respect  him.  He  laughs  easily  at  them. 
He  likes  to  tell  about  the  trained  case 
worker  who  visited  the  neighborhood 
twice  a  week  punctually  between  3:00 
and  5:00  p.m.,  making  notes  diligently  as 
he  interviewed  a  delinquent  boy,  then 
taking  the  boy  to  a  movie  and  buying  him 
sodas  in  an  effort  to  lure  him  away  from 
his  wicked  old  gang.  The  kid  told  Steve, 
"Hey,  Steve,  I  got  a  new  sucker."  Steve 
has  said,  "Other  agency  men  make  'em 
comb  their  hair  and  won't  let  'em  spit  in 
the  corner  or  have  chew  tobacco  in  their 
mouths.     Not  me." 

One  of  Steve's  most  important  jobs  is 
handling  parolees  from  penal  institutions. 


All  six  Area  Project  Committees  work  not 
only  with  juvenile  but  also  with  adult 
deliiKjuents.  Recidivism  is  of  course  a 
major  jiroblem  of  criminology.  Shaw  be- 
lieves it  is  caused  partially  by  the  tendency 
of  an  ex-convict's  community  to  shun 
him  when  he  comes  out  of  prison.  Barred 
thus  from  contact  with  "respectable" 
people,  the  ex-con  is  forced  to  seek  asso- 
ciation with  criminals.  Soon  he  will  go 
back  to  prison.  The  Area  Project  at- 
tempts to  reintegrate  ex-cons  into  their 
communities.  The  parolees  handled  by 
the  Russell  Square  Committee  range  from 
youngsters  of,  say,  fourteen  years,  locked 
up  for  the  first  time,  to  men  of  fifty  with 
long  criminal  records.  Of  forty-seven 
parolees  dealt  with,  only  one  has  been 
returned  to  prison  for  parole  violation. 
(The  parole  agent  caught  him  drunk.) 

Usually  one  man  on  the  Committee  is 
assigned  to  each  parolee  by  Steve,  who 
simply  says  he  is  careful  "to  pick  out  a  guy 
on  the  Committee  who  knows  the  ex-con 
or  can  get  along  with  him."  This  care 
pays  dividends:  no  Committee  member 
ever  has  been  rebuffed  by  an  ex-convict 
whom  he  has  tried  to  help,  yet  an  out- 
sider probably  would  get  his  face  pushed 
in,  Steve  believes.  Active  in  this  work 
are  a  couple  of  ex-convicts,  a  milk-truck 
driver,  a  shop  foreman,  some  open-hearth 
workers,  some  laborers,  and  some  other 
workers  in  the  steel  mills.  Significantly 
the  list  includes  no  business  men. 

Steve's  work — and  that  of  other  Com- 
mittee members — is  varied.  When  two 
young  girls  couldn't  be  found  by  the 
police  Missing  Persons  Bureau,  Steve  lo- 
cated them  and  persuaded  them  to  return 
home.  Mothers  complained  that  their 
sons  who  were  shoeshine  boys  were  staying 
out  too  late;  Steve  investigated  and  in- 
duced the  local  saloonkeepers  to  refuse 
the  kids  admittance.  A  couple  of  junk 
dealers  were  buying  hot,  or  stolen,  mer- 
chandise from  neighborhood  children  and 
encouraging  them  to  steal;  although  un- 
able to  obtain  convictions  the  Committee 
put  on  so  much  pressure  that  today  the 
dealers  telephone  Steve  before  buying  any 
doubtful  junk.  The  Committee  has 
closed  several  blind  pigs  and  taverns 
which  have  sold  liquor  to  minors.  When 
fourteen-year-olds  turned  up  drunk  con- 


506 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


If, 


sistently  the  Committee  discovered  the 
identity  of  their  bootlegger  and  tipped  off 
the  FBI,  which  sent  him  to  Leavenworth. 
The  Committee  almost  invariably  first 
asks  merchants  and  others  to  co-operate; 
if  this  fails  it  rescrts  to  pressure  and 
prosecution. 

Ill 

THE  programs  carried  on  in  other  areas 
of  Chicago  are  similar  to  that  of 
Russell  Square,  though  they  vary  in  detail 
and  emphasis  just  as  the  problems  of  the 
communities  vary.  Grinding  poverty,  for 
example,  is  the  problem  in  the  South  Side 
Negro  district.  Yet  here,  where  the  aver- 
age family  income  is  $1,000  per  year,  the 
Committee  raised  $7,000  in  1943,  its 
second  year  of  existence. 

The  people  of  Hegewisch — a  steel-mill 
community  in  South  Chicago  whose  prob- 
lems are  similar  to  those  in  Russell 
Square — heard  about  the  program  there 
and  asked  help  in  setting  up  a  similar 
project.  The  Committee  on  the  Near 
North  Side,  a  mixed  Italian  and  Negro 
area,  was  organized  a  little  more  formally: 
Shaw's  men  presented  their  program  to  a 
boys'  club  and  from  them  it  spread  to  the 
adults.  This  community,  which  embraces 
the  old  crime-ridden  Little  Italy,  has  one 
of  the  highest  rates  of  juvenile  delinquency 
in  Chicago.  Across  the  river  and  a  little 
south  lies  the  Racine  Avenue  Police  Dis- 
trict (where  dwelt  the  Polkadot  Gang, 
whose  history  was  outlined  in  Harper's 
in  September,  1943).  The  residents  here 
heard  about  the  project  in  Little  Italy  and 
sought  help  in  organizing  a  program  of 
their  own.  Most  recent  of  all  the  projects 
is  the  one  set  up  among  the  seven  or 
eight  thousand  Mexicans  who  are'scattered 
through  Chicago's  slums  on  the  West  and 
Southwest  Sides.  Nelson  Rockefeller's 
committee  provided  $10,000  for  this  work 
in  1943. 

But  the  Area  Project  which,  along  with 
the  Russell  Square  project,  serves  best  to 
round  out  the  picture  of  the  program's 
operation  is  the  one  on  the  West  Side. 

This  area,  which  includes  the  infamous 
Bloody  Twentieth  Ward,  was  a  blighted 
district.  Like  others  in  the  city,  it  has 
possessed  a  high  rate  of  juvenile  delin- 
quency  for   generations.     One   after  the 


other  the  children  of  successive  waves  of 
German,  Irish,  and  Italian  immigrants 
got  into  trouble  here.  The  present  resi- 
dents were  pleasantly  surprised  to  learn 
this  from  Shaw's  men — ''Maybe  it  ain't 
all  our  fault."  Furthermore,  unlike  the 
Russell  Square  community,  this  West  Side 
area  has  been  a  center  of  organized  adult 
crime  for  many  years.  A  kid  here  grad- 
uates from  looting  pushcarts  not  to  work- 
ing in  the  steel  mills  but  to  armed  robbery 
or  organized  racketeering,  formerly  in 
alky,  now  in  labor  unions  or  gambling. 
(Shaw's  people,  aware  of  the  impossibility 
of  pressing  a  totally  new  social  pattern 
down  on  the  community  overnight,  move 
within  the  framework  erected  by  ward 
politicians,  racketeers,  and  union  leaders 
when  it  proves  necessary.) 

Also  in  contrast  to  Russell  Square  the 
citizens  here  have  long  been  the  object  of 
uplifters,  whose  most  notable  enterprise 
is  Hull  House.  But  several  residents  have 
expressed  indifference  toward  Hull  House 
• — "Sure,  it's  all  right  with  me  if  they 
wanta  spend  their  dough."  Hull  House 
has  been  here  a  long  time  and  enjoys  a 
rich  financial  endowment  and  a  national 
reputation;  but,  according  to  a  neighbor- 
hood story,  when  some  of  the  kids  stole 
three  hundred  folding  chairs  from  Hull 
House  it  was  one  of  the  Project's  local 
community  workers,  not  Hull  House  lead- 
ers, who  got  them  back. 

The  West  Side  Community  Committee 
follows  the  general  Area  Project  pattern, 
but  it  emphasizes  work  with  children 
rather  than  parolees  or  adults  who  need 
re-educating.  It  got  two  young  college 
graduates  from  the  neighborhood  ap- 
pointed truant  officers,  men  who  func- 
tioned not  as  police  but  as  friends  of  the 
kids.  It  pushed  the  formation  of  parent- 
teacher  groups,  an  activity  commonplace 
in  more  prosperous  coramunities  but  pre- 
viously almost  unknown  here.  It  fought 
for  better  teachers  (many  Chicago  teach- 
ers, assigned  to  this  area,  immediately 
apply  for  a  transfer),  and  it  tried  in  every 
way  to  pull  the  teachers  into  the  com- 
munity and  the  community  into  the 
schools.  It  organized  neighborhood  cen- 
ters where  the  kids  could  play  after  school. 
On  the  delinquency  subcommittee  are  a 
factory  worker,  a  college  student,  a  labor- 


I 


A    NEW    ATTACK    ON    DELINQUENCY 


507 


r,  and  a  barber.  Of  about  fifteen  young 
•Ilnqucnts  handled  recently  only  one,  a 
iiant,  has  lapsed  back  into  delinquency. 
he  leaders  hope  ultimately  to  establish  a 

cighborhood  center  in  each  block. 

3NE  of  these  centers,  on  Garibaldi 
Place,  is  a  two-room  building  for- 
icrly  used  as  a  store,  inadequately  heated 
►y  a  kerosene  stove,  with  bare  floors,  a 
:w  folding  chairs,  a  desk  for  the  program 
irector,  a  sink,  a  ping-pong  table  and  a 
.iano  and  an  assortment  of  such  games  as 
heckers  and  parchesi  for  recreation,  and 
)atriotic   emblems   and    war   posters   for 

ill  decorations.  Into  this  place  one  day 
ccently  a  mother  brought  her  son  Jim, 
.  boy  of  about  fourteen  who  had  been 
ransferred  to  a  school  for  truants  and 
(icorrigibles.  Jim,  blue-eyed  and  light- 
omplexioned  in  contrast  to  the  Italian 
hildren  who  were  whooping  in  the  back 
oom,  regarded  the  program  director  with 
.  bland  skepticism  beyond  his  years, 
lis  mother  seemed  anxious  to  discuss 
im's  incorrigibility,  but  the  program  di- 
ector  discouraged  her,  welcomed  Jim,  and 
ent  him  into  the  back  room. 

It  seemed  that  Jim's  main  difficulty  was 
hat  he  didn't  like  to  be  in  school  or  at 
lome.  He  would  disappear  for  days  at  a 
ime — once  he  was  gone  nine  days  and 
lobody,  not  even  the  police,  could  find 
lim — and  when  he  came  back  he  would 
ay  only  that  he  had  been  to  a  show. 
Mnce  this  seemed  an  inadequate  explana- 
;ion,  his  mother  was  haunted  by  the  fear  so 
:ommon  in  this  neighborhood:  that  her 
Doy  had  been  out  robbing.  Significantly, 
ihe  had  come  for  help  to  the  Committee's 
:enter  instead  of  to  the  police  or  the 
;chool  principal,  who  perhaps  already 
lad  failed.  When  the  center  closed  for 
5upper  at  5:30,  the  program  director 
:alked  to  Jim;  so  did  the  president  of  the 
West  Side  Committee,  who  happened  to 
irop  in  on  his  way  home  from  work. 

"I  hear  you  like  shows,  Jim,"  the 
program  director  said. 

"Yes." 

"You  go  to  shows  a  lot?" 

"Yes."  Jim  was  answering  blandly. 
Surprisingly,  he  was  not  trying  to  avoid 
his  questioners'  gaze.  Nor  did  he  appear 
to  resent  the  questioning. 


"How  often  do  you  go?  Couple  of 
times  a  week?" 

"Yes.     About  that." 

"You  go  straight  home  from  the  show?" 

"Not  always.  I  haven't  for  the  last 
five  days." 

"Where  do  you  go  for  five  days?" 

"Oh,  lots  of  times  I  go  down  to  the 
Field  Museum."  (This  is  located  down- 
town, two  and  a  half  miles  away,  a  long 
trip  for  a  West  Side  boy,  for  many  resi- 
dents of  this  area  never  leave  the  im- 
mediate neighborhood.) 

"You  can't  go  to  the  Field  Museum 
at  night." 

"Oh  no.     Daytimes.     I  work  at  nights." 

"What  do  you  do?" 

"I  work  for  the  papers.  Tribunes.  Suns. 
Downtown." 

"You  sell  them  all  night?" 

"Oh  no.     Till  maybe  two  o'clock."^ 

"Then  where  do  you  go?" 

"Oh,  maybe  I  walk  around,  or  maybe  I 
go  to  my  boy  friend's  house.  Places  like 
that." 

"When  do  you  sleep?" 

"In  the  daytime,  maybe.  In  shows. 
Sometimes  I  don't  sleep." 

Jim  said  his  mother  intended  to  make 
him  quit  selling  papers  but  he  didn't 
want  to.  The  Committee  president,  who 
has  no  children  of  his  own,  said,  "Maybe 
we  could  find  you  a  job.  As  a  messenger 
boy,  maybe.  In  a  five  and  dime.  Would 
you  like  that,  Jim?" 

"That'd  be  swell,"  Jim  said.  There 
was  genuine  eagerness  in  his  voice. 

''But  only  after  school.  What's  the 
matter  with  you  and  school?" 

"I  don't  like  Montefiore  [an  institution 
for  incorrigibles]."  He  said  it  was  too 
far  from  home,  too  strict;  the  kids  were  too 
tough.  He  spoke  judiciously  of  the  five 
or  six  schools  he  had  attended,  in  the 
manner  of  a  "college  bum";  curiously  he 
disliked  one  because  the  teachers  blamed 
the  mothers  for  the  children's  truancy; 
Jim  said  it  was  the  fault  of  the  teachers 
and  the  children  themselves.  The  men 
said  they  would  see  what  they  could  do 
toward  getting  him  transferred  from 
Montefiore.  He  said,  "I'd  promise  any- 
thing to  get  out  of  there."  (Nobody  had 
asked  him  to  promise  anything;  this  prac- 
tice, rather  common  among  social  workers 


508 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


and  apparently  already  known  to  Jim,  is 
considered  ineffectual  by  Shaw's  work- 
ers.) Jim  also  said  he  played  hooky 
because  his  old  shoes  embarrassed  him. 
The  men  offered  to  get  him  a  new  pair. 
He  seemed  interested  in  swimming  at  the 
"Y"  and  in  joining  a  Boy  Scout  troop 
(but  doubted  if  he  would  have  the  $15 
for  a  uniform).  The  program  director 
invited  him  to  return  that  evening,  but  he 
said  he  thought  he  might  have  to  take  his 
little  brother  to  the  show  if  he  could  get 
a  dime.  Though  the  questions  asked 
him  might  seem  about  what  one  would 
expect  from  any  social  worker,  that  they 
were  well  received  because  they  were  asked 
by  a  local  ex-delinquent  is  apparent  in  the 
fact  that  Jim  did  return  that  evening, 
though  he  left  for  the  show,  alone,  after  a 
half-hour.  And,  voluntarily,  he  spent  all 
the  next  evening  at  the  center. 

^NE  of  the  strongest  groups  in  any  of  the 
six  areas  served  by  the  Area  Project 
is  what  we  will  call  the  Pioneers  Club 
in  one  of  the  city's  toughest  districts. 
The  Committee  there  had  been  operating 
about  four  years  when  in  1940  a  couple  of 
boys  of  seventeen  complained  that  there 
were  no  activities  for  older  boys.  The 
program  director  invited  about  fifty  boys 
over  fifteen  to  form  a  club.  Half  re- 
sponded; by  the  end  of  the  year  13  re- 
mained. Today  in  the  Pioneers  are  30 
active  members,  20  less  active,  and  25  in 
the  armed  services.  On  the  third  floor  of 
an  old  building  which  the  Committee  was 
using  the  boys  rearranged  partitions, 
scrubbed  walls  and  papered  them  in  a 
knotty-pine  pattern,  collected  such  dec- 
orative items  as  Indian  tomahawks,  arrow- 
heads, feathers,  outdoor  pictures  culled 
from  liquor  or  railroad  advertisements, 
a  mounted  eagle,  and  various  mementos 
of  canoe  trips  which  the  club  members 
have  taken. 

The  annual  canoe  trip  is  the  big  event 
of  the  year.  The  boys  sit  around  the 
clubrooms  all  winter  recalling  incidents 
of  these  trips.  At  first  when  the  pro- 
gram director  took  them  camping  they 
would  sneak  off  into  the  woods  to  shoot 
craps.  Now  they  are  interested  in  the 
outdoors. 

All  this,  of  course,  has  been  done  thou- 


sands of  times  elsewhere  in  slum-ridden 
communities.  The  difference  here  is  that 
the  boys  regard  their  club  as  their  own. 
They  built  the  clubroom.  They  come  to 
it  nightly.  It  is  their  hangout.  In  it 
they  can  do  as  they  please.  Their  meet- 
ings are  uproarious  and  profane,  for  these 
are  children  of  the  slums  and  their  speech 
is  not  genteel,  and  sometimes  they  argue 
noisily  half  the  night  in  a  manner  that 
would  alarm  many  welfare  workers. 
They  are  given  free  rein. 

THE  club's  influence  on  the  whole 
district  Committee  is  great.  One 
of  the  club  leaders,  a  recalcitrant,  strong- 
willed  youth  who  "won't  take  no  crap 
from  nobody,"  didn't  like  the  formalized 
way  in  which  the  adult  Committee  mem- 
bers sought  to  deal  with  young  delin- 
quents. He  said  so  and  hit  one  of  his 
elders.  The  Committee  ordered  him  out 
of  the  clubrooms.  He  went,  taking  his 
fellow-Pioneers  with  him.  They  went 
around  the  corner  and  kicked  in  the  win- 
dow of  an  abandoned  grocery  and  met 
there  in  an  unlighted  room;  they  called 
up  their  program  director,  who,  employed 
by  the  state,  was  supposed  to  guide  the 
whole  Community  Committee,  and  told 
him  where  they  were  meeting  and  why 
and  invited  him  to  join  them.  He  made 
his  choice:  he  joined  them.  A  big  row 
ensued.  The  adults  on  the  Committee, 
many  of  them  business  men,  stormed  out 
to  see  Shaw.  The  upshot  of  the  bitter, 
complicated  controversy  was  that  many 
of  the  adults  left  the  Committee,  the  kids 
came  back  to  the  fold,  and  the  Committee 
was  reorganized  by  other  adults.  To 
some  it  seemed  that  the  tail  was  wagging 
the  dog.  To  others  it  seemed  simply 
that  the  original  thesis  was  working  out: 
control  was  being  given  back  to  the 
people.  About  a  third  of  the  members 
of  the  Pioneers  have  court  records  as 
juvenile  delinquents. 

What  is  commonly  overlooked  is  that 
these  youngsters'  lives,  however  delin- 
quent, are  not  gloomy.  These  kids  have 
a  good  time.  They  like  to  joke  about 
their  own  delinquency.  One  Pioneer  said 
that  nobody  had  better  clout  (steal)  the 
plaster-of-Paris  Indian  heads  from  the 
clubrooms,  and  another  replied:  "Don't 


1 


A    NEW    ATTACK    ON    DELINQUENCY 


509 


orry — all  the  t'ievcs  are  in  the  Pioneers." 
/lien  the  respectable  Clonuiiitlcc  elders 
ime  upstairs  to  visit  the  clubrooms  one 
■  the  boys  made  a  great  show  of  counting 

,ie    Indian    heads    before    allowing    the 

i.ders  to  inspect  them. 


IV 

3NE  man  who  very  recently  has  come 
onto  the  state  payroll  under  Shaw's 
egis  is  an  ex-convict.  He  was  paroled 
om  Pontiac  in  1940  after  serving  five 
ears  for  armed  robbery.  He  had  been 
member  of  a  stickup  gang.  His  pastor 
ponsored  his  parole  and  introduced  him 
o  one  of  Shaw's  workers  who  was  active 
n  the  local  Community  Committee. 
This  man  invited  him  to  attend  a  Com- 
nittee  meeting.  He  did,  but  felt  out  of 
)lace.  Assured  that  others  on  the  Com- 
nittee  had  backgrounds  similar  to  his,  he 
/olunteered  for  work  on  a  subcommittee 
dealing  with  juvenile  delinquents.  For 
:wo  years  he  devoted  nearly  all  his  time 
lO  a  neighborhood  center  and  became  its 
president.  When  Shaw  recommended 
liim  for  state  employ,  the  wisdom  of  this 
was  questioned,  for  there  was  no  prece- 
dent for  hiring  an  ex-convict  without 
academic  background.  Shaw  feels  that 
those  who  teach  delinquency  are  delin- 
quents, not  theorists,  and  that  those  who 
combat  it  should  operate  on  the  same 
realistic  level.  "Politicians  can  run  rings 
around  professional  workers  in  getting 
public  support  for  what  they 'want,"  he 
says. 

Pete  is  a  parolee  handled  by  one  of  the 
Committees.  Pete  was  fourteen  when 
he  was  sent  to  the  St.  Charles  Training 
School  for  Boys.  Committee  members 
went  there  and  talked  to  Pete.  A  tough 
kid  with  a  long  record  of  delinquency,  he 
was  suspicious  at  first — "What's  you  guys' 
racket?" — but  presently  he  said  diffidently, 
"I  thought  you'd  forgot  all  about  me." 
Paroled,  he  was  encouraged  to  go  back  to 
I  school,  and  the  Committee  paid  him  S5  a 
!  week  to  care  part-time  for  a  group  of 
I  younger  children.  He  quit  school  at  six- 
teen and  the  Committee  got  him  a  job  in 
a  restaurant.  The  other  kids  working 
with  him  started  stealing  from  the  cash 
register.     So    did    Pete.     The    manager 


caught  him  and  prepared  to  call  the  police. 
But  the  Committee's  board  of  directors 
talked  him  out  of  this,  agreed  to  stand 
good  for  the  %2S  loss,  and  got  Pete  another 
job.  He  paid  the  $28  back  himself. 
Since  then  he  has  stayed  out  of  trouble,  has 
taken  his  mother  off  relief  for  the  first  time 
since  1931,  has  moved  her  from  her  two- 
room  tenement  flat  into  an  apartment  in  a 
new  housing  project,  and  has  bought  her  a 
$125  set  of  upper  teeth  which  she  had  gone 
without  for  years.  He  speaks  of  this 
proudly. 

Jack  was  a  strong-arm  artist  and  stickup 
man  who,  released  from  Joliet  Peniten- 
tiary at  thirty-four,  was  turned  over  to  the 
Committee  because  his  parole  sponsor 
became  worried  about  him.  The  Com- 
mittee gave  him  a  little  job  scrubbing 
the  walls  of  the  clubrooms.  When  good 
times  returned,  the  Committee  got  him  a 
job,  and  since  then  he  has  married,  be- 
come a  father,  and  stayed  out  of  trouble. 
His  fourteen-year-old  nephew  started 
playing  hooky  and  the  boy's  mother 
couldn't  handle  him.  Jack  made  a  bud- 
dy out  of  the  boy  and  induced  him  to  go 
to  the  club.  Now  the  boy  runs  a  game 
room  there  and  Jack  is  one  of  the  most 
active  men  on  the  Committee  in  working 
with  ex-cons.  He  knows  how  to  handle 
them.     He  has  been  there. 

^F  all  the  young  men  whom  the  Area 
Project  has  dredged  up  perhaps  the 
most  striking  is  one  whom  we  can  call 
Nick.  Short,  dark,  bad-complexioned, 
well-knit,  wiry,  he  never  went  to  the  peni- 
tentiary but  it  might  be  said  with  justifica- 
tion that  only  luck  kept  him  out.  He  was 
born  in  1922.  At  that  time  "most  every- 
body in  this  neighborhood  was  either  sell- 
ing alcohol  or  making  it  and  it  happened 
my  old  man  was  making  it."  So  his  father 
was  wealthy,  and  his  godfather  was  a  big- 
shot  racketeer,  and  his  baptism  apparel 
was  covered  with  fifty-  and  hundred-dollar 
bills. 

When  Nick  was  about  six  his  older 
brother  got  caught  at  the  Wisconsin  line 
with  a  stolen  car  and  several  guns.  "It 
cost  my  dad  about  $1,500  to  pay  off  the 
police."  Then  the  brother  got  into  one 
jam  after  another.  This  was  expensive, 
and  it  kept  the  father  so  busy  he  had  little 


510 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


time  to  devote  to  rearing  Nick,  then  nine. 
Nick's  mother  fell  ill.  Most  of  the  fam- 
ily's money  was  gone.  The  family  went 
on  relief.  ^ 

By  now  Nick  was  growing  up  fast,  and 
when  his  father  smarted  "picking  on  me, 
I  would  not  take  it."  He  met  some  of  the 
boys  and  with  them  stole  candy  wagons 
and  pie  wagons,  wrecked  the  wagons,  and 
sold  the  loot.  "In  this  neighborhood  you 
either  had  to  be  tough  or  you  got 
hell  beat  outta  you."  He  didn't  like 
school.  "In  those  days  we  had  a  new 
principal  every  month  and  a  new  teacher 
every  day.     They  couldn't  take  it." 

One  day  when  Nick  was  about  ten  an 
older  boy  told  Nick's  gang  that  "he  knew 
a  good  spot  to  make."  So  Nick  stole  a 
gun  from  his  father  and  another  boy  did 
likewise  and  though  frightened  they  were 
shamed  into  carrying  out  their  plan  to 
burglarize  an  A  &  P  store;  this  netted 
them  $50  apiece,  a  lot  of  money  which 
they  spent  next  day  at  a  show  and  in 
"putting  on  the  big-shot  act  downtown." 

"So  we  went  on  a  few  more  of  these 
jobs.  We  made  a  pawnshop,  grocery 
stores,  a  hardware  store.  I  used  to  get 
home  about  one  or  two  every  morning. 
My  dad  used  to  beat  hell  out  of  me  for 
coming  home  so  late.  One  day  we  made 
a  laundry  driver,  my  buddy  and  I,  and 
got  $80  from  him,  so  we  went  out  and 
bought  some  whisky  and  drank  it  in  our 
clubroom  under  the  sidewalk  beside  an 
empty  lot.  We  got  blind  drunk  and  de- 
cided to  run  away  from  home." 

Nick's  buddy  formerly  had  lived  on  the 
Southwest  Side  of  town,  so  they  went 
there  and  met  some  older  fellows  of  about 
twenty,  one  of  whom  owned  a  car.  This 
one  brought  a  girl  to  the  hotel  room. 
"There  were  three  of  us  that  took  on  the 
girl.  It  was  my  first  experience  with  a 
girl."  Nick  was  then  eleven.  That  night 
they  burglarized  a  pawnshop,  stealing  a 
sawed-off  shotgun,  a  30-30  rifle,  two  12- 
gauge  shotguns,  and  a  few  pieces  of 
jewelry. 

Next  night  the  older  leader  planned  a 
stickup  "on  the  road" — a  roadhouse 
holdup.  Nick  was  posted  outside  the 
roadhouse  with  the  30-30.  His  buddy, 
the  wheelman,  stayed  in  the  car.  Their 
two  pals  went  inside.     Everything  went 


according  to  plan  and  they  got  away  witl  i 
$1,100.  In  their  next  job  they  invadec 
the  home  of  an  elderly  woman,  threat- 
ened and  perhaps  beat  her,  and  robbec 
her  of  $500.  This  they  ran  up  to  $2,00C 
in  a  gambling  house.  They  bought  a 
1932  Chrysler  Imperial.  With  this  they 
staged  another  roadhouse  job,  but  some- 
thing went  wrong  and  in  the  gun  battle 
Nick  caught  a  38-caliber  slug  in  the  right 
leg  just  above  and  behind  the  knee.  A 
crooked  physician's  fee  was  $150. 

The  brains  of  the  gang  now  proposed  a 
payroll  holdup  which  would  yield  $25,- 
000.  It  didn't  work  out.  A  police  squad 
chased  them  and  pumped  eighteen  bul- 
lets into  their  fine  Chrysler  Imperial,  and 
though  none  of  the  youths  was  hit  all  were 
frightened,  and  Nick  and  his  buddy  went 
back  to  the  old  neighborhood,  back  to 
"things  we  could  handle,"  such  as  laun- 
drymen,  milkmen,  grocery  stores.  One 
day  Nick's  father  and  brother  found  him  i 
in  a  movie  theater  and  took  him  home  to  \ 
his  mother,  who  was  ill  from  worrying  i 
about  him.  He  was  shocked;  he  had  for- 
gotten about  her.  He  went  back  to 
school. 

But  studying  was  difficult.  (He  still 
cannot  read  or  write.)  He  and  some 
others  were  sent  to  Montefiore;  during 
the  two  years  he  spent  there  he  organized 
a  protection  racket,  patterned  after  adult 
gangsters'  methods:  he  and  his  pals  ex- 
torted fixed  sums  from  the  other  children 
or  beat  them  up.  The  Negroes,  being 
stronger  in  numbers  at  Montefiore,  took 
this  racket  over.  Nick  took  to  stealing  ' 
on  nearby  Maxwell  Street.  Transferred 
back  to  school  in  his  home  neighborhood, 
he  operated  protection  again. 

After  a  time  "they  t'rew  me  out  of 
school  and  give  me  a  diploma."  Nick's 
father  wanted  him  to  go  to  work,  "so  I 
did — I  went  to  work  for  one  of  the  racket- 
eers in  the  neighborhood."  This  man 
had  a  beverage  route,  and  Nick,  servicing  ' 
it,  managed  to  steal  enough  from  each 
tavern  to  which  he  made  a  delivery  to 
average  about  $60  a  week.  This  was 
fine  while  it  lasted.  When  the  customers 
started  complaining,  Nick  quit  and  got 
another  job  where  he  stole  from  his  em- 
ployer. Till  he  was  caught  he  averaged 
nearly    $90    a    week.     Then    he    began 


A    NEW    ATTACK    ON    DELINQUENCY 


511 


langing  around  the  neighborhood  candy 
store,  cutting  on  dice— that  is,  taking  a 
percentage  from  the  crap  game  on  the 
street  corner  there.  Before  long  this 
crap  game  became  well  known  through- 
out the  neighborhood,  and  the  poHce  be- 
gan breaking  it  up.  The  boys  knew  what 
the  coppers  wanted.  They  gave  it  to 
(hem— SI 0  a  week.  All  was  well.  But 
then  "the  coppers  told  their  buddies  an' 
they  wanted  their  cut  an'  before  long  they 
were  makin'  more  than  we  were."  So 
they  moved  the  crap  game  into  the  back 
room  of  the  candy  store,  where  Nick  got  a 
third  of  what  he  cut. 

There  was  more  in  a  similar  pattern, 
then  along  came  the  draft  and  the  old 
bunch  began  to  disintegrate.  Nick  was 
4F,  a  circumstance  he  still  resents.  Soon 
most  of  his  crowd  had  disappeared.  One 
day  a  boy  he  knew  slightly  talked  him 
into  going  over  to  the  clubrooms  which 
the  boys  in  the  local  Area  Project  Com- 
mittee had  taken  over.  He  did,  he  be- 
came interested,  and  he  has  been  active 
ever  since.  He  even  became  an  out- 
standing Boy  Scout,  though  formerly  he 
had  despised  the  Boy  Scouts  and  once, 
lured  to  a  Scout  camp,  had  been  thrown 
out  for  tossing  a  half-dozen  rotten  duck 
eggs  into  the  scoutmaster's  tent. 

He  first  became  interested  in  the  Com- 
munity Committee  because  of  its  athletic 
activities.  He  was  encouraged  to  teach 
boxing  and  wrestling  to  the  younger  boys. 
Presently  he  became  a  "volunteer  leader." 
Finally  the  Committee  hired  him  on  a 
full-time  basis  for  $150  a  month  to  work 
on  juvenile  delinquency.  In  this  job  he 
spends  most  of  his  morning  at  the  schools 
checking  on  truants,  or  in  Juvenile  Court, 
"fronting  for  the  kids,"  or  in  calling  on 
them  or  their  parents;  in  the  afternoon  he 
teaches  boxing  or  "progressive  games  such 
as  I'm  sorry,  monopoly,  cards"  at  the 
nearby  park  fieldhouse.  (He  describes 
his  activities  very  seriously;  a  listener 
would  not  be  wise  to  smile  at  them.) 

N-iGK  still  is  independent,  tough.  His 
new  enterprises  apparently  have  not 
mellowed  him  at  all.  He  is  volatile,  per- 
haps unpredictable.  Many  would  con- 
sider him  dangerous  to  the  Committee's 
program.    The  fact  remains,  however,  that 


many  boys  throughout  the  neighborhood 
respect  him,  and  whether  he  is  inside  or 
outside  the  program  he  is  an  influence  to 
be  reckoned  with.  It's  better  for  every- 
one if  he  is  inside. 

While  he  was  still  only  a  "volunteer 
leader"  for  the  Committee,  he  got  into 
trouble  about  every  six  months.  Once 
he  wanted  to  go  on  a  camping  trip  but 
lacked  the  money;  so,  with  another  youth, 
he  burglarized  the  neighborhood  candy 
store.  His  companion  squealed;  the  pro- 
prietor threatened  to  kill  Nick  if  he  didn't 
repay  the  $40;  the  Committee  program 
director,  who  has  been  Nick's  sponsor  all 
along,  lent  him  the  money,  and  this  im- 
pressed Nick:  "I  didn't  have  to  go  pull 
another  job  to  get  outta  that  one." 

The  last  time  Nick  got  into  trouble  was 
quite  a  while  ago  now.  "One  Saturday 
I  was  out  and  I  was  broke.  As  usual. 
I  knew  the  place  I  used  to  work  had  a 
cash  register  so  I  decided  to  go  over 
there."  The  watchman  caught  him  and 
he  made  a  deal  with  the  watchman  but 
the  watchman  double-crossed  him.  "One 
day  a  little  later  I  see  two  guys  comin' 
with  their  hat  brims  down  so  I  start  to 
run  and  one  says,  'Stop  or  I'll  shoot!'  so 
I  stop.  When  I  stopped  I  got  hit.  They 
were  usin'  these  blackjacks  they  usually 
put  on  the  gearshifts  of  cars.  They're 
solid  rubber.  I  got  eight  stitches  in  my 
head  and  my  hands  was  all  busted  from 
trying  to  protect  my  head,  and  my  back 
and  arms  and  legs  too.  A  week  later  I 
knew  where  this  guy  hung  at,  one  of  these 
guys  who  beat  me  up.  I  spotted  him  at 
eleven  o'clock  one  night.  He  started  to 
cross  the  street  but  I  doubled  back  and  I 
met  him  face  to  face  and  I  asked  him  how 
he  was.  He  turned  all  difTerent  colors 
and  he  was  speechless.  Then  he  said  he 
was  all  right  and  kept  on  goin'.  I  let 
him  go." 

The  program  director  asked  Nick, 
"It's  all  over  now,  eh,  Nick?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Nick  said  without  ex- 
pression. "The  back  of  my  head  still  has 
the  eight  stitches  and  they  intend  to  get 
even.     Right?" 

The  program  director  said,  "I  don't 
think  so." 

But  nobody  really  knows.  Nick  is  a 
curious  case,  a  young  man  in  transition,  a 


512 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


young  man  in  delicate  balance.  He 
could  topple  either  way.  "I  been  in  Ju- 
venile Court  three  times  and  Boys'  Court 
twice  but  I  never  served  any  time.  Yet. 
But  my  old  man  always  said,  'You'll  wind 
up  with  a  bullet  in  you.'  One  thing 
sure,  I  won't  wind  up  with  a  nickel  in  my 
hand  [gangsters  so  mark  a  squealer  they 
have  murdered;  Nick  never  will  let  social 
work  make  a  squealer  of  him].  I'd  like  to 
keep  on  with  this  work,  though.  If  the 
guys  up  on  top  just  don't  push  me.  I  like 
this  work." 


WHAT  does  all  this  add  up  to?  What, 
in  concrete  terms,  has  the  Chicago 
Area  Project  accomplished? 

Certainly  it  is  an  arresting  experiment. 
It  has  affected  the  lives  of  thousands  of 
persons.  It  has  been  termed  "a  first 
move  toward  remaking  society,"  a  de- 
scription which  Shaw  disclaims.  He  pre- 
fers to  regard  the  Project  simply  as  an 
experiment  in  method. 

Results  in  this  field  are  difficult  to 
measure.  Nevertheless,  some  statistics 
are  available.  The  rate  of  juvenile  de- 
linquency has  declined  in  all  but  one  of 
the  six  areas  since  Projects  have  been  un- 
dertaken. In  three  of  these  Shaw  con- 
siders the  programs  of  such  recent  origin 
that  no  conclusions  can  be  drawn.  Lit- 
tle change  has  occurred  in  the  rate  in  the 
Near  North  Side.  But  in  the  two  re- 
maining areas,  Russell  Square  and  the 
West  Side,  the  decrease  has  been  striking 
during  the  period  of  the  Projects'  activity. 
In  each  area  the  rate  in  1940  was  only 
about  a  third  of  the  rate  in  1930;  in  both 
areas  the  rate  was  cut  approximately  in 
half  when  the  Project  took  hold,  and 
never  again  reached  its  former  high. 
Also  in  Russell  Square  the  average  num- 
ber of  boys  actually  handled  each  year 
by  the  police  declined  from  95.1  during 
1927-1933  to  27  during  the  period 
1934-40  (when  the  Project  was  in  opera- 
tion), while  on  the  West  Side  the  same 
averages  dropped  from  124  during  1927- 
33  to  59  for  1934-40. 

Shaw  warns  that  caution  must  be  used 
in  interpreting  these  statistics,  since  so 
many  factors  aff'ect  the  rate  of  juvenile 
delinquency  (the  general  economic  situa- 


tion, for  example,  is  only  one).  But  the 
fact  remains  that  the  decline  in  the  rate  in 
other  Chicago  areas  during  the  same 
period  has  been  much  less  marked. 

Perhaps  the  results  of  the  Project  should 
not  be  measured  by  the  rate  of  juvenile 
delinquency  alone.  There  seems  little 
doubt  that  the  residents  of  these  low-in- 
come areas  have  demonstrated  that  they 
can  and  will  organize  to  make  their  neigh- 
borhoods better  places  in  which  to  live. 
The  Project  has  uncovered  latent  talent 
within  the  communities  not  heretofore 
channeled  toward  civic  betterment.  The 
committees  have  improved  parent- teacher 
relationships  and  shouldered  responsibil- 
ity for  school  attendance  and  school  im- 
provement. They  have  brought  to  bear 
eff'ective  public  opinion  on  specific  con- 
tributors to  juvenile  delinquency.  They 
have  succeeded  in  leading  children  away 
from  crime  and  in  reincorporating  pa- 
rolees into  the  neighborhood. 

^NE  young  man,  a  Russell  Square  gang 
graduate  who  was  active  in  the  Com- 
mittee's work  before  the  war,  came  back 
recently  on  an  Army  furlough  much 
disturbed  about  the  postwar  future.  He 
wondered  if  the  war  would  disrupt  the 
Committee  fatally.  He  was  assured  this 
was  not  the  case.  He  also  had  been 
worrying  about  whether  the  boys  now 
learning  to  use  guns  might  not  come  back 
and  continue  to  use  them.  "There  isn't 
much  to  look  forward  to,  really.  There 
were  a  lot  of  promises  made  about  how 
our  jobs  would  be  waiting  for  us  when 
we  come  home,  but  you  know  as  well  as  I 
do  that's  a  lot  of  crap."  The  young  man 
thought  something  ought  to  be  done  about 
this.  Why  couldn't  the  Committee  make 
a  start  now,  with  a  program  of  adult  ed- 
ucation that  would  help  cushion  the  shock 
when  the  boys  came  home?  And  he  had 
another  idea — the  Committee  always  had 
hoped  to  have  a  key  man  in  every  block; 
why  not  use  the  OCD  organization,  with 
its  block  captains,  for  this  purpose  after 
the  war?  Steve,  who  heads  the  local 
OCD  organization,  said  he  would  call  a 
meeting  and  place  the  plan  before  the 
Community  Committee. 

Many  ambitious  postwar  plans  have 
made  less  sense. 


(  Kurt  Steely  otherwise  Professor  Rudolf  Kagey 
\  of  New  York  University,  bases  his  true 
\  narrative  on  Naval  and  diplomatic  records. 


OUR    FIRST   WAR    WITH    JAPAN 


KURT   STEEL 


UR  first  war  with  Japan  grew  out 
of  a  swift,  carefully  prepared  at- 
tack on  us.  This  attack  came  at 
almost  the  very  hour  when  Japanese 
envoys  were  meeting  with  an  American 
minister  to  protest  the  friendship  of  their 
government  for  the  United  States.  Our 
first  war  with  Japan  lasted  one  hour  and 
ten  minutes.  It  happened  on  the  morn- 
ing of  July  16,  1863,  ten  years  after  Com- 
modore Perry  sailed  into  the  Bay  of  Yedo. 
That  it  ever  took  place  at  all  is  known 
today  to  hardly  one  American  in  a  mil- 
lion, so  completely  was  public  attention 
in  1863  riveted  upon  the  Civil  War  and 
so  neglected  has  it  been  by  historians. 

The  attack  which  led  to  this  brief  pro- 
phetic conflict  had  occurred  three  weeks 
earlier  when  the  American  steamer  Pern- 
broke,  peaceably  bound  from  Yokohama 
to  Shanghai,  anchored  one  evening  at 
the  entrance  to  the  Straits  of  Shimonoseki. 
Captain  Cooper,  master  of  the  Pembroke, 
knowing  the  currents  that  swirled  back 
and  forth  from  the  China  Sea  through  the 
narrow  pass,  wanted  the  safety  of  day- 
light to  make  the  run.  On  any  other 
day  this  would  have  been  a  wise  choice. 
But  that  day,  June  25,  1863,  had  for  some 
time  past  been  secretly  marked  by  the 
Japanese  warlords  and  policy-makers  as 
a  deadline.  It  was  the  day  when  the 
Japanese  were,  in  the  Mikado's  own  words, 
to  ''expel  totally  the  foreigners  and  sweep 
them  away  as  with  a  broom.". 


At  twilight  that  evening  a  Japanese 
bark  of  war  bore  down  on  the  sitting 
Pembroke  and  anchored,  broadside  on, 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  away.  About  mid- 
night a  signal  gun  was  fired  from  a  bluff. 
Other  batteries  along  the  coast  spoke  up 
in  chorus,  and  the  bark  began  pouring 
salvos  at  the  Pembroke,  while  a  second 
Japanese  warship  came  up  from  wind- 
ward, all  guns  firing. 

By  dint  of  steam  and  Yankee  seaman- 
ship, the  Pembroke  dodged  through  a  little- 
frequented  channel,  outran  the  enemy, 
and  escaped.  The  next  two  vessels  essay- 
ing the  Straits  were  French  and  Dutch, 
and  with  nice  impartiality  the  Japanese 
shelled  them  both.  But  the  distinction  of 
being  first  belongs  to  the  Pembroke  and 
the  flag  she  flew. 

NEWS  of  the  outrage  reached  Shanghai 
with  the  Pembroke  on  July  3rd,  and 
was  relayed  to  the  American  consul  in 
Yokohama  on  the  tenth.  The  Western 
ministers  in  Yokohama  all  knew  that  the 
Imperial  government  of  the  Mikado  was 
plotting  to  expel  foreigners,  but  they  had 
been  privately  assured  by  the  Shogun 
— head  of  what  with  some  license  might 
be  called  the  civilian  government — that 
nothing  would  come  of  these  plots. 

Robert  Pruyn,  the  American  consul, 
had  been  especially  told  by  the  Shogun's 
envoys  at  a  midnight  conference  on  June 
22nd  that  even  then  efforts  were  being 


514 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


made  to  bring  the  Mikado  around  to  an 
amicable  attitude.  The  next  day,  forty- 
eight  hours  before  the  deadUne  that  had 
been  secretly  set  almost  a  month  earlier, 
the  Western  Powers  were  again  promised 
that,  no  matter  how  strongly  the  Mikado 
and  the  feudal  princes  favored  expulsion, 
nothing  would  be  done  until  further  ne- 
gotiations had  taken  place  at  the  Imperial 
court  and  that  this  would  of  course  take  a 
long  time.  On  the  twenty-fourth  the 
Japanese  envoys  reluctantly  presented  the 
Mikado's  expulsion  order  but  let  it  be 
understood  that  this  was  a  pro  forma  mat- 
ter and  that  no  immediate  enforcement 
was  contemplated  by  the  Shogunate. 

Pruyn,  who  had  come  to  Yokohama  the 
year  before  when  Townsend  Harris  re- 
tired, was,  like  his  predecessor,  an  alert, 
wise,  and  forceful  man.  Through  a  long 
series  of  Japanese  attacks  on  foreign  resi- 
dents which  had  included  murder,  arson, 
and  pillaging  of  legation  property,  Pruyn 
had  doggedly  held  out — especially  against 
the  British — for  moderation  and  patience 
on  the  part  of  the  Powers.  But  when  the 
Emperor's  expulsion  order  was  given  him 
by  the  deprecating  officials,  Pruyn's  an- 
swer was  quick  and  spirited: 

"A  solemn  treaty  has  been  made  by 
the  government  of  Japan  with  the  United 
States  granting  to  its  citizens  the  right  to 
reside  in  and  trade  at  these  ports.  The 
right  thus  acquired  will  not  be  surren- 
dered, and  cannot  be  withdrawn.  Even 
to  propose  such  a  measure  is  an  insult  to 
my  country,  and  equivalent  to  a  declara- 
tion of  war." 

The  envoys  were  so  sorry.  The  Ameri- 
cans must  not  misunderstand.  The  Sho- 
gun  himself  wanted  only  friendship.  The 
Emperor,  shut  away  in  his  temple,  was 
under  the  influence  of  bad  men,  but  in 
time  good  judgment  would  prevail.  There 
was  needed  only  a  little  more  time.  The 
American  consul  would  surely  let  them 
continue  negotiations  with  the  Emperor. 
That  night  the  prearranged  signal  gun 
was  fired  on  a  headland  and  the  Pembroke 
ran  for  the  China  Sea. 

WHEN  Pruyn  heard  of  the  Pembroke 
attack  fifteen  days  later,  he  may 
have  recalled  Townsend  Harris's  amiable 
words:   "They  are  the  greatest  liars  on 


earth;  however,  to  lie  is,  for  a  Japanese, 
simply  to  speak."  Pruyn  himself  had  no 
illusions  about  the  episode.  He  wrote  to 
Secretary  Seward  that  the  acts  of  the 
Prince  of  the  Choshiu,  in  whose  waters 
the  attack  took  place,  "if  justified  by  the 
government,  constituted  war;  if  disavowed 
were  acts  of  piracy."  And  he  sent  the 
U.  S.  S.  Wyoming  under  Commander  Mc- 
Dougal — then  standing  by  in  Japanese 
waters — to  find  out. 

At  10:45  on  the  morning  of  July  16, 
1863,  the  Wyoming,  making  no  warlike 
gestures  and  with  no  battle  colors  flying, 
entered  the  Straits  of  Shimonoseki.  Ly- 
ing in  wait  were  a  bark,  a  brig,  and  a 
steamer,  all  showing  the  Imperial  ensign. 
The  moment  the  Wyoming  appeared  these, 
three  opened  fire,  and  as  she  steamed  into 
the  mouth  of  the  Straits  hoisting  her  colors,! 
six  shore  batteries,  mounting  from  two  to' 
four  guns  each,  went  into  action.  The 
war  was  on. 

The  Straits  at  this  point  are  less  than 
three-quarters  of  a  mile  wide  and  turbu- 
lent as  Hell  Gate.  Caution  would  have 
dictated  a  withdrawal  to  consider  the 
situation,  and  a  new  approach.  Instead, 
Commander  McDougal  drove  squarely 
on,  slugging  his  way  between  Japanese 
vessels  "at  pistol  shot,"  turned  the  Wyo- 
ming for  a  better  broadside,  grounded  in 
the  tide  race,  fought  his  ship  free,  and 
came  out  the  way  he  had  gone  in,  slugging. 
When  the  cease-fire  order  came  at  12:10, 
the  Wyoming  had  four  dead  and  seven 
wounded;  her  smokestack  and  rigging 
had  been  partly  shot  away,  and  she  had 
been  hulled  eleven  times.  But  she  had 
blown  up  the  steamer,  left  the  brig  sink- 
ing, silenced  the  bark,  and  wrought  evi- 
dent destruction  among  the  shore  batteries. 

But  was  it  war?  Was  the  Prince  of  the 
Choshiu  acting  under  Imperial  orders  or 
on  his  own  piratical  hook?  We  know  this 
much.  We  know  that  when  word  reached 
the  Mikado  that  the  Kokura  clan  across 
the  Straits  had  taken  no  part  in  the  battle, 
the  Son  of  Heaven  secretly  upbraided  the 
Kokura  leaders  for  their  disloyalty. 

But  that  was  the  Mikado.  The  Mikado 
was  under  the  influence  of  bad  men  and 
must  be  forgiven.  The  Shogun,  the  lib- 
eral, tolerant  Shogun,  had  been  earnestly 
trying  to  avert  war  by  prolonging  confer- 


MASSACRE 


515 


rnccs  and  cultivating  the  fricnclshi})  of  the 
Western  governments. 

Iwen  I*ruyn  may  have  beheved  this  for 
a  {"ull  yeai-,  while  fruitless  palaver  con- 
tinued and  the  Straits  stayed  elosed.  But 
linally,  when  a  flotilla  of  Powers  vessels 
steamed  into  Shimonoseki  and  the  Prince 
saw  that  the  Westerners  meant  business, 
he  hastily  sent  his  councillors  out  with  a 


petitioii  f(jr  amnesty,  and  confessed  tliat 
the  firiiif^  on  the  shij)s  had  been  at  the 
direct  orders  of  the  Mikado  and  the  Shogun. 

His  plea  concludes  prettily:  "I  felt  no 
enmity  towards  you,  nor  did  I  wish  to 
bring  disaster  upon  my  own  people;  my 
sole  desire  is  .   .   .  peace." 

There  matters  stood  for  seventy-seven 
years. 


MASSACRE 


MARTHA     KELLER 


1IKE  peeled  and  painted  posts,  like  copper  skin  is, 
^      The  timber's  bald  and  bare. 
As  red  as  sumac  is,  as  sharp  as  sin  is, 

The  copper  leaves  like  arrows  cut  the  air. 

The  sinkhole's  dry.     The  water  hole  is  falling. 

Under  the  storehouse  shed 
Like  fog  the  smoke  sneaks  in  and  coils  there,  crawling 

Under  the  boarding  like  a  copperhead. 

The  hush  that  waits  between  the  screech-owl's  shrieking 

Grows  to  a  freshet's  roar. 
The  doorsill  and  the  shaken  door  are  creaking. 

The  feathered  wind  stands  up  and  fills  the  door. 

The  gun  is  broke.     The  axe's  edge  is  blunted. 

Rust's  on  the  hunting  knives. 
There's  more  than  women  here  is  hid  and  hunted. 

There  are  as  many  widows  here  as  wives. 

What  little  water's  left  is  red  and  muddy. 

The  silence  roars  like  sound. 
This  is  a  spot  where  more  than  ground  is  bloody, 

Though  hereabout  was  always  bloody  ground. 


{First  a  teacher^  then  a  newspaperman,  Dan  Stiles  is  now 
a  lecturer  who  visits  several  hundred  high  schools  each 
year  in  the  course  oj  his  travels  over  the  United  States. 


I 


LOOK   AT   AMERICA'S   HIGH    SCHOOLS 


DAN    STILES 


THE  Connecticut  high  school  in  which 
I  taught  fifteen  years  ago  occupied 
seven  classrooms  on  the  second  floor 
of  a  building  the  first  floor  of  which  housed 
the  grades.  That  same  high  school  today 
has  its  own  new  building  with  twenty 
classrooms,  an  auditorium  and  gymna- 
sium, a  library,  a  nurse's  room,  an  art 
department,  a  home  economics  depart- 
ment, carpentry  and  machine  shops,  mu- 
sic studios,  a  photographic  darkroom,  and 
so  on.     It  cost  $400,000. 

Multiply  that  instance  by  several  thou- 
sand, add  five  or  six  hundred  high  schools 
whose  cost  exceeded  a  million  dollars  (and 
a  handful  which  cost  as  much  as  three 
million  apiece),  and  you  have  a  rough 
idea  of  the  physical  growth  of  American 
high  schools  in  the  past  two  decades. 
Concurrently  there  has  been  an  equally 
impressive  expansion  of  school  curricula 
and  activities,  together  with  a  vast  amount 
of  experimentation  and  pioneering  in  ed- 
ucational methods.  And  until  the  war 
there  was  a  corresponding  growth  in  high 
school  enrollment. 

And  yet,  spectacular  as  this  growth  now 
appears  in  the  aggregate,  it  has  taken 
place  with  so  little  fanfare  that  many  peo- 
ple are  almost  completely  unaware  of  it, 
except  for  what  they  see  in  their  own 
communities.  The  authors  of  books  and 
articles  on  education  have  concerned  them- 
selves chiefly  either  with  the  progressive 
and  rebel  schools  which  generate  news  of  a 


picturesque  order,  or  with  the  colleges  and 
universities  and  the  philosophy  and  aims 
of  liberal  education.  The  high  schools 
have  been  pretty  generally  ignored. 

It  is  high  time  we  examined  these 
schools  and  took  stock  of  their  achieve- 
ments and  shortcomings.  Even  if  we  were 
concerned  primarily  with  the  minority  of 
our  citizens  who  go  in  for  higher  education, 
it  would  be  foolish  to  ignore  the  high 
schools.  Obviously  there  can  be  no  sound 
general  program  of  higher  education  which 
does  not  begin  where  the  high  schools 
leave  off,  but  you  would  never  guess  it 
from  reading  much  of  the  current  litera- 
ture on  liberal  education.  The  authors 
have  an  irritating  kinship  with  the  no- 
torious Vermonter  who,  when  asked  how 
to  get  to  such  and  such  a  village,  said, 
"Well,  in  the  first  place  you  ought  to  start 
from  somewheres  else." 

Anyhow,  the  majority  of  Americans 
never  go  to  college.  For  them  the  high 
schools  are  of  major  importance  in  their 
own  right,  not  as  a  bridge  to  some  more 
exalted  form  of  education.  So  in  the 
broadest  sense  it  is  upon  the  high  schools 
rather  than  upon  the  colleges  that  the  fu- 
ture of  American  education  depends. 

What,  then,  does  the  enormous  recent 
expansion  of  the  high  schools  mean?  Are 
the  boys  and  girls  who  graduate  from  the 
million-dollar  plants  better  educated  than 
their  predecessors  who  studied  in  less 
elaborate    buildings?    Are   they   better 


LOOK    AT    AMERICA'S    HIGH    SCHOOLS 


517 


»rcpared   to   meet  the   problems   of  the 
uciety  into  which  they  emerge? 

THERE  is  no  scientific  yardstick  you  can 
apply,    of  course,    but    thousands   of 
)arents  feel  that  their  children  don't  learn 
cry  much  in  high  school,  except  things 
vhich  have  to  be  unlearned.     Their  im- 
)ressi()n  is  corroborated  by  the  doubts  of 
(  hoohnen    who    arc    honest    enough    to 
juestion  the  value  of  their  own  eflorts;  by 
he  attitude  of  men  in  public  position,  such 
IS  a  state  publicity  director  who  said  to  me 
ecently,  after  describing  two  new  million- 
:lollar  schools  in  his  state:  "But,  you  know, 
►ve're  still  not  doing  a  very  good  job  of 
educating  our  children."     In  short,  with 
the  high  schools  approaching  the  ultimate 
in  plant  and  facilities,  the  ultimate  in  ef- 
fectively educated  youth  seems  to  be  no- 
where in  sight. 

It  may  be  nearer,  however,  than  now 
appears  likely.  If  the  high  schools  have 
so  far  been  unsuccessful  in  producing  a 
program  to  match  their  streamlined  build- 
ings, it's  not  for  lack  of  trying.  Putting 
aside,  for  the  moment,  the  special  wartime 
problems  and  experiences,  I  believe  that 
out  of  the  welter  of  experimentation  and 
trial  and  error  and  searching  which  has 
been  going  on  during  the  past  fifteen  years 
from  Maine  to  California,  the  outline  of  a 
new  program  is  beginning  to  emerge. 
How  fast  it  takes  shape  and  how  closely  it 
conforms  to  the  pattern  now  indicated  will 
depend  almost  entirely  on  the  attitude  of 
the  public,  since  schoolmen,  understand- 
ably enough,  are  loath  to  get  too  far  ahead 
of  community  opinion.  And  the  willing- 
ness of  the  public,  in  turn,  to  support  a 
new  and  quite  radical  high  school  program 
will  depend  on  how  serious  the  average 
person  believes  the  present  faults  to  be, 
how  well  he  understands  recent  trends  and 
tendencies.  I  believe  it  is  worth  while  to 
describe  some  of  these  developments  and 
attempt  to  appraise  them. 

II 

•ANY  high  school  administrators  be- 
lieve  that  the  most  significant  re- 
cent development  in  high  school  educa- 
tion— though  by  no  means  the  most  obvi- 
ous or  clean-cut — has  been  the  extension 


of  the  influence  of  the  school  over  more 
and  more  of  the  students'  waking  hours. 
This  has  gone  largely  unnoticed  because  it 
has  been  very  gradual  and  scattered  and 
because  it  has  been  hidden  under  an  ap- 
parently opposite  development — the  short- 
ening of  the  high  school  day.  But  while 
many  high  schools  have  been  adopting  the 
short  or  so-called  solid  session,  they  have 
at  the  same  time  been  lengthening  the 
school  day  informally  by  the  addition  to 
their  programs  of  shop  and  work  courses 
and  a  wide  variety  of  extracurricular 
activities  which  are  taking  up  an  increas- 
ing portion  of  students'  leisure  time. 
Every  hour  a  boy  or  girl  devotes  to  a 
school-sponsored  activity,  whether  on  Sat- 
urday, Sunday,  or  in  the  evening,  may  be 
properly  counted  as  one  more  under  school 
influence. 

Probably  no  school  in  the  country  runs  a 
sufficiently  broad  program  of  activities  to 
provide  every  student  with  something  to 
fill  all  his  leisure  hours.  But  several  hun- 
dred schools  have  gone  far  enough  in  this 
direction  to  enlist  the  full-time  interest  of  a 
certain  percentage  of  students  as  partici- 
pants, and  a  larger  proportion  as  specta- 
tors, in  a  surprising  variety  of  activities. 
There  are  schools  at  which  something  is 
going  on  every  night  in  the  week  and  in 
good  weather  on  Saturdays  as  well.  Some 
of  this  activity  is  merely  expansion  of  what 
you  could  have  found  twenty  years  ago. 
Middle  Western  schools  have  made  a 
major  activity  of  football — and  a  good 
business,  too — by  equipping  their  playing 
fields  for  night  games.  The  growth  of 
basketball  needs  no  rehearsal  here.  School 
bands,  under  the  impetus  of  the  efforts  of 
musical  instrument  companies  which  saw 
radio  killing  their  business  in  the  1920's, 
have  become  amazingly  popular  in  many 
parts  of  the  country.  The  traditional 
school  play  has  grown  in  some  schools  to  a 
year-round  program  of  student-operated 
entertainment.  Other  activities  are  the 
result  of  new  developments  in  the  adult 
community.  Movie  clubs  are  now  com- 
mon, some  schools  having  complete  equip- 
ment to  make  annual  records  of  school 
activities  and  even  their  own  feature  pic- 
tures. Students  in  many  of  the  bigger 
schools  have  organized  broadcasting  sta- 
tions to  operate  over  the  school  public 


518 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


address  system .  E  astern  schools  have  win- 
ter sports  clubs;  Western  schools  hold 
rodeos. 

The  list  of  activities  includes  many 
which  are  not  play. "  ^Parents  who  have  to 
get  stern  before  Johnny  will  mow  the 
lawn  or  Mary  will  pick  up  her  room  are 
vexed  to  see  the  same  youngsters  working 
like  beavers  to  get  out  the  school  paper,  or 
print  the  senior  classbook,  or  build  desired 
equipment  for  the  school.  The  war  has 
added  new  activities  in  the  field  work. 
The  biggest  scrap  piles  I  saw  last  year 
were  on  high  school  grounds.  Crews  of 
boys  combed  the  countryside  in  many 
places — on  their  own  time,  too — and 
pushed  or  dragged  in  old  cars  or  farm 
equipment  that  nobody  else  would  bother 
to  move.  The  contributions  of  students  in 
war  stamps  and  bonds  are  astonishing.  In 
some  communities  they  have  organized 
their  own  drives.  I  heard  a  fifteen-year- 
old  girl  in  the  Star  Valley  High  School  in 
Wyoming  report  to  the  student  body  that 
the  campaign  to  raise  $1,150  for  a  jeep  had 
been  "very  successful";  they  had  $1,250 
and  had  decided  to  go  after  a  second. 
One  of  the  school  bands  in  Superior,  Wis- 
consin, gives  concerts  at  the  shipyard  for 
the  night  shift.  In  short,  in  the  course  of 
visiting  several  hundred  high  schools  a 
year,  I  have  learned  to  expect  almost 
anything,  from  the  odor  of  freshly  cooked 
doughnuts  to  an  election  parade,  when  I 
enter  the  doors  of  a  school. 

THE  fact  that  most  of  the  drive  behind 
this  expanded  activities  program,  and 
a  good  many  of  the  ideas,  have  come  from 
the  students  themselves  is  compelling  evi- 
dence that  they  are  genuinely  interested; 
that  this  program  does,  in  truth,  constitute 
an  extension  of  school  influence.  How 
valuable  this  kind  of  influence  may  be 
educationally  depends  to  a  large  extent 
upon  how  well  it  is  integrated  with  the 
general  school  program.  Some  school- 
men are  content  to  promote  and  supervise 
outside  activities  merely  as  a  means  of 
keeping  their  students  out  of  mischief, 
finding  it  easier  to  do  that  than  to  be  con- 
tinually explaining  why  it  is  not  their 
business  what  students  do  outside  of  school. 
Others — and  their  communities  owe  them 
much — are    attempting    to    develop    the 


students'  urge  for  activities  into  a  well- 
rounded  program  of  work  and  play  that 
will  keep  them  properly  occupied  much  of 
the  time.  I  heard  one  such  principal,  at 
Twin  Falls,  Idaho,  personally  urging  the 
student  body  to  make  dates  and  come  to  a 
school  dance.  He  told  me  afterward  that 
he  had  helped  make  the  arrangements  and 
that  he  expected  to  attend — and  dance. 
But  whether  students  get  help  from  their 
schools  or  not,  they  are  likely  to  go  ahead 
anyway  on  projects  that  they  regard  as 
desirable.  A  recent  article  in  the  New 
Tork  Times  described  a  number  of  juke 
joints  organized  by  teen-agers  in  various 
parts  of  the  country  because  the  young- 
sters were  not  satisfied  with  those  provided 
by  the  community. 

Only  a  few  attempts  have  been  made  to 
extend  school  influence  formally  by  length- 
ening schedules.  Nashville,  Tennessee, 
put  its  high  schools  on  an  annual  schedule 
of  forty-eight  weeks  a  decade  ago,  then 
abandoned  it  because  it  proved  too  ex- 
pensive and  graduated  students  at  too 
tender  an  age.  Other  school  leaders  who 
became  interested  pointed  out,  however, 
that  year-round  operation — if  accompa- 
nied by  sufficient  reorganization — would 
not  cost  more  than  taxpayers  would  ac- 
cept, and  that  you  could  easily  keep  stu- 
dents in  school  until  the  proper  graduating 
age  simply  by  giving  them  more  work  to 
do.  The  idea  is  still  alive.  The  schools 
of  Gary,  Indiana,  have  from  time  to  time 
held  voluntary  summer  sessions  at  which 
students  were  off"ered  a  program  of  work, 
study,  and  play.  The  attendance  was 
surprisingly  large. 

The  great  significance  of  this  extension 
of  school  influence  lies  in  its  ability,  if  and 
when  it  becomes  sufficiently  widespread, 
to  eliminate  what  is  often  considered  a 
major  weakness  of  the  whole  high  school 
system,  its  restricted  operating  time. 
Some  high  school  educators  declare  that  if 
they  could  exercise  some  sort  of  influence 
over  their  students  for  three-quarters  of 
the  time,  or  even  half,  in  place  of  the  scant 
quarter  allowed  under  present  schedules, 
they  would  have  gone  a  long  way  toward 
producing  effective  education.  They  re- 
gard the  expanded  activities  program  as  a 
potential  means  of  achieving  this  end. 
The  program  has  a  negative  value  in  that 


LOOK    AT    AMERICA'S    HIGH    SCHOOLS 


519 


i^ivcs  the  student  less  time  to  himself — 
lie  which  he  might,  and  too  often  docs, 
ipcnd  in  an  undesirable  environment  or 
jinder  iniproper  influence;  it  has  a  positive 
luc  in  that  it  contributes  heavily  to  the 
,(uclcnt\s  general  preparation  for  adult 
ife. 

Theoretically,    the    home   should    bear 
ome    of    the    responsibility    for    keeping 
•outh  occupied  and  teaching  him  how  the 
idult    world    operates.     Practically,    and 
narkcdly  so  since  the  advent  of  the  auto- 
nobile,  the  teen-ager  is  pretty  much  on 
lis  own  out  of  school.     The  hundreds  of 
voungstcrs  you  fmd  on  the  streets  of  any 
\merican  town  after  dark  reveal  this  only 
:oo    clearly,    and    the    grim   statistics    of 
juvenile   delinquency    are    proof  enough 
that  some  of  them  get  into  trouble.     And 
even  if  ninety-five  per  cent  avoid  serious 
trouble,    the    complete    futility    of   these 
leisure  hours  is  a  criminal  waste.     I  over- 
heard five  high  school  girls  holding  a  con- 
ference the  other  night  on  the  main  street 
of  a  small  Indiana  city.     The  subject  was 
what  to  do  next.     Said  one:  "Let's  walk 
around  some  more,  then  have  some  ice 
cream."     "No,"  said  another,  "let's  have 
some  ice  cream,  then  walk  around."     A 
little  further  down  the  street  a  group  of 
high  school  boys  were  taking  turns  pushing 
one   another  ofT  the  curb.     I   caught   a 
snatch  of  conversation  from  another  group 
of  girls:  "Might  as  well,  there's  nothing  to 
do  at  home."     Or  at  school,  she  might 
have  added. 

At  present  this  trend  toward  extension 
of  the  influence  of  the  high  school  seems 
well  established,  and  growing.  Its  fur- 
ther development  seems  likely  to  be  has- 
tened by  several  factors.  The  students 
themselves  are  voluntarily  putting  them- 
selves under  an  increasing  measure  of 
school  supervision  by  constantly  seeking 
and  devising  more  school  activities.  The 
glittering  facilities  of  the  new  buildings 
are  a  continuous  invitation  to  activity. 
And  sooner  or  later  educators  and  parents 
will  be  moved  to  make  a  larger  contribu- 
tion than  at  present. 

To  predict  that  high  schools  will  some 
day  operate  full  time  as  a  matter  of  course 
is  to  go  uncomfortably  far  out  on  a  limb, 
yet  the  idea  is  not  fantastic  and  a  few 
educators  are  already  dreaming  about  it. 


They  envision  a  school  organization  which 
would  never  cease  to  function,  day  or 
night,  summer  or  winter,  and  which  would 
carry  on  a  continuous  program  of  classes, 
study,  reading,  work,  recreation,  clubs. 
With  continuity  of  administration  the 
schedule  itself  could  become  much  more 
elastic,  adapting  itself  to  the  needs  and 
tempo  of  community  life  in  normal  times 
as  it  is  now  doing  under  stress  of  war. 
There  might  even  be  classes  at  night; 
there's  no  better  time  for  a  science  class 
to  study  astronomy,  for  instance.  Advo- 
cates of  such  a  program  would  shorten 
holiday  vacations,  save  the  longer  ones  for 
seed  time  or  harvest  or  some  other  funda- 
mental community  need.  But  whether 
the  schoolhouse  was  actually  open  or  not, 
the  school  organization  would  never  stop 
exerting  its  influence  in  one  way  or  another. 

A  SECOND  highly  significant  trend  in  high 
^/^  school  education  is  the  increasing 
recognition  by  schoolmen  of  the  value  of 
extracurricular  activities  as  a  vehicle  of 
teaching.  This  development  has  been 
obscured  by  the  multiplication  of  the  ac- 
tivities themselves — the  list  now  includes 
probably  a  hundred  difTerent  items — and 
by  the  tendency  of  some  schoolmen,  al- 
ready noted,  to  use  them  merely  as  a 
means  of  keeping  students  out  of  mischief. 
Yet  ten  years  ago  the  principal  of  a  large 
Eastern  high  school  told  me  that  he  con- 
sidered his  activities  program  to  be  fully  as 
important  as  the  formal  course  of  study. 
This  attitude  has  become  increasingly 
widespread. 

Used  first  to  supplement  the  teaching  of 
the  fundamental  skills  of  reading,  writing, 
speaking,  and  figuring,  activities  programs 
are  now  used  in  some  schools  to  teach 
citizenship,  co-operation,  a  social  sense, 
getting  along  with  others,  principles  of 
business,  and  several  other  skills  and  qual- 
ities which  can  be  acquired  in  no  other 
way.  What  this  amounts  to  in  a  few 
schools  is  a  definite  shift  in  emphasis  from 
what  can  be  learned  from  books  to  de- 
velopment of  character  and  preparation  to 
meet  the  common  problems  of  adult  life. 
But  whether  accompanied  by  a  change  in 
educational  philosophy  or  not,  the  activi- 
ties program  is  now  widely  used  as  a 
vehicle  of  education. 


520 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Student  government  provides  a  good 
example  of  what  is  happening.  As  origi- 
nally introduced  in  high  schools  it  fitted 
the  definition  of  "extracurricular"  activ- 
ity  pretty  closely — something  for  the  stu- 
dents to  do  in  addition  to  the  formal 
course  of  study.  A  few  alert  educators 
were  quick  to  perceive,  however,  that  it 
provided  a  first-class  means  of  teaching 
democratic  government.  As  one  of  them 
put  it  recently:  "I  believe  it's  the  only 
way  to  teach  government.  What's  the 
use  of  having  students  learn  the  rules  of 
democracy  out  of  a  book  but  imposing  on 
them  at  the  same  time  a  school  govern- 
ment which  is  in  too  many  cases  entirely 
autocratic?  The  foundation  of  democ- 
racy is  consent  of  the  governed  and  it's 
far  more  important  for  young  people  to 
learn  that  than  to  be  able  to  parrot  the 
qualifications  of  a  Senator."  As  a  result 
of  that  attitude  an  increasing  number  of 
school  administrators  have  turned  over  a 
large  share  of  the  responsibility  of  school 
government  to  the  students.  The  form 
and  mechanics  difi'er  widely,  but  the  most 
successful  are  those  under  which  students 
are  allowed  a  considerable  voice  in  policy- 
making as  a  reward  for  keeping  order. 

As  such  governments  become  estab- 
lished, students  are  given  more  and  more 
responsibility.  I  know  of  one  school  in 
Pennsylvania  where  the  student  council  is 
entrusted  with  the  finances  of  all  extra- 
curricular activities,  running  into  several 
thousand  dollars  a  year.  All  revenue 
goes  into  a  common  treasury  and  the 
council  decides  how  it  shall  be  spent. 
They  seldom  have  to  call  on  the  principal 
for  intervention.  The  Rochester,  Min- 
nesota, high  school  has  an  ethics  board,  a 
group  of  students  who  seek  by  persuasion 
and  example  to  alter  the  attitude  of  stu- 
dents who  do  not  actually  break  school 
laws  but  who  reveal  antisocial  tendencies. 
Students  living  under  such  a  government 
are  not  conscious  that  they  are  learning 
civics,  but  what  better  preparation  could 
they  have  for  running  their  own  aff'airs  in 
adult  life?  And  as  a  highly  desirable  by- 
product, properly  conducted  student  gov- 
ernment provides  the  best  method  of 
school  discipline. 

Many  other  activities  are  being  con- 
verted from  irrelevant  pastimes  to  effective 


means  of  education.  School  newspaper? 
are  used  to  teach  a  variety  of  skills  and 
experience  ranging  from  objective  and  ac- 
curate reporting  to  business  management 
and  typesetting.  Any  club  which  is  al- 
lowed to  run  its  own  aff'airs  teaches  co^ 
operation  and  the  niceties  of  getting  along 
with  others.  Travel  clubs  teach  geog-, 
raphy;  art  clubs  lead  students  to  an  ap- 
preciation of  form  and  color;  bands  and 
orchestras  and  glee  clubs  teach  teamwork 
and  a  feeling  for  music  in  general.  Dra- 
matic clubs  generate  an  interest  in  the 
theater;  debating  societies  foster  good 
speech.     The  list  is  long. 

An  increasing  number  of  school  activi- 
ties are  being  used  to  teach  the  essentials 
of  community  business  activities.  Local 
business  men  usually  decry  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  profit  motive  into  the  schools 
because  it  means  a  little  loss  of  revenue  to 
themselves;  but  as  long  as  the  nation's 
economy  is  based  on  the  capitalistic  sys- 
tem there  seems  to  be  no  good  reason  why 
business  principles  should  not  be  taught  in 
school  in  a  practical  manner.  School  or- 
ganizations such  as  athletic  teams,  bands, 
orchestras,  and  dramatic  societies  have 
been  on  a  commercial  basis  for  years;  that 
is,  they  get  up  a  show  of  some  kind  and 
present  it  to  the  public  or  to  the  students 
for  profit.  Such  activities  provide  good 
training  in  business  and  furnish  at  the 
same  time  a  proving  ground  for  would-be 
members  of  the  show  world.  The  idea 
seems  to  be  spreading.  Schools  in  Mil- 
waukee last  winter  were  running  regular 
feature  movies  during  the  noon  hour  un- 
der student  management  and  with  paid 
admission.  Many  schools  present  pro- 
fessional assembly  programs  on  that  basis. 
Educators  all  over  the  country  are  pro- 
moting more  entertainment  by  and  for  the 
students.  The  juke-joint  clubs  previously 
mentioned  suggest  another  legitimate  pos- 
sibility for  student-operated  entertain- 
ment. The  idea  of  a  juke  joint  in  a  high 
school  would  no  doubt  be  horrifying  to 
many  school  board  members  but  certainly 
it  would  be  no  more  shocking  than  some 
of  the  dives  high  school  students  now 
frequent. 

A  school  cafeteria  in  which  students 
plan,  cook,  and  serve  their  own  meals — 
and    take    the    profit — serves    the    same 


LOOK    AT    AMLRiCA'S    IlKJIl    SCHOOLS 


521 


Purpose  as  one  operated  professionally  and 
provides  good  training  for  the  students 
)articipatinLC.  Students  in  Phoenix,  Ari- 
',c)na,  not  only  operate  their  own  cafeteria; 
!  hey  built  it  from  the  ground  up,  building 
uid  equipment  both.  A  New  Hampshire 
I  ligh  school  put  its  auto  repair  shop  on  a 
■onnnerciai  basis,  accepting  work  from  the 
public  to  give  the  boys  some  realistic  prac- 
lice.  Local  garage  men  no  longer  object; 
when  they  want  a  mechanic  they  go  to  the 
high  school  and  get  one  already  trained. 

It  is  true  that  the  cafeteria  and  the 
garage  grew  out  of  the  formal  curriculum 
rather  than  the  activities  program.  But 
here  is  an  arresting  idea.  If  the  students 
do  these  things  because  they  find  them 
interesting,  how  can  you  draw  a  line?  To 
a  student,  a  class  in  cooking  or  mechanics 
IS  still  a  class;  running  a  cafeteria  or  a 
garage  is  fun.  Educators  with  their  eyes 
open  have  noticed  that  with  interest. 
Some  of  them  now  believe  that  eventually 
the  activities  program  will  supplant  the 
formal  course  of  study  as  the  core  or 
foundation  of  the  whole  school  program. 
A  few  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  since  formal 
classroom  study  has  proved  largely  inef- 
fective, schools  should  scrap  most  of  what 
cannot  be  taught  through  activities.  This 
is  the  extreme  view,  but  there  is  no  deny- 
ing the  present  vigorous  trend  in  that 
direction  and  nobody  can  be  sure  where  it 
will  stop. 

Ill 

A  NOTHER  promising  development  in  high 
J\^  school  education  which  has  largely 
escaped  public  notice  is  the  attack  on  the 
formality  and  dullness  of  the  conventional 
classroom  method  of  instruction — lecture 
and  recitation.  Many  progressive  educa- 
tors have  long  since  realized  the  essential 
weakness  of  a  system  based  largely  on 
memorizing  and  have  tried  assiduously  to 
devise  more  fruitful  methods.  But  the 
point  is  that  not  only  the  rebel  schools  now 
use  these  methods.  Even  in  fairly  con- 
servative high  schools  classes  have  been 
turned  into  conferences;  work  is  assigned 
by  units  rather  than  by  pages  in  a  book; 
dramatizations,  movies,  speakers  from  the 
community,  trips  to  events  and  places — all 
have  been  and  are  being  used  in  the  hope 
that  a  little  more  fact  will  stick  in  the 


student's  head.  In  some  schools  not  more 
than  half  the  students  can  be  found  in  the 
conventional  qucstion-and-answcr  session 
at  any  one  time. 

Yet  clearly  these  changes  cover  only  a 
very  partial  solution  for  an  obstinately 
diilicult  problem. 

Probably  more  energy  has  been  ex- 
pended in  recent  years  on  the  problem  of 
how  to  make  education  stick  than  on  any 
other — with  less  result.  The  New  Tork 
Times  survey  revealing  the  ignorance  of 
college  freshmen  on  matters  of  American 
history  and  geography  was  no  surprise  to 
a  good  many  schoolmen;  some  have  told 
me  that  they  were  surprised  the  freshmen 
remembered  anything. 

As  to  what's  wrong,  I  think  the  laymen 
have  a  more  acceptable  answer  than  the 
profession.  Get  any  parent  to  talking 
about  education  and  he'll  express  in  some 
form  the  idea  that  much  of  what  is  taught 
in  high  school  is  not  related  to  the  stu- 
dent's life  or  interest.  A  small-town 
banker  said:  "My  boy  will  sit  up  half  the 
night  reading  a  book  about  radio  because 
he  wants  to  build  his  own  set.  He  won't 
study  American  history  or  algebra  that 
way  because  he  can't  see  any  use  for  the 
knowledge."  The  most  popular  courses 
in  high  school  are  the  homemaking  course 
for  the  girls  and  shop  work  for  the  boys. 
Students  put  extra  time  and  energy  into 
these  things  because  they  see  a  value  in 
them.  If  they  could  see  equal  value  in 
other  courses  they  would  probably  apply 
themselves  as  diligently;  so  the  school's 
job  is  primarily  one  of  leading  students  to 
recognize  such  values  rather  than  trying 
to  invent  ways  of  making  them  remember 
things  they  have  no  interest  in. 

So  far  the  attack  on  this  problem  has 
been  largely  negative — the  elimination  of 
courses  which  appear  to  have  the  least 
immediate  value  and  hence  the  least 
interest  for  the  student.  Latin  has  been 
the  most  popular  target.  The  general 
attitude  of  schoolmen  is  epitomized  in  the 
statement  of  a  New  Hampshire  high  school 
principal  who  beamed:  "We've  got  rid  of 
two  years  of  Latin  and  we're  working  on 
the  other  two."  Ancient  history  has  also 
been  a  popular  target.  And  regardless  of 
the  merits  of  the  debate  over  the  value  of 
modern  languages,   these   too  are  being 


522 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


crowded  out.  A  Connecticut  high  school 
has  a  half-year  summary  course  on  both 
ancient  and  modern  languages  which  con- 
tains all  it  is  believed  the  average  student 
need  know.  Many  school  people  think 
that  devoting  an  entire  year  each  to  al- 
gebra, geometry,  physics,  and  chemistry 
is  a  flagrant  waste  of  time.  They  prefer 
general  courses  covering  all  branches  of 
science  from  astronomy  to  zoology,  with 
the  double  objective  of  teaching  a  student 
how  the  machine  age  operates  and  pro- 
viding him  with  the  background  to  enjoy 
more  completely  the  physical  world  around 
him. 

|UT  this  negative  approach  seems  to  miss 
the  real  point  entirely.  If  Latin  is 
dropped  from  the  curriculum  it  should  be 
dropped  because  educators  and  parents 
are  agreed  that  it  is  less  valuable  than 
some  other  subject  which  will  replace  it, 
not  because  students  see  no  value  in  it. 
If  a  subject  is  valuable,  by  adult  standards, 
but  the  students  do  not  see  its  value,  then 
it  is  the  school's  job  to  make  that  value 
clear.  Once  that  is  accomplished  the 
students'  interest  will  be  aroused  and  they 
will  learn. 

There  have  always  been  individual 
teachers  who  could  strike  sparks  from  even 
the  soggiest  subject  matter  and  who  some- 
how managed  to  infect  a  majority  of  their 
pupils  with  the  kind  of  interest  which 
makes  learning  possible.  But  such  in- 
dividuals are  scarce,  and  no  method  has 
been  discovered  whereby  they  can  be 
systematically  produced  either  at  teachers' 
colleges  or  elsewhere.  It  is  possible  that 
more  of  them  would  turn  up  if  teachers' 
salaries  were  high  enough  to  attract  more 
people  with  ambition  and  ability.  As  it  is 
now,  teachers'  salaries  are  so  low — espe- 
cially in  the  rural  districts — that  only  a 
profound  devotion  to  the  profession  or 
inability  to  find  better-paying  jobs  keeps 
anyone  in  teaching.  When  good  jobs  are 
plentiful,  as  they  are  now,  the  teachers 
quit  school  in  droves.  (In  the  fall  of  1 942 
there  were  7,500  teaching  positions  va- 
cant; by  midyear  the  number  had  risen 
to  13,000.)  But  there  would  never  be 
enough  really  good  teachers  to  staff*  the 
nation's  high  schools  even  if  the  pay  were 
better.     It  seems  hopeless  to  rely  on  an 


educational  system  whose  motive  power 
depends  primarily  on  such  an  intangible 
and  unpredictable  factor  as  the  contagious 
enthusiasm  of  its  faculty. 

The  average  high  school  student  be- 
comes aware  of  the  value  of  something 
only  if  he  experiences  that  value  himself. 
What  is  needed,  therefore,  is  a  way  to 
institutionalize — either  as  curricular  or 
extracurricular  activity — the  kind  of  ex- 
periences which  will  reveal  to  the  student 
the  value  of  those  subjects  which  teachers  and 
parents  want  the  younger  generation  to  learn. 

Unfortunately  there  has  been  very  little 
progress  in  this  direction.  Any  intelligent 
teacher  starting  a  course  in  American 
history  last  fall  must  have  despaired  of 
arousing  any  enthusiasm  for  the  plodding 
explorers  of  fouf  hundred  years  ago  in  a 
class  which  had  brothers,  cousins,  friends 
writing  blazing  history  in  the  sky  all  over 
the  world.  The  first  high  school  teacher 
who  teaches  American  history  backward 
will  probably  get  fired,  but  the  next  may 
be  hailed  as  a  pioneer.  It's  nothing  more 
than  applying  one  of  the  most  widely  ac- 
cepted— and  generally  ignored — laws  of 
pedagogy,  that  you  should  begin  the  study 
of  any  subject  at  the  point  closest  to  the 
student's  interest. 

Literature  is  a  little  more  intelligently 
presented  in  some  schools  largely  because 
the  students  themselves  showed  the  way. 
If  a  girl  brings  a  copy  of  the  latest  best 
seller  to  her  teacher  and  asks  if  it's  a  good 
book,  the  teacher  has  to  provide  an  an- 
swer. Alert  teachers  are  now  using  the 
student's  natural  interest  in  contemporary 
literature  to  lead  him  to  an  appreciation 
of  the  so-called  classics.  This  is  a  much 
more  sensible  method  than  making  boys 
and  girls  read  English  novels  of  a  century 
ago  a  page  at  a  time.  (There  is  a  well- 
worn  joke  in  the  school  world  about  the 
principal  who  reread  Silas  Marner  in  mid- 
dle life  and  discovered  it  was  really  a  fine 
piece  of  literature.)  In  states  which  have 
a  body  of  literature  of  their  own — Indiana, 
Virginia,  the  New  England  group — teach- 
ers are  able  to  use  the  appeal  of  home- 
produced  writing  as  a  means  of  arousing 
interest  in  the  wider  field. 

Geography,  when  it  is  taught  at  all,  has 
sufi*ered  from  lack  of  any  eff'ort  to  relate  it 
to  student  interest.     Since  ninety-nine  out 


LOOK    AT    AMERICA'S    HIGH    SCHOOLS 


523 


of  a  hundred  high  school  students  spend 
their  Hves  in  the  state  they  grow  up  in,  a 
knowledge  of  local  geography  is  of  con- 
siderable value  to  them;  they  would  real- 
ize that  if  somebody  took  the  trouble  to 
point  it  out.  The  study  of  regional  geog- 
raphy leads  naturally  into  the  larger  field. 
An  Eastern  geography  teacher  expressed 
great  surprise  last  fall  at  the  unusual  in- 
terest of  her  class;  they  were  putting  in 
hours  of  extra  time.  There  was  nothing 
surprising  about  it.  Almost  everybody 
had  a  friend  or  a  relative  in  the  armed 
services  in  some  distant  part  of  the  world. 
The  students  had  found  their  own  incen- 
tive. 

The  Army  and  Navy  have  been  em- 
ploying a  number  of  teaching  techniques 
which  may  carry  over  into  the  schools 
after  the  war.  Movies,  animated  car- 
toons, and  comic  strips  have  been  effec- 
tively used  to  teach  languages,  military 
maneuvers,  and  mechanics.  But  the  speed 
and  intensity  with  which  GI  educa- 
tion functions  is  primarily  the  result  of 
the  student's  vital  interest  in  learning. 
The  knowledge  he  acquires  may  save  his 
skin,  and  he  knows  it.  The  teaching  de- 
vices help  him  learn  only  because  he  al- 
ready wants  to  learn. 

A  NUMBER  of  other  traditional  school  ar- 
rangements are  under  attack,  with 
no  definite  trends  yet  discernible.  Most 
schools  are  still  backing  and  filling  over 
sex  education.  Students,themselves  want 
a  full,  frank  course  in  sex  and  family  life 
and  they  may  ultimately  be  able  to  get  it. 
The  attitude  of  the  student  toward  the 
insipid,  left-handed  biology  course  he  now 
gets  was  expressed  by  a  Pennsylvania  boy 
recently  who  complained:  "For  heaven's 
sake,  why  can't  we  talk  about  us  instead  of 
the  birds  and  the  flowers?"  Another 
traditionally  taboo  subject,  religion,  may 
eventually  get  into  high  school  curricula, 
though  the  problems  this  raises  are  trou- 
blesome (see  "Religion  and  the  Public 
Schools,"  by  Vivian  T.  Thayer,  in  the 
April  issue  of  Harper's) .  The  schools  must 
not  teach  any  particular  creed,  of  course, 
but  as  part  of  the  general  preparation  for 
adult  life  they  might  very  properly  teach 
the  social  and  moral  values  of  organized 
religion. 


The  system  of  grading  is  being  reap- 
praised; I  know  of  two  New  England  com- 
munities which  are  actually  operating  un- 
graded systems,  unknown  to  the  taxpayers. 
Report  cards  have  been  repeatedly  abol- 
ished and  then  brought  back  by  public 
clamor;  but  their  value  is  widely  ques- 
tioned. Some  educators  are  now  won- 
dering if  it  is  not  unwise  to  set  up  identical 
graduation  requirements  for  all  students. 
The  capacity  to  absorb  education  varies 
from  one  individual  to  another,  as  Ameri- 
cans from  Jefl'erson  to  Ickes  have  pointed 
out.  Some  can't  make  the  grade  and 
drop  out.  A  "limited  objectives"  diploma 
might  keep  some  of  them  in  school  a  little 
longer. 

IV 

A  LL  of  this  experimentation  with  teach- 
£\^  ing  methods  and  curricula,  especially 
when  taken  together  with  the  trends  to- 
ward extending  the  hours  during  which 
boys  and  girls  are  under  the  schools' 
influence  and  toward  using  extracurricu- 
lar activities  as  vehicles  for  teaching,  seems 
to  indicate  that  in  spite  of  the  lack  of  any 
preconceived  plan  for  educational  reform, 
the  high  schools  of  the  country  are  stead- 
ily, if  somewhat  haphazardly,  evolving  a 
program  which  will  ultimately  justify  the 
splendor  of  their  physical  plant. 

Ideally,  of  course,  it  would  be  preferable 
if  the  aims  and  objectives  of  high  school 
education — and  all  education,  for  that 
matter — were  defined.  Then  all  experi- 
ments could  be  directed  at  achieving 
clear-cut  goals  and  the  current  sense  of 
confusion  would  be  ended.  But  in  a  time 
when  the  very  foundations  of  civilization 
are  shifting,  and  the  social  structure  is 
being  transformed,  we  cannot  bind  our- 
selves to  any  one  of  the  conflicting  aims 
which  are  being  so  devoutly  urged  upon 
us  by  those  who  want  either  to  remake  the 
world  in  the  image  of  some  glorious  past  or 
to  recast  it  in  the  mold  of  some  intriguing 
but  improbable  future. 

For  the  present  all  we  have  to  go  on  is 
the  fragmentary  evidence  of  trends  which 
— as  this  article  has  tried  to  show — seem 
to  add  up  to  an  overall  picture  of  evolution 
toward  a  much  more  effective  kind  of  high 
school  than  those  we  now  have.  It  prom- 
ises to  be  a  school  which  provides  a  con- 


524 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


tinuous  program  of  work,  study,  and  play; 
which  trains  for  citizenship  and  character 
as  enthusiastically  as  it  does  for  college 
entrance;  which  is  fle^ctble  enough  in  its 
administrative  arrangements  to  give  every 
student  all  the  education  he  can  absorb; 
which  is  steered  by  a  faculty  that  knows 
how  to  organize  a  program  that  gets  its 
drive  from  the  students'  own  interest; 
which  puts  a  premium  on  individuality 
but  at  the  same  time  teaches  the  virtues 
of  co-operation. 

Such  a  school  would  come  close  to  ef- 


fectiveness. I  think  it  is  not  unduly  op- 
timistic to  believe  that  the  country's  25,000 
high  schools  will  some  day  approach  that 
ideal.  The  present  general  mood,  in- 
duced by  the  war,  of  "Let's  start  all  over 
again  and  do  it  better,"  may  hurry  things 
along.  But  the  most  important  factor  in 
the  situation  for  a  long  time  to  come  will 
be  the  attitude  of  American  parents. 
Parents  long  ago  discovered  how  little 
pressure  is  required  to  produce  changes  in 
a  school  system;  their  job  now  is  to  decide 
what  changes  they  want. 


LETTERS   FROM   THE   ALEUTIANS 


ERWIN    SPITZER 


Note  to  Civilians 


Victory 


ITS  EASY 
When  the  power  line  is  unbroken 
And  the  bulb  is  bright 
And  the  ice  is  in  the  glass 
And  the  seat  is  soft 
And  the  bed  is  soft 
And  all  the  toilets  flush. 

Sitting-down  anger 
Is  quick 
And  noble; 
Imaginary  rifles 
Are  never  heavy. 
Remember  that. 


ALWAYS 

£\^  The  bold  echoing  promise 

The  frozen  gold  statue 

The  stiff  bronze  words 

The  smooth  marble  memory. 


Never 

The  sick  smell  of  dead  cooking 

The  nose-knifing  urinal 

The  invisible  wall 

The  unrelenting  chains 

Or  the  twisted  retching  of 

Unnatural  pumping  wounds. 


Remember 

That  heroes  crawl,  fall, 

And  remembering 
You  can  begin 
To  clench  your  fists 
With  understanding. 


And  still  we  grip  the  promise 
Tightly  in  our  hands 


And  mould  it 

With  our  dirty  fingers. 


TH 


E  Easy  Chair  "Ber^mrdVi^m 


IET  me  summarize  some  ideas  about  the 
South  which  we  tend  to  beUeve  in 
^  Boston.  We  understand  that  the 
South  is  culturally  backward.  We  know 
that  many  Southerners  are  well-bred,  well- 
educated  people — cosmopolitan,  of  liberal 
minds,  tolerant,  interested  in  ideas,  culti- 
vated in  the  arts  and  occasionally  adept  at 
them.  We  think  of  them,  however,  as  a 
minority  which  is  made  impotent  by  the 
surrounding  illiteracy,  ignorance,  and  prej- 
udice, and  by  a  social  myth  which  looks 
back  to  a  romanticized,  unreal  past  and 
has  kept  the  Southern  mind  from  adjusting 
to  the  modern  world .  We  understand  that 
educational  standards  in  the  South  are 
low  and  though  we  concede  that  this  is 
due  in  part  to  poverty  we  believe  that  it  is 
also  due  to  traditions  which  set  no  great 
value  on  education .  Moreover,  a  primitive 
form  of  Christianity,  economic  discrimina- 
tion against  Negroes,  economic  medieval- 
ism, fear  of  miscegenation,  and  a  defensive 
psychology  which  goes  back  to  defeat  in 
the  Civil  War  and  back  of  that  to  the 
necessity  of  defending  slavery — such  addi- 
tional matters,  we  tolerantly  realize,  have 
helped  to  make  the  Southerner  bigoted; 
emotional,  and  reactionary.  His  preju- 
dices are  violent,  his  defensiveness  makes 
him  aggressive,  he  cannot  permit  the  ob- 
jective discussion  of  ideas  that  is  one  of 
the  marks  of  a  civilized  man,  he  settles  all 
questions  by  force. 

We  do  not,  in  Boston,  expect  much  from 
Southern  civilization,  and  especially  we 
do  not  expect  liberality.  We  have,  for 
instance,  been  trying  to  solve  the  Negro 
problem  for  well  over  a  century,  and  for 
well  over  a  century  what  has  prevented  us 
from  solving  it  is  Southern  prejudice. 
Southern  passion,  and  Southern  intoler- 
ance. Naturally  we  do  not  expect  much 
devotion  to  the  arts  down  South.     Liberal 


thinking  and  artistic  thinking  require  a 
kind  of  cultural  leadership  which  the 
South  lacks.  We  realize  that  even  culti- 
vated Southerners  are  too  indelibly  stained 
with  the  prejudices  of  the  section  to  pro- 
vide that  kind  of  leadership.  It  follows 
that  we  do  not  expect  a  mature  literature 
from  the  South.  The  soil  is  unfavorable, 
and  even  if  one  should  germinate  in  it. 
Southern  intolerance  would  stamp  it  out. 

A  Southern  woman  has  lately  published 
a  novel  about  the  South.  It  is  both  a 
courageous  novel  and  a  good  one,  serious, 
mature,  wise,  excellently  written.  It  may 
be  something  of  a  landmark,  but  all  these 
facts  are  irrelevant.  It  contains  some 
words  which  were  certain  to  arouse  the 
bigotry  of  the  South's  primitive  backwoods 
religion.  Worse  still,  its  theme  is  the  most 
inflammatory  of  all  themes  down  South, 
miscegenation.  That  is  a  topic  on  which 
no  Southerner  can  hold  an  objective  opin- 
ion. It  strikes  home  to  his  deepest  fears 
and  taboos,  he  cannot  tolerate  any  dis- 
cussion of  it,  he  cannot  permit  anyone  to 
express  an  opinion  about  it.  It  was  easy 
enough  to  predict  that  this  novel.  Miss 
Lillian  Smith's  Strange  Fruit,  would  be  sup- 
pressed by  a  culturally  backward  society, 
illegally  but  with  complete  social  assent, 
in  the  distorted  violence  and  prejudice 
which  animate  such  a  society.  And  that 
in  fact  has  occurred. 

It  has  not  occurred,  however,  exactly 
as  predicted.  Strange  Fruit  is  being  sold 
freely  in  for  example  Atlanta  and  Birming- 
ham, as  freely  as  in  more  advanced  cul- 
tures like  Oshkosh,  Davenport,  and  Three 
Rivers.  It  is  being  sold  just  as  freely  in 
those  ominous  little  Southern  towns  which 
we  Bostonians  recognize  as  socially  sick 
and  from  which  we  fear  an  American  fas- 
cism may  emerge  sometime.  It  is  being 
discussed  intelligently,   temperately,   and 


526 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


frequently  with  high  praise  in  the  South- 
ern press  which  we  have  learned  to  regard 
as  one  of  the  most  dangerous  bulwarks 
of  Southern  prejudice.- ^  The  mobbing  of 
Strange  Fruit  did  not  take  place  down 
South.     It  took  place  in  Boston. 

That  reversal  may  momentarily  discon- 
cert outlanders  who  do  not  understand 
Boston,  and  I  feel  that  a  decent  respect  to 
the  opinions  of  mankind  requires  me  to 
explain  my  home  town. 

To  begin  with,  you  must  understand 
that  the  suppression  was  in  fact  a 
mobbing.  It  occurred,  that  is,  outside 
the  law — so  far  outside  that  both  the  of- 
ficial and  the  unofficial  suppressors  are 
announcing  that  no  suppression  has  oc- 
curred. As  yet — I  send  this  to  the  press 
on  March  25th — the  book  has  not  been 
subjected  to  review  by  any  official  board 
or  any  socially  accountable  officer  whom- 
soever. The  truth  is,  we  learned  better 
than  that  long  ago.  There  was  a  time 
when  the  police  used  to  proceed  against 
books  which  they  thought  Bostonians  ought 
not  to  read.  We  did  not  object  to  the 
assumption  of  such  authority  by  the  police 
but  we  found  that  their  exercise  of  it 
exposed  us  to  ridicule,  to  the  ridicule  of 
even  backward  cultures.  Furthermore  it 
proved  profitable  to  publishers.  They 
inserted  "Banned  in  Boston"  in  their  ad- 
vertising and  readers  soon  came  to  under- 
stand that  if  Boston  suppressed  a  book,  that 
book  was  a  serious  treatment  of  an  impor- 
tant subject  by  a  writer  of  considerable 
skill — for  exceedingly  few  books  of  any 
other  kind  were  ever  suppressed  here.  So 
we  resorted  to  an  ingenious  expedient. 

Many  of  us  in  Boston  are  Republicans 
and  many  more  are  anti-New  Deal  Demo- 
crats. As  such  we  realize  that  one  of  the 
most  dangerous  threats  to  our  institutions 
is  government  by  fiat.  Executive  com- 
missions and  similar  agencies  which  are 
not  restrained  by  statutory  law  and  are 
not  accountable  to  elected  representatives 
of  the  people,  we  have  proclaimed,  are 
despotic,  essentially  totalitarian,  and  in- 
compatible with  democracy.  We  believe 
in  a  government  of  laws,  not  men.  With 
that  principle  in  mind  we  have  set  up  a 
committee  of  the  Board  of  Trade  of  Boston 
Book  Merchants.     Whenever  that  com- 


mittee thinks  that  a  book  may  be  prose- 
cuted by  the  police,  it  notifies  the  book- 
sellers that  that  book  has  been  withdrawn 
from  sale — withdrawn,  that  is,  by  the 
stores  represented  on  the  committee. 
That  notification  suffices.  No  Boston 
bookseller  sells  that  book,  knowing  that  if 
the  police  should  prosecute  him  the  Board 
of  Trade  would  not  come  to  his  defense. 
(He  is  perfectly  free  to  do  what  he  likes,  the 
head  of  the  committee  explained  to  me, 
but  the  committee  has  done  its  part.) 
Everyone  is  happy.  The  affair  has  been 
conducted  in  complete  privacy,  free  alike 
of  official  dictation  and  social  control. 
There  has  been  no  official  censorship,  no 
one  has  received  any  objectionable  pub- 
licity, the  police  are  tranquil  and  the 
booksellers  safe,  and  if  any  freedom  of  any 
Bostonian  or  any  author  has  been  in- 
fringed, Boston  does  not  give  a  damn. 

Next  you  must  realize  that  literature  is 
not  important  in  Boston.  It  has  been 
seventy-five  years  since  there  was  any 
general  respect  for  literature  hereabout 
and  fully  fifty  years  since  there  was  any 
general  interest  in  it.  Books  which  make 
a  lot  of  money  are  respected,  of  course,  and 
it  remains  possible  for  a  writer  to  be  re- 
spected and  even  admired  if  he  achieves 
eminence  as  a  fisherman  or  a  skier,  if  he 
makes  money  on  the  stock  market,  or  if  his 
collection  of  porcelains  or  even  his  love 
affairs  create  newspaper  publicity,  which 
is  fully  appreciated  in  Boston.  But  it  is 
inconceivable  that  literature  could  be 
made  a  public  issue  here.  There  was  a 
time  when  men  like  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son and  Henry  Thoreau  could  summon 
public  opinion  to  the  defense  of  such 
obscenity  as  Whitman's  Leaves  of  Grass^ 
but  that  was  many  years  ago. 

GAIN,  you  must  understand  that  Strange 
Fruit  was  not  mobbed  because  of  its 
inflammatory  theme.  It  is  true  that  ra- 
cial tensions  are  increasing  in  Boston,  as  I 
shall  report  in  a  later  Easy  Chair,  but  we 
are  extremely  tolerant  about  discussions  of 
the  Negro  problem  at  a  distance.  In  hold- 
ing this  attitude  we  are  living  up  to  our 
traditions.  The  typical  Boston  reformer 
was  a  factory  owner  who  felt  deeply 
about  slavery  in  Georgia,  as  Thoreau 
said,  or  a  corporation  lawyer  who  longed 


THE    EASY    CHAIR 


527 


to  bestow  economic  justice  on  the  Fili- 
pinos, as  Thorcau  would  have  said  if  he 
had  Hvcd  long  enough.  The  cause  of 
this  suppression  was  not  at  all  the  theme 
of  the  book,  miscegenation,  it  was  sex. 
It  was  in  fact  three  lines  of  sexual  phrase- 
ology. The  head  of  the  booksellers'  com- 
mittee has  told  me  that  he  assured  the 
publisher  that  the  book  could  be  sold 
in  Boston  if  the  author  would  make  de- 
letions amounting  to  no  more  than  three 
lines.  (I  asked  him  if  he  did  not  consider 
this  suggestion  an  insult  to  the  author. 
He  said  no.  I  asked  him  if  he  did  not 
consider  it  an  insult  to  me  as  a  writer, 
a  buyer  of  books,  and  a  citizen  of  Massa- 
chusetts.    He  said  no.) 

Here  it  must  be  made  clear  that  Boston 
is  not  uninterested  in  sex,  afraid  of  sex,  or 
opposed  to  the  portrayal,  representation, 
or  exploitation  of  sex.  All  we  have  ever 
objected  to  is  an  honest,  decent,  or  artistic 
treatment  of  sex.  In  the  name  of  right- 
eousness and  for  our  taste's  sake  we  insist 
that  sex  be  treated  with  a  leer  and  a 
snigger.  Pornography  circulates  as  freely 
in  Boston  as  in  any  other  city,  as  any 
casual  visitor  may  determine.  Boston  is  a 
town  where  strip-teasers  flourish  but  the 
ballet  must  wear  tights,  where  sexual  and 
homosexual  humor  in  night  clubs  is  im- 
mune from  prosecution  provided  only 
that  it  is  kept  vulgar  enough,  but  three 
frank  lines  will  get  a  novel  lynched  pro- 
vided only  that  it  is  a  decent  and  serious 
novel.  Burlesque  shows  Ho  a  rousing  busi- 
ness and  we  are  the  best  town  on  the  road 
for  revues,  but  Strange  Interlude  cannot  play 
here  at  all.  You  may  freely  patronize 
any  kind  of  pornography  in  Boston,  but 
the  local  standards  of  taste  and  morality, 
which  the  booksellers'  committee  accu- 
rately translates,  will  see  to  it  that  you 
cannot  buy  distinguished  books  which 
treat  sex  seriously.  The  much-repeated 
allegation  that  we  are  over-squeamish 
about  indecency  is  a  libel:  we  object  only 
to  decency. 

True,  Massachusetts  has  an  anti-ob- 
scenity statute  rather  more  idiotic  than 
most  such  laws.  Right  here  one  is  sup- 
posed to  stop  talking  out  loud  and  to 
whisper,  as  several  who  say  they  have 
been  outraged  by  this  latest  suppression 
have  whispered  to  me,  that  nothing  can  be 


done  to  attack  that  statute  because  it  is 
supported  by  the  Catholic  Church.  Prot- 
estant Boston ians  tend  to  speak  about  the 
Catholic  Church  in  whispers  and  one  of 
them  lately  put  it  to  me  this  way,  "The 
cops  run  straight  to  the  Cardinal."  As  one 
reared  in  and  shaped  by  the  Catholic 
Church,  I  deny  both  the  statement  and 
the  implication.  Both  are  a  comforting 
alibi  for  Bostonians;  they  enable  the 
timorous  to  excuse  themselves  from  taking 
action.  Certainly,  though  the  Catholic 
Church  has  not  officially  backed  the  stat- 
ute and  though  a  very  great  many  Catho- 
lics are  opposed  to  it,  certainly  it  has 
Catholic  support.  Also  it  has  the  support 
of  the  Watch  and  Ward  Society  (yes,  that 
really  is  its  name),  which  is  Protestant,  and 
of  several  queer  remnants  of  Puritan 
heresies — Puritanism  was  never  to  my 
knowledge  Catholic.  Even  an  alliance 
between  Catholic  bigotry  and  Protestant 
bigotry,  however,  could  not  have  put  this 
statute  on  the  books  and  enforced  it  (as 
the  experience  of  New  York,  for  one  in- 
stance, shows)  if  that  alliance  were  not 
supported  by  still  a  third  group.  Actually 
it  is  made  effective  by  a  third  group,  the 
well-born,  the  rich,  the  cultivated,  the 
heirs  of  the  old  ruling  class,  from  whom 
social  and  cultural  leadership  would  nor- 
mally be  expected.  It  is  made  effective 
because  this  group — generalize  them  as 
the  Harvard  alumni — will  not  accept 
social  responsibility  or  exercise  leader- 
ship. 

For  many  years  Boston  has  been  unable 
to  buy  good  books  legally  because  this 
group  has  refused  to  act — from  indiffer- 
ence, the  profit  motive,  or  simple  cow- 
ardice. These  people  do  not  believe  in 
suppression  or  approve  of  the  anti-ob- 
scenity statute,  they  denounce  it  in  private, 
they  know  that  the  situation  is  ridiculous 
and  dangerous,  but  they  will  do  nothing 
about  it.  Why?  Well,  literature  is  not 
important  in  the  Boston  culture  and 
neither  are  civil  rights.  Not  important 
enough,  certainly,  to  make  a  fight  for 
them.  Boston  will  not  defend  a  writer  in 
the  exercise  of  his  freedom.  And  if  either 
a  bigot  or  a  committee  which  has  no  legal 
status  chooses  to  infringe  Boston's  own 
freedoms,  that  is  perfectly  all  right  with 
Boston. 


528 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


You  may  suggest  that  a  determined 
stand  by  anyone,  even  a  bookseller, 
would  certainly  overturn  the  statute  and 
restore  literature  to  a  respectable  status  in 
Boston  and  Boston  to  p  decent  respect  in 
the  opinions  of  mankind.  That  is  true. 
The  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice, 
for  instance,  can  no  longer  successfully  at- 
tack a  decent  book  in  New  York — it  no 
longer  even  tries  to.  The  fight  for  free- 
dom of  expression  in  literature  has  been 
won  everywhere  except  in  Boston  because 
it  has  been  made  everywhere  except  in 
Boston.  You  may  think  that  the  mere 
existence  and  still  more  the  public  tolera- 
tion of  a  socially  uncontrolled  and  ir- 
responsible body  like  the  booksellers'  com- 
mittee— which  deprives  both  writers  and 
readers  of  a  basic  freedom  without  any 
process  of  law  whatever — you  may  think 
that  its  existence  and  public  toleration  are 
considerably  more  important  than  an  ab- 
surd law  or  the  suppression  of  a  few  books. 
You  fail  to  understand  how  repugnant 
that  idea  is  to  the  committee.  It  sees  its 
motives  as  pure  beyond  expression  and  is 
proud  of  the  fact  that  its  activities  assure 
every  Boston  bookseller  who  acts  on  its 
warnings  that  he  will  never  go  to  jail,  at 
least  not  for  obscenity.  It  cannot  see  that 
any  other  issue  is  involved.  And  you 
must  understand  that  it  accurately  ex- 
presses Boston's  point  of  view.  Boston 
does  not  mind  being  under  the  subjec- 
tion of  bigotry  and  it  sees  no  reason  to 
make  a   fight   against   either  intolerance 


or  the  infringement  of  personal  liberty. 

You  may  keep  coming  back  to  that 
self-evident  fact,  after  thinking  over  the 
history  of  censorship  in  Boston.  You  may 
end  by  deciding  that  there  probably  is  in 
Boston  a  minority  of  liberal,  tolerant  peo- 
ple who  are  interested  in  ideas,  cultivated 
in  the  arts,  and  occasionally  adept  at 
them.  But  that  minority,  you  may  de- 
cide, appears  to  be  made  impotent  either 
by  an  absurd  social  myth  which  looks 
backward  to  an  unreal  past  or  by  the 
ignorance  and  prejudices  of  the  society 
that  surrounds  it.  For  the  Bostonian,  you 
observe,  has  violent  prejudices,  they  make 
him  aggressive,  he  will  not  permit  the 
objective,  detached  discussion  of  ideas 
that  is  one  of  the  marks  of  a  civilized  man. 
Boston,  you  may  decide,  must  be  a  back- 
ward culture. 

It  seems  possible  that  the  mobbing  in 
Boston  of  one  more  serious,  decent  novel 
may  suggest  such  conclusions  to  you. 
This  sort  of  suppression  is  routine  in  Bos- 
ton, it  happens  every  once  in  a  while,  and 
you  are  forced  to  make  two  observations 
about  it.  The  suppression  is  not  even 
legal,  and  it  is  done  with  complete  public 
assent — with  only  the  most  scattered  and 
perfunctory  protest.  Not  only  a  back- 
ward culture,  you  may  think,  but  some- 
thing else  as  well.  For  in  this  comfortable 
acceptance  of  the  intolerable,  beginning 
moreover  in  the  area  of  civil  rights  where 
early  decay  is  always  significant,  you  catch 
a  whifF  of  something  sick  and  dangerous. 


!  Diana  Trilling  is  the 
regular  reviewer  of  fic- 
tion Jor  Tlic  Nation 


WHAT    HAS    HAPPENED    TO    OUR 

NOVELS? 


DIANA    TRILLING 


"5 


IT  IS  surely  ironic  that  just  at  the 
moment  when  paper,  is  being  rationed 
we  should  be  in  the  midst  of  the 
greatest  book-buying  boom  in  our  history. 
At  the  time  of  Pearl  Harbor,  American 
publishers  were  afraid,  not  without  some 
justification,  that  war  would  turn  the 
American  public  away  from  books,  but 
quite  the  opposite  seems  to  have  hap- 
pened. The  pressure  of  wartime  activ- 
ities has  not  had  the  adverse  effect  that 
was  anticipated,  and  the  chief  problem  of 
publishers  is  how  to  manufacture,  within 
printing  and  paper  restrictions,  enough 
books  to  meet  the  expanding  market. 
Every  kind  of  book  is  selling  well — not 
only  the  latest  popular  novel,  whose  suc- 
cess might  be  attributed  to  the  desire  for 
"escape"  reading,  but  also  history,  tech- 
nology, biography,  and  science.  Even 
reprints  and  the  classics  are  booming,  and 
library  sets  of  the  old  novelists,  which 
before  the  war  had  languished  on  the 
booksellers'  shelves  for  years,  have  now 
suddenly  begun  to  move. 

To  be  sure,  some  part  of  our  current 
book  boom  may  be  merely  inflationary — 
another  straw  in  the  wind  of  war-pros- 
perity spending.  Library  circulation  has 
not  kept  pace  with  book  sales;  it  has  even 
somewhat  diminished  since  the  war  and 
we  can  therefore  conjecture  that  not  all  of 
the  books  that  are  being  bought  are  neces- 


sarily being  read.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
would  be  pessimistic  and  wrong  to  write 
off  as  of  no  cultural  importance  the 
amount  of  money  we  are  spending  on 
books  simply  because  it  parallels  increased 
spending  in  theaters,  restaurants,  and 
department  stores.  A  cultural  advance 
of  some  significance  has  been  made  when 
a  nation  comes  to  think  of  literature  as 
something  worth  spending  its  money  on. 
And  no  cultural  advance  is  accom- 
plished overnight.  There  is  reason  to 
think  that  this  present  book  boom  has 
been  in  preparation  for  some  years — 
perhaps  ever  since  the  last  war.  Cer- 
tainly in  the  past  twenty-five  years  this 
country  has  measurably  closed  the  gap 
between  its  so-called  cultivated  and  uncul- 
tivated classes.  Just  as  college  education 
has  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  the  pre- 
rogative of  a  privileged  section  of  society, 
so  reading  has  come  out  of  the  con- 
spicuous consumption  category  to  which 
the  American  popular  imagination  for- 
merly consigned  it.  This  is  demonstrated, 
for  instance,  by  the  enormous  success  of 
the  book  clubs  and  by  the  spread  of  our 
lending-library  services.  The  magazine 
field,  too,  illustrates  the  steady  infiltration 
of  literacy  into  all  sections  of  American 
life.  If  the  popularity  of  the  picture 
magazine  suggests  a  trend  away  from  the 
printed  word,  the  equal  popularity  of  the 


530 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


digest  magazine  counterbalances  it;  to 
read  a  digested  book  or  magazine  article 
may  create  lazy  reading  habits,  but  it 
creates  and  affirms  th£  existence  of  read- 
ing habits  of  a  sort. 

But  if  the  volume  of  our  reading  is 
great,  and  if  we  could  even  say  that 
America  lives  more  easily  with  ideas  today 
than  it  did  a  generation  or  two  ago,  this 
does  not  mean  that  we  are  in  the  midst  of 
either  a  general  cultural  renaissance  or  a 
specifically  literary  one.  Our  actual  cre- 
ative achievement  in  literature  is  not 
precisely  a  cause  for  pride.  The  classics 
may  be  selling  as  they  have  never  sold 
before  but  it  is,  after  all,  current  writing 
which  provides  our  chief  day-to-day 
nourishment,  and  we  can  boast  no  current 
writing  boom  to  match  our  new  popular 
enthusiasm  for  books.  Indeed,  I  think 
most  serious  critics  would  agree  that  we 
are  in  the  midst  of  a  period  of  acute  cre- 
ative poverty. 

II 

ris  in  the  field  of  the  novel  that  one 
first  looks  for  the  expression  of  literary 
vitality.  The  sales  of  many  of  our  novels 
and  the  language  in  which  they  are 
greeted  by  the  reviewers  may  give  the 
impression  of  a  constantly  flowing  stream 
of  gifted  and  important  new  works  of 
fiction,  but  actually  our  novels  are  of  low 
quality.  We  must  keep  in  mind  that 
sales  reflect  the  desire  for  good  books,  not 
necessarily  their  existence,  and  that  the 
popular  reviewer  forms  his  judgments  on 
a  current  basis — that  is,  by  measuring  the 
book  under  review  against  the  books  he 
read  last  week  or  the  week  before,  and  not 
against  the  truly  fine  book  he  may  have 
read  three,  five,  or  twenty  years  ago. 
This  is  practically  an  open  secret  among 
reviewers.  It  removes  the  aspersion  of 
absolute  bad  taste  from  the  superlatives 
about  such  books  as  A  Tree  Grows  in 
Brooklyn  or  The  Walsh  Girls,  Reviewers 
are  perfectly  aware  that  the  novels  they 
recommend  are  a  commodity,  not  an 
experience — for  they  know  very  well  what 
kind  of  experience  a  really  good  novel 
gives.  They  have  been  brought  up  on 
the  great  French,  English,  and  Russian 
novelists  and  their  lives  were  shaped  by 
them;  what  is  more  to  our  point,  most  of 


them  came  of  age  in  our  own  last  dis- 
tinguished literary  era.  It  is  keeping 
abreast  of  the  market  that  obscures  their 
recollection  of  what  it  meant  to  read 
Dreiser  or  Willa  Gather,  and  for  the 
occasion  they  persuade  themselves  either 
that  the  novelist  under  review  is  the 
Dreiser  or  Gather  of  this  particular  mo- 
ment in  literary  history  or — more  likely — 
that  since  this  moment  has  no  Dreisers  or 
Gathers,  it  is  the  part  of  generosity  to 
celebrate  without  reservation  the  next 
best  thing. 

There  are  innumerable  next  best  things 
on  our  fiction  market  and  there  are  the 
usual  number  of  best  sellers.  But  I  would 
venture  to  guess  that  the  readers  of  this 
magazine  would  be  hard  put  to  it  to  name 
the  novel  of  these  war  years  which  has 
been  even  a  small  landmark  in  their 
literary  educations  or  their  emotional  lives. 
I  know  that  I  myself  have  read  or  glanced 
through  some  five  hundred  novels  in  the 
past  two  years.  Some  few  were  marked 
by  literary  talent  and  some  few  more  were 
entertaining,  but  I  have  not  had  the  im- 
pulse to  save  any  for  my  library  shelves 
and  an  eventual  rereading;  all  have  gone  to 
the  second-hand  dealer.  And  I  am  speak- 
ing of  serious  novels,  novels  written  by 
people  who  were  undoubtedly  educated  in 
the  great  literature  of  the  past. 

It  is  not  merely  that  these  best  of  our 
current  novels  are  not  stamped  by  genius; 
after  all,  genius  is  rare  in  any  age.  These 
best  of  our  current  novels  are  simply  not 
alive.  The  one  quality  which  all  first- 
rate  novelists  or  novelists  who  aspire  to 
the  first-rate  have  in  common — an  energy 
of  creation  which  touches  everything  and 
enlivens  everything  it  touches — is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  novelists  of  the  present  day 
for    whom    the    most    is    being    claimed. 

Of  course  it  will  be  protested  that  we 
are  losing  a  whole  generation  of  possible 
new  writing  talent  to  the  armed  services. 
That  is  true,  and  it  may  account  for  the 
fact  that  no  new  male  writer  of  rank  has 
appeared  in  the  past  two  to  three  years. 
But  the  draft  cannot  be  blamed  for  the 
poor  quality  of  the  books  written  by  men 
and  women  who  are  not  in  the  services, 
nor  for  the  low  level  of  work  during  the 
ten  years  which  preceded  the  war,  includ- 
ing the  work  of  our  already  established 


WHAT    HAS    HAPPENED    TO    OUR    NOVELS? 


531 


writers.  It  is  not  only  the  immediate 
creative  scene  which  is  so  bleak.  Our 
present  poverty  follows  and  continues  a 
whole  decade  of  poverty. 

UR  last  period  of  novclistic  glory 
began  after  the  last  war  and  ended 
with  dramatic  suddenness  as  the  decade  of 
the  twenties  drew  to  a  close.  Sherwood 
Anderson,  Sinclair  Lewis,  Willa  Gather, 
F.  Scott  Fitzgerald,  Ernest  Hemingway, 
John  Dos  Passos — in  fiction  these  are  the 
names  we  associate  with  our  last  brief 
literary  renaissance,  and  it  is  significant 
that  all  but  one  of  these  novelists  lived  and 
died,  artistically  speaking,  with  the  post- 
war decade;  only  Hemingway  has  con- 
tinued to  sustain  and  mature  his  talent. 
Anderson's  last  novels  were  feeble  reit- 
erations of  the  themes  and  method  of  the 
work  that  had  brought  him  to  fame.  The 
later  novels  of  Sinclair  Lewis  are  juvenile 
compared  to  the  relatively  youthful  Main 
Street  and  Babbitt.  Of  the  three  novels 
Gather  has  written  since  Death  Comes  For 
the  Archbishop  (1927),  only  Shadows  on  the 
Rock  can  stand  with  her  early  work. 
Dreiser  has  produced  nothing  since  An 
American  Tragedy  (1925).  The  personal 
drama  of  Fitzgerald's  failure  promises  to 
outlive  his  few  successful  novels,  and  even 
John  Dos  Passos,  while  never  weakening 
in  intention,  has  weakened  considerably 
in  inspiration. 

In  the  decade  of  the  thirties  a  few  out- 
standing personalities  did  appear  to  re- 
place these  striking  talents,  but  they  loom 
large  only  in  comparison  with  their  con- 
temporaries; they  are  scarcely  of  the  stat- 
ure of  these  predecessors.  John  P.  Mar- 
quand,  William  Faulkner,  Thomas  Wolfe, 
John  Steinbeck,  and  James  Farrell  are  the 
novelists  who  first  come  to  mind  as  having 
staked  out  some  claim  for  themselves  in 
the  decade  of  the  thirties.  But  the  novels 
of  Marquand,  readable  and  interesting  as 
they  are,  surely  reflect  life  rather  more 
than  they  illuminate  it;  Faulkner  is  essen- 
tially a  virtuoso;  Thomas  Wolfe's  great 
energy  tends  to  obscure  his  limited  range; 
Steinbeck  has  a  fatal  softness  at  the  bone 
of  his  social  understanding;  and  Farrell 
has  yet  to  be  able  to  enlarge  upon  his  own 
restricted  background. 

The  past  fifteen  years  have  not  been 


propitious  to  the  novel  and  we  can  readily 
see  why.  The  conditions  of  the  external 
world  have  made  the  practice  of  fiction 
more  than  a  little  difficult.  An  era  which 
witnessed  not  only  a  major  economic 
depression  in  our  own  country,  but  the 
rise  of  Hitlcrism  abroad  and  the  prep- 
aration throughout  the  world  for  a  new 
world  war,  has  put  an  unprecedented 
burden  upon  the  imaginative  writer;  and 
perhaps  only  the  greatest  novel  could  hope 
to  hold  its  own  against  the  urgent  drama 
of  modern  times. 

Then,  too,  we  have  been  living  in  a 
period  in  which  the  problems  of  the 
individual  have  been  everywhere  sub- 
merged in  the  problems  of  society  as  a 
whole.  But  the  conflicts  in  individual 
lives  have  always  been  the  most  fruitful 
subject  for  fiction  and  the  medium  by 
which  fiction  sheds  its  light  upon  the 
world.  Indeed,  if  one  factor  can  be  iso- 
lated as  responsible  for  the  decline  of  the 
novel  in  the  past  fifteen  years  I  think  it  is 
this  break  in  our  tradition  of  individual- 
ism. For  when  the  individual  lost  pres- 
tige in  the  modern  world,  the  novel  lost 
prestige. 

I  have  said  that  our  last  period  of 
literary  glory  ended  with  the  decade  of  the 
twenties.  A  more  precise  way  to  put  it 
would  be  to  say  that  the  decline  of  modern 
American  fiction  dates  from  the  depression 
of  1929.  With  the  collapse  of  our  eco- 
nomic structure  the  American  novelist 
began  to  identify  himself  with  the  social 
process  and  renounced  his  old  artistic 
privilege  of  standing  outside  of  it.  I  do 
not  mean  that  the  novelists  of  the  twenties 
were  out  of  touch  with  life,  as  they  were 
later  accused  of  being.  We  have  only  to 
glance  at  such  books  as  Main  Street  or 
Babbitt  to  be  aware  of  their  vigorous 
social  content;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
would  be  hard  to  equal,  in  the  novels  of  a 
later  generation,  the  conscience  and  com- 
mitment to  life  of  our  best  writers  of  the 
twenties.  The  difference,  however,  be- 
tween the  social  novels  of  the  postwar  dec- 
ade and  the  social  novels  of  the  next  decade 
is  in  the  role  that  the  author  conceives  for 
himself.  In  the  twenties,  the  novelist 
was  in  individual  rebellion  against  society; 
he  knew  that  the  artist  walks  alone  and  is 
always  at  a  vantage  point  to  the  rest  of  the 


532 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


world.  In  the  thirties  the  progressive  and 
sensitive  novelist  saw  himself  as  the  con- 
scious instrument  of  social  forces,  even  as 
someone  who  must. J;ake  practical  sides 
and  make  political  alignments;  he  not 
only  renounced  his  own  individual  im- 
portance as  an  artist,  but  shifted  the  focus 
of  his  work  from  the  outcome  of  the  forces 
of  society  in  the  moral  life  of  the  in- 
dividual to  the  morality  of  the  social 
structure  itself.  It  is  a  difference  in  point 
of  view  which  is  almost  overstated  in  a 
comparison  between,  say,  Dreiser's  An 
American  Tragedy  of  1925  and  Robert 
Gantwell's    The   Land  of  Plenty   of   1934. 

We  recall  how,  in  the  twenties,  it  was 
almost  the  boast  of  literacy  to  be  ignorant 
of  actual  political-economic  issues,  but 
how  almost  overnight,  with  the  depression, 
this  situation  altered.  The  American 
novelist  of  the  thirties  became  a  social 
theorist;  he  dedicated  himself  to  a  for- 
mulated political  purpose.  Instead  of 
being  an  expositor  and  critic  of  society,  he 
became  its  policy-maker.  But  this  was  in 
effect  to  abdicate  his  chief  function  as  a 
novelist;  we  can  go  back  to  Dickens  or  the 
later  Tolstoy  to  prove  how  heavily  the  con- 
scious urge  to  reform  has  always  weighed 
down  even  the  most  creative  pen.  Any 
good  novel  is  socially  useful,  but  the 
intention  of  being  socially  useful  is  likely 
to  produce  the  works  of  Upton  Sinclair;  it 
does  not  produce  good  novels. 

It  is  a  paradox  of  our  depression  fiction 
that,  quite  in  the  measure  that  our  writers 
renounced  the  individualism  of  the  artist, 
they  overestimated  the  powers  of  the 
artist  to  influence  society.  That  is,  a 
philosophy  which  had  been  designed  to 
submerge  the  individuality  of  the  novelist 
actually  worked  out  to  put  upon  the 
individual  novelist  more  responsibility 
than  he  had  ever  before  been  asked  to 
bear — and  it  was  a  very  immodest  fiction 
that  answered  the  current  demand  for  the 
great  American  proletarian  novel  or  the 
great  American  revolutionary  novel!  In 
addition — and  this  is  another  paradox  of 
the  time — the  novelist  himself,  seeing  life 
in  crude  terms  of  social  determinism  and 
recognizing  almost  too  vividly  the  inter- 
dependence of  the  individual  and  the 
group,  came  to  look  upon  himself  as  a 
victim  of  society.     One   would   have  to 


search  far  in  the  literature  of  individualism 
to  match  the  exacerbated  self-pity  that 
came  into  our  literature  simultaneously 
with  this  new  sense  of  social  responsibility 
and  which  has  persisted  even  into  our 
fiction  of  the  present  day.  So  recent  a 
novel  as  Michael  Blankfort's  A  Time  to  Live 
is  an  instance  of  the  ease  with  which  a 
feeling  of  social  guilt  turns  into  self- 
commiseration. 

The  degeneration  of  our  Lewises  and 
Andersons  in  the  depression  years  was 
probably  as  much  a  response  to  the  pres- 
sure of  the  contemporary  literary  temper 
as  to  the  pressure  of  the  times  themselves. 
There  was  never  a  less  generous  period 
than  our  thirties;  the  younger  novelists  and 
our  critics  were  all  too  eager  to  assist  at  the 
burial  of  our  established  authors.  Even 
John  Dos  Passos,  who  more  than  any  other 
writer  of  the  twenties  was  a  social  novelist 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  next  decade  was 
to  define  it,  faltered  in  the  presence  of  the 
younger  proletarian  writers  growing  up 
around  him.  Yet  the  proletarian  move- 
ment itself  produced  only  one  novelist  of 
any  note,  James  Farrell,  and — ironically 
enough — Farrell  was  to  suff*er,  as  his  dec- 
ade passed,  the  fate  that  had  been  mocked 
in  his  predecessors,  the  fate  of  still  saying 
the  same  things  long  after  his  audience  had 
ceased  to  be  involved. 

For  the  depression  passed  with  no  pro- 
found social  changes  accomplished.  No 
revolution  was  fought  in  America,  except 
on  the  literary  front  where  it  took  such  a 
sad  toll  of  budding  talents.  To  the  novel- 
ists who  launched  their  careers  in  the  full 
tide  of  the  class-conscious  thirties  the  end 
of  the  decade  brought  cynicism  and  dis- 
illusionment. Edward  Dahlberg,  Albert 
Halper,  Meyer  Levin,  Grace  Lumpkin — 
these  are  some  of  the  promising  talents  we 
remember  from  our  proletarian  days,  but 
of  the  four,  to  my  knowledge,  only  Albert 
Halper  is  still  producing  novels;  and  be- 
tween his  The  Foundry  of  1934  and  his 
Only  an  Inch  from  Glory  of  1 943  there  yawns 
the  abyss  of  an  enormous  social  weariness. 
Today  one  wonders,  indeed,  whether  the 
writers  of  our  proletarian  vanguard  were 
ever  really  as  promising  as  we  thought 
them,  or  whether  they  simply  claimed  so 
much  of  our  hope  because  they  were  so 
sympathetic   to    the   spirit   of  the   time. 


WHAT    HAS    HAPPENED    TO    OUR    NOVELS? 


533 


And  the  novelists  who  fought  against 
this  dominant  tendency  of  the  thirties — 
for  after  all,  not  all  our  writers  took  the 
revolutionary  side — of  course  suffered  as 
much  from  the  self-consciousness  of  con- 
servatism as  our  Marxist  novelists  suffered 
from  the  false  sense  of  political  power. 
Especially  the  less  forceful  among  them, 
the  writers  who  lacked  the  conviction  of 
their  conservative  positions,  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  pushed  further  and  further 
back  from  contact  with  a  hostile  world. 
Just  as  so  gifted  a  writer  as  Willa  Gather 
under  the  pressure  of  the  times  retreated 
rather  desperately  along  her  favored  his- 
torical path,  just  so  the  novelists  of  lesser 
gift  were  routed  either  into  the  past  or  into 
provincialism;  and  it  was  in  this  period, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  the  historical  novel 
and  the  regional  novel  came  into  a  vogue 
which,  with  a  new  emphasis,  has  not  yet 
lost  its  appeal.  The  stronger  talents,  writ- 
ers like  Marquand  and  Faulkner  and 
Wolfe,  continued  to  hoe  their  own  rows 
and  they  even  found  large  audiences;  but 
who  can  say  how  their  work  might  have 
developed  if  they  had  not  been  writing 
against,  as  it  were,  the  main  current  of 
their  day? 

HI 

^UT  it  would  be  false  to  give  the  im- 
pression that  because,  with  the  end 
of  the  thirties  and  the  start  of  the  war, 
revolutionary  literature  died  in  America, 
it  left  no  heritage  to  its  next  in  line.  In 
the  degree  that  our  present  fiction  is  still 
largely  concerned  with  its  social  duty,  it 
still  in  large  part  lives  on  an  inheritance 
from  the  depression.  The  political  direc- 
tives have  changed;  fiction  is  no  longer 
concerned  to  make  revolutions.  But  the 
didactic  impulse  persists.  By  a  strange 
political  logic  deriving  from  Russia's  posi- 
tion in  world  affairs,  the  vanguard  of  the 
proletariat  has  become  the  rearguard  of 
democracy,  and  a  section  of  our  fiction  is 
as  busy  today  exhorting  to  democracy  as  it 
was  exhorting  to  the  class  struggle  ten 
years  ago.  In  the  nationalism  of  war, 
indeed,  there  has  been  a  juncture  on  the 
literary  front  of  the  two  armies  of  the  left 
and  right  which  were  once  so  inimical. 

A  literature  of  nationalism  is  no  doubt 
inevitable  in  time  of  war.     In  this  war  we 


are  producing  few  novels  of  out-and-out 
flag-waving  like  MacKinlay  Kantor's 
Happy  Land,  but  Americanism  is  nonethe- 
less being  propagandized  extensively  both 
in  our  regional  novels  whose  purpose  it  is 
to  increase  our  love  of  country  by  ac- 
quainting us  with  little-known  sections  of 
the  land,  and  in  our  historical  novels 
whose  purpose  it  is  to  point  a  lesson  to 
present-day  democracy.  This  is  patriotic 
literature  in  its  crudest  aspect,  and  perhaps 
not  worth  lingering  over  except  to  point 
out  that  it  runs  in  a  cultural  current  which 
our  conservative  writers  have  always  kept 
alive. 

More  significant  is  the  national  pattern 
of  thought  that  is  being  unconsciously 
revealed  by  that  portion  of  our  present- 
day  fiction  which  is  not  at  all  aware  that  it 
is  teaching  lessons.  For  if  we  can  gen- 
eralize of  our  literature  of  the  twenties 
that  it  was  a  literature  of  the  individual 
against  society,  and  of  our  literature  of  the 
thirties  that  it  was  a  literature  of  class 
against  class,  we  can  just  as  accurately 
generalize  of  our  literature  of  today  that  it  is 
a  literature  of  acceptance  of  the  status  quo. 
The  values  of  our  present-day  novels  are 
the  established  values.  Our  fiction  would 
have  us  love  what  we  have  and  hold  on  to 
it.  Or  perhaps  it  puts  it  more  precisely 
to  say  that  our  fiction  of  these  war  years 
would  have  us  love  what  we  once  had  and 
recapture  it — for  while  there  is  little  actual 
nostalgia  in  our  recent  novels,  it  is  un- 
mistakable that  they  prefer  the  past  to  the 
present  way  of  life. 

The  days  of  rebellion  have  gone  and 
our  fiction  of  the  past  two  or  three  years  is 
biased  not  only  against  social  and  political 
change  but  even  against  implied  criticism. 
If  the  memory  of  our  fiction  is  long,  the 
will  is  short.  There  is  little  action  in 
present-day  novels  because  action  has  a 
way  of  disturbing  the  established  order. 
A  period  of  war  is  a  period  of  great 
personal  heroism,  yet  our  novels  are  no- 
ticeably lacking  in  heroes  and  heroines — 
again  because,  almost  by  definition,  a 
hero  acts  upon  his  environment  instead  of 
remaining  quiescent  as  his  environment 
acts  upon  him.  Our  fiction  is  deficient  in 
drama,  plot,  and  even  physical  motion, 
most  of  its  "story"  taking  place  inside  the 
minds    of   its    characters.     But    even    in 


534 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


their  mental  lives,  our  fictional  characters 
are  more  complacent  than  daring,  more 
conciliatory  than  energetic. 

THUS  a  book  like  A  Tree  Grows  in 
Brooklyn  is  typical  of  our  fiction  of  this 
war  despite  the  fact  that  most  of  its  action 
antedates  the  last  war.  In  Miss  Smith's 
picture  of  American  poverty  there  is 
neither  ugliness  nor  rebellion,  only  senti- 
ment; the  explosive  family  life  of  James 
Farrell's  realistic  novels  is  replaced,  in  the 
"realism"  of  A  Tree  Grows  in  Brooklyn,  by  a 
sweet  co-operativeness.  National  unity 
reflects  itself  in  family  unity,  and  fiction 
arms  us  with  the  illusion  of  domestic 
security  against  the  insecurity  of  the  world. 
This  theme  of  domestic  strength,  indeed, 
is  one  of  the  leitmotifs  of  current  novels. 
Sometimes,  as  in  Janet  Lewis's  Against  a 
Darkening  Sky,  it  is  treated  with  a  kind  of 
poetic  homeliness;  sometimes,  as  in  Kath- 
ryn  Forbes' s  Mama^s  Bank  Account,  with  a 
quasi-robust  humor.  Always  it  is  handled 
with  a  respect  that  contrasts  strangely  with 
the  days  when  fiction  was  so  busy  ques- 
tioning the  sanctity  of  family  ties. 

Family  life  is  the  safe  way  of  life,  and 
family  life  has  little  place  for  heroes.  The 
leading  character  of  Marquand's  So  Little 
Time  is  typical  as  a  contemporary  sub- 
stitute for  a  hero.  He  is  not  only  middle- 
aged,  and  therefore  adventures  at  the  risk 
of  making  himself  a  bit  ridiculous,  but, 
having  tasted  the  sexual  freedom  reminis- 
cent of  another  day,  is  finally  and  for  no 
apparent  reason  made  to  return  to  the 
wife  who  has  afi'orded  him  so  little  comfort 
and  understanding.  Again,  in  Elizabeth 
Jane  way's  The  Walsh  Girls,  marriage  is 
explicitly  described  as  a  fortress  in  a  fright- 
ening world;  and  certainly  Helen  Walsh, 
securely  married,  has  few  of  the  charms  of 
the  conventional  heroine  of  fiction. 

The  instances  in  which  our  novels  put 
themselves  at  the  service  of  established 
institutions  could  be  multiplied  endlessly. 
The  pattern  is  subtle  but  pervasive.  Sex- 
ual freedom,  feminism,  insight  into  the 
economic  sources  of  our  social  ills,  all 
disappear  from  a  fiction  determined  to 
buttress  us  against  the  threats  implicit  in 
an  uncertain  political  world.  And  the 
fact  that,  as  I  write,  there  are  three 
religious   novels — The  Robe,    The  Song   of 


Bernadette,  and  The  Apostle — in  a  list  of  ten 
best  sellers,  is  but  added  proof  that  the 
conservative  impulse,  although  newly  vig- 
orous, falls  back  upon  its  oldest  lines  of 
defense. 

Of  all  categories  of  fiction,  the  novel  of 
artistic  sensibility  exists  in  the  longest 
tradition  of  rebelliousness,  but  even  our 
contemporary  version  of  the  artist  as  a 
young  man  has  ceased  to  struggle.  If  we 
compare,  say,  Robert  Smith's  The  Journey, 
published  last  year,  with  any  of  the  classics 
of  the  type,  D.  H.  Lawrence's  Sons  and 
Lovers  or  Somerset  Maugham's  Of  Human 
Bondage,  we  are  at  once  struck  by  the 
extreme  subjectivism  of  our  present-day 
writer.  There  is  no  environment  in  Mr. 
Smith's  novel,  and  in  so  empty  a  world 
his  artist  is  able  to  blame  no  one  but  him- 
self for  his  spiritual  emptiness. 

To  EMPHASIZE  the  mood  of  inaction  in 
our  current  fiction  is  not  to  overlook 
the  violence  which  is  natural  to  wartime. 
Juvenile  delinquency  and  a  certain  law- 
lessness in  civilian  life  are  always  a  con- 
comitant of  war,  and  lawlessness  is  bound 
to    appear   even    in    novels    whose   chief 
movement  is  in  the  direction  of  safety  and 
co-operation.     But  it  is   interesting   that 
just  as  our  patriotic  feelings  are  open  in 
our  historical  novels  and  hidden  in  our 
novels  of  the  contemporary  scene,  our  ex- 
pressions   of   violence    are    open    in    our 
novels  about  the  past  and  hidden  in  our 
novels  of  present-day  life.     That  is,  more 
often  than  not  there  is  no  moral  justifi- 
cation for  the  acts  of  violence  committed 
in  our  pioneer  novels  or  in  our  novels 
about  nineteenth-century  life  in  the  South 
or  West;  for  example,  when  the  cotton 
planter  in  John  Faulkner's  Dollar  Cotton 
kills  his  farmhand  and  then  steals  his  wid- 
ow, we  are  supposed  to  accept  such  con- 
duct as  all  in  the  day's  work  in  a  primitive 
society.    It  is  as  if,  in  dealing  with  the  past, 
the  novelist  can  not  only  admit  our  less 
pleasant    human    instincts    but    revel    in 
them.     In    fiction    of  the   contemporary 
world,  however,  only  our  novels  of  race 
conflict — books  like   Lillian   Smith's  ad- 
mirable   study    of   the    Negro    situation, 
Strange  Fruit — seem  able  openly  to  admit 
lawless  conduct  and  at  the  same  time  con- 
demn  it;   apart  from   our  race-problem 


WHAT    HAS    HAPPENED    TO    OUR    NOVELS? 


535 


novels,  I  can  recall  but  one  recent  work  of 
fiction,  The  Hunted,  by  Albert  Guerard, 
which  itself  takes  a  clear  stand  against  vio- 
lence while  admitting  that  it  exists  in  con- 
temporary American  life.  Our  anti-Nazi 
novels  in  which  violence  is  cloaked  in 
political  necessity,  or  even  a  novel  like 
Nancy  Hale's  The  Prodigal  Women  in 
which,  because  the  husband  tortures  his 
wife  in  the  righteous  cause  of  monogamy, 
the  author  seems  scarcely  to  recognize  that 
he  is  cruel,  are  much  more  typical  of  the 
way  we  disguise  violence  by  virtue. 

It  is  to  the  past  that  the  current  novelist 
prefers  to  relegate  the  threatening  personal 
emotions,  and  it  is  to  the  past  that  he  also 
relegates  certain  subjects  which,  although 
they  are  clearly  of  the  present  scene,  are 
evidently  too  disturbing  to  handle  as  of 
the  moment.  For  instance,  judging  by 
our  fiction,  imperialism  ceased  to  exist 
with  the  turn  of  the  century.  Or  big 
business — obviously  as  much  an  American 
institution  now  as  it  was  in  the  twenties  or 
thirties — appears  in  our  novels,  if  at  all, 
only  as  in  Marcia  Davenport's  The  Valley 
of  Decision,  as  so  much  romantic  backdrop 
to  the  pageant  of  the  generations.  Even 
romantic  love  (as  opposed  to  domestic 
love)  is  no  longer  a  theme  for  novels,  nor 
indeed  has  it  been  for  some  time.  Hem- 
ingway is  the  only  love-story  writer  we 
have  had  in  this  country  since  the  twenties. 
For  it  is  in  the  very  nature  of  great  love 
that  it  admits  no  barriers  and  defies  the 


securities. 


IV 


THERE  is  this  barrenness  of  scene,  then, 
in  present-day  fiction,  there  is  no  ac- 
tion or  drama,  there  is  this  blinking  of 
contemporary  reality.  It  is  therefore 
small  wonder  that  novel  reading  has  lost 
something  of  its  hold  on  our  popular  affec- 
tions. And  publishers  have  become  aware 
of  this  important  shift  in  the  American 
taste — from  a  preference  for  fiction  to  a 
preference  for  other  kinds  of  writing.  Not 
that  novels  have  stopped  selling,  and  in 
good  quantity.  But  in  recent  years  fewer 
novels  have  been  winning  great  success, 
whereas  more  and  more  non-fiction  books 
have  reached  enormous  audiences. 

Of  course  this  is  not  to  say  that  non- 
fiction  has  achieved  a  higher  intellectual 


and  literary  level  than  fiction,  and  any 
general  assessment  of  the  quality  of  non- 
fiction  is  made  particularly  difficult  by  the 
existence  of  so  many  different  branches  of 
non-fiction  writing — philosophy,  criticism, 
biography,  science,  poetry,  many  of  them 
directed  to  highly  specialized  audiences. 
But  it  is  in  the  broad  field  of  journalism 
that  non-fiction  has  won  its  multitude  of 
new  readers  and,  questions  of  purely 
literary  merit  aside,  it  is  surely  under- 
standable that  our  books  of  reporting,  of 
political  experience,  and  of  personal  his- 
tory should  be  more  attractive  to  the 
average  reader  than  our  novels. 

For  if  fiction  pales  by  comparison  with 
the  facts  of  the  present-day  world,  jour- 
nalism is  the  facts  of  the  present-day 
world.  The  excitement,  the  adventure, 
the  drama  which  are  so  conspicuously 
absent  from  our  current  novels  are  present 
in  full  measure  in  the  books  of  our  war 
correspondents  and  in  the  personal  rem- 
iniscences of  people  whose  lives  have  been 
intimately  touched  by  modern  history.  A 
book  like  Etta  Shiber's  Paris-Underground, 
even  a  book  like  Burma  Surgeon,  holds  our 
interest  with  an  intensity  that  few  modern 
novels  can  equal.  Our  fiction  may  be 
concerned  with  formulating  and  preserv- 
ing a  desirable  order  of  society,  but 
journalism  has  no  such  concern — and  this 
lack  of  responsibility  may  reduce  jour- 
nalism's intellectual  standing;  it  is  true 
that  the  past  fifteen  years  have  produced 
no  Lincoln  Steffens  and  even  that  for 
every  thoughtful  book  like  Vincent 
Sheean's  Personal  History  there  have  been 
dozens  of  journalistic  stunts.  But  at  least 
journalism  feels  no  need  to  retreat  before 
the  realities  of  contemporary  life. 

There  is  a  tempo  and  change  of  scene  in 
our  current  journalism  that  parallels  the 
movies  and  in  contrast  to  which  our 
fiction  is  bound  to  seem  slow  and  static. 
The  inability  of  our  fiction  to  evoke  clear 
visual  images  is  one  of  its  serious  weak- 
nesses; it  is  journalism  that  has  become 
the  eyes  of  modern  writing.  Of  course, 
journalism  has  been  free  to  travel  even  in 
wartime,  but  this  actual  freedom  of  move- 
ment cannot  be  the  only  explanation  of 
the  greater  visuality  in  our  books  by 
reporters  than  in  our  novels.  More  likely 
it  is  because  our  reporters  dare  to  see  that 


536 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


they  do  see;  and  it  is  because  our  novelists 
do  not  dare  to  see  or  want  to  see  that  they 
do  not  see. 

And  less  self-consciouS  and  certainly  less 
inhibited  by  preconceotions  than  our  fic- 
tion writers,  our  journalists  even  manage 
to  tell  us  more  about  people  than  we  are 
told  by  our  novelists.  Our  journalists  of 
the  thirties,  traveling  across  the  country 
interviewing  gas-station  proprietors  and 
factory  workers  and  the  unemployed,  doc- 
umented the  American  people  in  the 
depression  with  a  suggestiveness  that 
should  have  been  a  lesson  to  our  depression 
novelists  who  were  so  busy  modeling 
human  character  into  social  principles. 
Similarly,  our  present-day  journalists  are 
revealing  the  American  personality  of  this 
time  far  more  convincingly  than  our 
present-day  novelists,  who,  whether  they 
know  it  or  not,  are  forcing  human 
character  into  stereotypes.  For  example, 
the  soldiers  who  appear  in  Ernie  Pyle's 
Here  is  Your  War  live  and  flower  in  our  im- 
aginations long  after  most  of  the  charac- 
ters in  recent  fiction  vanish  back  into  air. 
Nor  is  Mr.  Pyle's  book  the  sole  instance 
in  which  the  photographic  eye  and  ear 
of  the  reporter  turn  out  to  be  more  crea- 
tive than  the  ostensibly  creative  mind. 
We  can  compare  the  non-fiction  features 
in  The  New  Yorker  with  the  stories  to  see 
how  much  more  of  life  and  people  is 
caught  by  the  Profiles  and  the  Reporter- 
at-Large  pieces  than  by  The  New  Yorker's 
fiction. 

IooKiNG    at    current    writing,    in    other 
^  words,   we  would  seem  to  have  to 
conclude  that  there  has  been  a  curious 


reversal  of  roles  between  our  fiction  and 
our  non-fiction,  and  that  non-fiction — 
or,  specifically,  journalism — has  taken  over 
some  of  the  prime  duties  of  imaginative 
writing.  It  gives  us  our  drama,  it  tells  us 
about  people,  it  even  supplies  us  with  our 
objects  of  admiration  and  our  objects  for 
identification — the  heroes  who  have  disap- 
peared from  fiction.  And  we  wonder  if  it 
is  possible,  then,  that  our  novels  can  be 
wholly  replaced  and  that  fiction  will 
disappear  because  it  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary. 

Well,  I  think  this  is  hardly  possible,  and 
for  one  very  important  reason.  There  is 
still  one  sphere  that  journalism  cannot 
penetrate — the  moral  sphere,  which  is 
uniquely  the  province  of  the  novel.  No 
matter  how  much  of  an  illusion  journalism 
can  give  us  of  reporting  all  of  reality, 
reality  is  finally  composed  of  moral  ele- 
ments that  are  not  to  be  rendered  by  mere 
reporting.  These  moral  elements  can  be 
reached  only  through  the  moral  imagina- 
tion. Without  the  free  play  of  the  critical 
intelligence,  of  course  the  moral  imagina- 
tion is  crippled,  and  for  some  years  now 
our  fiction  has  abdicated  the  free  play  of 
the  critical  intelligence.  Our  novelists 
have  been  suicidally  determined  to  reform, 
to  comfort,  or  otherwise  to  find  a  place  for 
themselves  in  society  as  anything  but 
artists.  Perhaps  this  has  been  an  in- 
evitable response  to  the  confusion  of 
modern  life.  But  if  literature  is  to  carry 
its  full  share  in  our  future  culture,  and  if 
fiction  is  to  carry  its  full  share  in  our  litera- 
ture, the  novel  will  have  to  meet  confusion 
with  art — which,  as  E.  M.  Forster  has 
said,  is  the  moral  order  of  the  universe. 


MACARTHUR  AND   THE   CENSORSHIP 


WE  RECENTLY  acccpted  an  article  on  General  MacArthur  by  an 
experienced  correspondent  of  high  repute  who  for  over  a  year  and 
a  half  had  been  accredited  to  the  General's  headquarters.  Following  the 
arrangement  in  force  for  all  accredited  correspondents,  we  sent  the  manu- 
script to  the  Army  for  review.  Publication  was  "objected  to  on  grounds  of 
military  security."     We  therefore  may  not  print  the  article. 

This  act  of  censorship  was  not  based  on  the  inclusion  of  military  informa- 
tion of  value  to  the  enemy;  for  if  the  article  contained  any  at  all  this  could 
readily  have  been  deleted.  It  was  based  on  the  fact  that  the  article  con- 
tained, along  with  some  praise,  considerable  criticism  of  the  General;  and 
on  the  contention  that  "as  written"  it  "undermines  the  confidence  of  this 
country,  Australia,  and  particularly  the  troops  in  that  theatre,  in  their 
commander  and  his  strategic  and  tactical  plans,"  and  that  "such  a  result 
would  be  of  great  value  to  the  Axis  and  damaging  to  General  MacArthur's 
very  difficult  campaign  in  the  Southwest  Pacific." 

We  have  always  approved  the  censoring  of  information  which  might  be  of 
military  value  to  the  enemy  and  have  voluntarily  submitted  for  review,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  every  article  which  we  felt  might  contain  such  information. 
(The  Office  of  Censorship  has  been  consistently  unexceptionable  in  its  treat- 
ment of  our  material,  and  the  armed  forces  usually,  though  not  invariably, 
have  been  so.)  But  there  is  a  perpetual  danger  that  censorship  may  be  ex- 
tended to  the  concealment  of  military  losses,  mistakes,  and  shortcomings, 
and  we  believe  it  is  better  in  the  long  run  that  the  publicity  given  to,  let  us 
say,  a  Patton  incident  should  cause  acute  discomfort  in  high  military  quarters 
than  that  mistakes  should  be  hidden.  We  acknowledge,  however,  that  in 
specific  cases — which  those  on  the  outside  may  not  be  in  a  position  to  es- 
timate— censorship  of  criticism  may  sometimes  be  justifiable  if  military 
matters  alone  are  at  stake. 

But  the  present  case  wears  another  and  graver  aspect.  As  we  go  to  press, 
General  MacArthur  has  not  denied  receptiveness  to  a  nomination  for  the 
Presidency  of  the  United  States.  No  candidate  for  the  Presidency,  tacit  or 
otherwise,  should  stand  hidden  behind  a  veil  of  censorship. 

One  may  write  what  one  pleases  about  the  other  candidates;  about  Gen- 
eral MacArthur  no  opinions  based  on  recent  direct  observation  may  ap- 
parently be  given  publicity  unless  they  are  flattering. 

This  situation  is  intolerable  in  a  free  country.  It  may  be  that  General 
MacArthur's  apparent  grievances  against  the  Administration  are  justified.  It 
may  be  that  the  many  unfavorable  criticisms  of  him  which  we  have  heard — • 
even  those  which  we  sought  to  publish — have  been  misjudged.  But  that  a 
man  who  stands  protected  by  censorship  should  permit  his  name  to  be  con- 
sidered for  the  Presidency  mocks  a  central  principle  of  democracy — the  right 
of  the  people  to  see  their  political  candidates  in  the  light  of  free  discussion. 

Before  this  page  reaches  print  the  General  may  have  unequivocally  with- 
drawn his  name.  Or  the  censorship  may  have  been  relaxed.  Otherwise 
let  the  public  stand  warned.  The  accounts  of  this  candidate  which  have 
been  appearing  are  incomplete,  biased  by  censorship,  and  therefore  politi- 
cally unreliable. —  The  Editors 


This  article^  based  on  direct  observations  in 
the  Midwest  farming  country^  is  the  last  oj  a 
series  by  Mr,  Dos  Passos  on  wartime  America. 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND 


A   TRACTOR 


JOHN    DOS    PASSOS 


n  s  WE  drove  west  across  southern  Ohio, 
/_\  cornfields  spread  out  over  the  flat 
A.  j5l  land  on  either  side  of  the  straight 
concrete  road.  The  white  farmhouses 
with  green  roofs  had  a  well-kept  look. 
They  were  very  small  beside  the  immense 
barns  and  cowstables  and  the  tall  silos 
that  towered  above  the  tattered  russet  of 
the  trees  round  the  house  lots. 

It  was  prosperous-lookingcountry. 
The  high  wire  fences  were  neat.  The 
gates  hung  straight.  A  high-tension 
power  line  went  looping  along  on  tall 
steel  towers  to  the  right  of  the  road.  At 
regular  intervals  olive-colored  four-motor 
bombers  roared  overhead  on  their  way 
out  from  the  airplane  reconditioning 
plant  in  the  industrial  town  we  had  just 
left.  In  some  fields  the  corn  had  been 
cut  by  hand  and  stacked  in  rows  of  wig- 
wam-shaped shooks;  in  others  the  mechan- 
ical picker  had  gone  through  leaving  a 
confusion  of  mangled  stalks  where  tall 
black  hogs  rooted  and  munched;  in  others 
the  corn  still  stood  in  twelve-foot  ranks  of 
pale  silvery  yellow  that  rustled  dryly  in 
the  fading  breeze  of  the  late  afternoon. 
There  were  occasional  patches  of  pump- 
kins or  warty  nilegreen  Hubbard  squashes 
humped  among  their  wilted  vines,  or 
strips  of  green  alfalfa,  or  stubble  where 
beans  had  been  cut  off,  but  mostly  it  was 
corn,  corn,  corn,  and  tall  black  hogs  that 


looked  bigger  and  taller  and  blacker  as 
the  evening  mist  closed  in. 

It  was  dusk  when  the  highway  swerved 
south  and  plunged  down  through  a 
wooded  rolling  country  that  smelt  of  dead 
leaves  toward  the  river.  In  the  dried-out 
weeds  along  the  roadside  a  rabbit  now 
and  then  sat  up  looking  at  us  with  twitch- 
ing nose  for  a  second  before  he  turned  and 
showed  us  a  white  blob  of  cottontail  as 
he  made  off  into  the  darkness  of  the  under- 
brush. By  the  time  we  reached  the  red- 
brick river  town  where  the  meeting  was 
being  held  it  was  night  and  the  street- 
lights swam  ruddy  in  the  streaky  mist  off 
the  river. 

Farm  Bureau  Supper 

IT  was  the  yearly  get-together  and  busi- 
ness meeting  of  the  local  county  Farm 
Bureau  organization.  The  meeting  was 
being  held  in  the  basement  of  a  rambling 
old  Methodist  church  off  the  main  street. 
Smells  of  frying  steak  and  baked  biscuits 
met  us  as  we  hurried  past  a  few  lanky  sun- 
burned men  in  store  clothes  standing 
silent  round  the  entrance,  treating  them- 
selves to  a  last  chew  of  tobacco  or  a  last 
puff  on  a  cigarette  before  going  in.  The 
ladies  of  the  organization  had  prepared 
the  supper.  The  tables  were  set  in  the 
long   basement   room   under   the   steam- 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND    A     J'RACTOR 


539 


pipes.  Wc  were  greeted  at  the  door  by 
the  minister,  a  redfaced  young  man  who 
had  the  heahhy  cornfed  look  of  a  prize 
carthorse.  While  we  were  being  shown 
our  places  at  the  crowded  narrow  boards 
everybody  was  singing  to  the  tune  of 
"Jerusalem  the  Golden": 

Oh  beautiful  for  spacious  skies, 
For  amber  waves  of  grain  .  .  . 

At  first  the  women  carried  it  but  gradually 
the  men  and  little  piping  children's 
voices  joined  in. 

For  purple  mountain  majesties, 
Above  the  fruited  plain  .  .  . 

The  minister  stood  on  a  piano-stool  and 
led  with  as  much  energy  as  if  he  were 
leading  the  cheering  at  a  football  game. 

America,  America, 

God  shed  His  grace  on  thee, 

God  crown  thy  good  with  brotherhood. 

From  sea  to  shining  sea. 

They  sang  well.  The  song  roared 
among  the  low  rafters.  The  glasses 
along  the  tables  rang  on  the  high  notes. 
On  *'sea"  they  ended  up  with  a  bang  that 
left  the  hall  so  silent  you  could  hear  the 
puffing  of  the  ladies  with  frilled  aprons 
over  their  party  dresses  as  they  hurried 
in  with  the  last  trays  of  dinner  plates. 

The  minister  boomed  out  a  short 
grace.  With  the  "amen"  chairs  scraped, 
throats  were  cleared,  crockery  clattered 
as  we  all  sat  down  simultaneously  to  the 
steaming  meal  of  fried  steak,  stewed  corn, 
string  beans,  fruit  salad  in  pink  jelly,  and 
biscuits  and  hot  baker's' rolls  and  butter. 
Opposite  me  sat  a  long-faced  man  in  a 
black  suit  with  black  hair  and  a  leathery 
skin  who  looked  like  a  member  of  Lin- 
coln's cabinet.  Further  along,  several 
old  ladies  in  their  best  frocks,  with  dimpled 
marshmallow  faces,  chirped  and  squeaked 
among  themselves.  On  my  left  was  a 
fresh-faced  whitehaired  man  in  light  gray 
tweeds.  I  asked  him  what  folks  round 
here  thought  about  the  Presidential 
election. 

"We  are  mostly  Republicans  bred  and 
born,"  he  said.  "If  a  man  votes  the 
Democratic  ticket  it's  a  pretty  sure  sign 
he  comes  from  across  the  river.  We 
pretty  near  fell  for  the  Administration 
once.  I  came  near  voting  for  the  man 
in  the  White  House  myself.  I'd  just 
about  made  up  my  mind  to  vote  for  him 


when  I  went  out  to  talk  to  some  old  ten- 
ants on  part  of  our  farm.  The  old  man's 
father  had  been  a  tenant  of  my  grand- 
father's. I  asked  him  how  he'd  take  it  if 
I  voted  the  Democratic  ticket.  His  face 
got  so  long  you  would  have  thought  I'd 
told  him  about  a  death  in  the  family. 
*How  do  you  think  your  father  and  grand- 
father would  have  taken  it?'  he  asked  me. 
That  saved  me  from  doing  what  I  sec  now 
would  have  been  a  foolish  thing." 

I  asked  him  what  kind  of  a  Republican 
nominee  they'd  vote  for  down  here. 
"They'd  vote  for  any  Republican,  natu- 
rally," he  said,  "but  they'd  prefer  a 
candidate  as  different  as  possible  from 
the  present  incumbent.  They  would  go 
all  out  for  a  general." 

They  were  singing  again,  this  time 
men's  and  women's  voices  carrying  alter- 
nate verses  of  "When  You  and  I  Were 
Young,  Maggie."  With  the  dessert  of 
icecream  and  cake  child  entertainers  were 
herded  by  their  mamas  into  the  open 
corner  of  the  room  where  the  piano  was. 
Two  little  girls  in  pigtails  sang  "Pistol- 
Packin'  Mama."  A  small  toddler  in  a 
white  rayon  naval  uniform  with  a  great 
deal  of  gold  braid  on  the  shoulders  was 
stood  up  on  the  piano-stool  and  howled 
out  mournfully,  "Let  Me  Call  You 
Sweetheart." 

Then  the  meeting  was  called  to  order. 
We  pushed  back  our  chairs  and  listened 
to  a  series  of  serious-faced  men  giving  an 
account  of  the  year's  proceedings.  Most 
of  them  dealt  with  their  efforts  to  start  a 
co-operative  to  sell  gas,  tires,  feed,  and 
fertilizer.  Though  the  co-operatives  had 
been  a  great  success  in  the  rest  of  the  state, 
this  county  organization  had  had  poor 
luck.  Two  fires  had  set  them  back.  In 
this  coming  year  they  were  determined  to 
get  her  over  the  hump.  A  young  man 
with  blond  hair  cut  in  a  brush  gave  a 
talk  on  the  food  needs  of  the  nation  for 
next  year.  Prices  would  be  good,  he 
said.  It  was  up  to  the  farmer  to  produce 
as  he  had  never  produced  before.  A 
sharp  volley  of  handclapping  accented  the 
word  "produce."  There  were  reports 
from  committees.  There  was  an  elec- 
tion of  officers.  Then  the  man  who  had 
brought  me  over,  who  was  making  the 
trip  to  organize  a  membership  drive,  gave 


540 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


a  talk  on  what  the  Farm  Bureau  could  do 
for  the  farmer  and  urged  everybody  to 
go  out  and  get  new  members  and  we  all 
sans:  "America"  and  filed  out. 


The  Co-operative  Idea 

AS  we  drove  out  of  town  under  a  last 
^/\  quarter  of  moon  that  shone  wanly 
on  cobwebby  tangles  of  mist  among  the 
trees  in  the  hollows,  the  Farm  Bureau 
organizer  said  apologetically  that  this 
county  we  had  just  been  in  was  one  of  the 
worst  in  the  state  from  the  point  of  view 
of  farm  organizations.  In  this  state,  he 
went  on  to  explain,  the  Farm  Bureau 
wasn't  so  political  as  it  was  in  the  South. 
They  were  building  the  most  progressive 
set  of  consumers'  co-operatives  in  the 
country.  Already  their  gas  stations  sold 
enough  gasoline  to  set  the  price  for  the 
whole  state.  They  were  on  the  point  of 
buying  a  factory  to  build  farm  machinery. 
When  they  got  that  going  it  would  help 
keep  prices  down  for  the  nation.  I 
mustn't  think  this  county  was  typical.  I 
assured  him  that  nobody  could  go  through 
the  big  office  building  of  the  Farm  Bureau 
co-operatives,  as  I  had  that  morning, 
without  getting  the  impression  of  an  im- 
mense going  concern. 

This  blue-eyed  young  man  who  had 
invited  me  to  come  along  on  part  of  his 
organizing  trip  was  a  Virginian.  After 
working  his  way  through  college  he  had 
got  a  scholarship  to  go  abroad  and  study 
the  co-operative  movement.  He'd  been 
in  England,  France,  and  Sweden  just 
before  war  broke  out.  He'd  stayed  on  in 
Sweden  for  a  while  after  the  shooting 
started.  Everywhere  he'd  seen  self- 
government  and  individual  liberty,  every- 
thing we  had  been  brought  up  to  prize  in 
this  country  as  making  life  worth  living, 
going  down  the  drain.  How  could  we 
keep  that  from  happening  here?  was  what 
he'd  been  asking  himself  ever  since.  Of 
one  thing  he  was  sure.  No  human 
institution  ever  stood  still.  It  either 
grew  and  progressed  or  else  it  decayed. 
That  was  \vhy  the  conservatives  were 
always  wrong  because  what  they  were 
trying  to  conserve  was  always  spoiling  on 
their  hands.  When  he  came  home  he 
had  gone  into  co-operative  work  because 


he  thought  that  if  anybody  could  bring 
self-government  back  to  life  in  this  coun- 
try the  farmers  could.  In  this  state  they 
had  really  inspired  leadership,  he  thought. 
The  plan  was  to  build  up  consumers' 
co-operatives  for  economic  self-help  at 
the  same  time  as  they  built  up  a  political 
lobby  to  influence  legislation.  He  didn't 
think  one  could  go  ahead  very  far  without 
the  other. 

There  was  one  interesting  development 
I  ought  to  know  about.  .  .  .  Now  in  his 
opinion  one  of  the  great  mistakes  of  Farm 
Bureau  leadership  was  opposition  to 
labor.  There  was  just  no  doubt  that 
farmers  were  naturally  prejudiced  against 
labor  organizations.  Nobody  had  ever 
convinced  the  farmer  that  he  had  any- 
thing to  gain  from  high  industrial  wages. 
But  in  this  new  development  he  saw  a 
chance  of  bridging  the  gap  between  them. 
There  was  springing  up  in  this  state  a 
chain  of  co-operative  stores  operated  by 
labor  unions  in  the  cities  which  bought 
their  products  directly  from  the  farmer. 
It  had  begun  with  poultry.  These  stores 
cut  out  the  middleman's  expenses  and 
assured  the  farmer  a  good  profit  for  his 
product  and  the  union  man  the  lowest 
possible  price.  Outside  of  the  expense 
of  hauling,  they  shared  between  them  the 
entire  markup  of  the  commission  mer- 
chant, the  retail  storekeeper,  the  jobber, 
the  wholesaler.  More  important  than 
the  economics  of  it  was  the  fact  that  it 
constituted  a  bridge  between  farmers  and 
workers  in  the  industrial  cities.  "That's 
the  sort  of  thing  I  call  practical  politics," 
he  said. 

II  ^^ 

The  Farmer  Loves  to  Produce 

66Y  AM  seventy-four,"  said  the  hawk-faced 
JL  whitehaired  man  as  he  let  himself 
down  from  the  wagon  piled  high  with 
corn  where  he'd  been  fixing  a  sideboard. 
He  grunted  as  he  straightened  up  in  his 
neatly  patched  blue  overalls  and  put  his 
hand  to  his  back  above  his  lean  hip. 
"Ouch  .  .  .  I'm  beginning  to  find  the 
work  heavy."  He  pointed  to  the  new 
mechanical  loader  that  was  hitched  be- 
hind the  wagon.  "Boys  bought  me  that. 
They  think  I'm  too  old  to  lift  the  corn  up 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND    A    TRACTOR 


541 


into  the  wagon.     Never  could  have  gotten 
this  crop  in  without  it." 

He  took  his  hand  away  from  his  back, 
wiped  it  on  his  overalls,  and  walked 
slowly  toward  us  with  the  hand  out- 
stretched. We  were  standing  beside  a 
highway  in  the  western  part  of  Ohio  on  a 
semicircle  of  grass  heaped  with  red-brown 
leaves  from  the  horse-chestnut  trees  in 
front  of  the  big  mansarded  house  with 
broad  porches.  Whenever  any  one  of  us 
moved,  the  leaves  crunched  crisply  under- 
foot. He  was  a  tall  slender  man,  re- 
markably straight  for  his  age.  After 
shaking  hands  the  old  man  stood  quietly 
looking  us  over  for  a  moment  out  of  sharp 
blue  eyes  between  narrowed  red  lids. 
"Well,  the  government  said  they  wanted 
production  and  by  gum  we'll  give  it  to 
'em  if  it  kills  us,"  he  said.  "By  the  way, 
how's  Pete  Hawkins?"  he  added  looking 
toward  the  Dane  who  accompanied  me. 
"Those  cornpickers  are  nasty  things. 
Never  put  your  hand  near  'em  without 
stopping  the  motor;  that's  the  rule  here." 

"He's  gone  to  the  hospital,"  said  the 
Dane.  "His  hand's  pretty  badly 
mangled." 

"Picking  some  stalks  out  of  the  snappers 
that  looked  like  they'd  stick,  I  suppose. 
The  hired  man  over  at  the  Children's 
Home  got  a  piece  taken  out  of  his  finger 
that  way  only  yesterday.  Lucky  he 
didn't  lose  it.  We  are  so  shorthanded 
around  here  we  can't  afford  to  have 
accidents.  Well,  we've  planted  eighty 
acres  of  wheat  and  we've  picked  six  thou- 
sand bushels  of  corn,  just  me  and  the  two 
boys.  All  this  machinery  costs  a  heap  of 
money  but  it  surely  does  the  work.  If 
we  can't  get  labor  we've  got  to  buy  ma- 
chinery. If  we  buy  machinery  we've  got 
to  get  prices  to  pay  for  it." 

"Well,  before  long  we'll  have  co-oper- 
ative machinery,"  said  the  Dane. 

"They  won't  be  able  to  cut  prices 
much." 

"If  it's  a  co-operative  the  price  won't 
matter.  The  profits  will  go  back  to  the 
membership." 

"They  will  if  it's  run  right." 

"It's  up  to  us  to  see  it's  run  right,"  said 
the  Dane,  warming  up.  "The  farmers 
around  here  do  a  pretty  good  job  running 
their  farms.     There's  no  reason  on  earth 


why  they  can't  run  a  few  enterprises,"  he 
went  on,  his  voice  rising  as  he  spoke. 
"Look  at  me.  I've  done  both.  I've 
kept  a  store  and  I've  worked  for  co- 
operatives and  I  tell  you  storekeeping's  a 
whole  lot  easier  and  a  whole  lot  less  satis- 
factory to  the  spirit  of  man." 

"I'd  surely  like  to  see  the  whole  agricul- 
tural program  taken  away  from  the 
government,"  said  the  old  man  with  a 
blue  flash  in  his  eye. 

"You  wouldn't  want  to  see  it  fall  into 
the  hands  of  the  Wall  Street  bankers, 
would  you?  Then  we'd  get  our  hides 
taken  off  for  fair." 

"I've  been  through  periods  when  the 
bankers  ruled.  I've  had  'em  skin  me 
alive  like  the  rest  of  the  folks.  .  .  .  I'd 
trust  'em  before  I  would  the  politicians 
at  that." 

"But  suppose  the  farmers  ran  their 
entire  business  for  themselves?  Finance, 
furnishing  of  supplies,  marketing  right 
through  to  the  consumer  ..." 

"I'd  like  to  see  it  properly  managed.  I 
certainly  would  like  to  be  shown." 

A  shining  black  Buick  towncar  drove  up 
and  parked  in  the  shallow  ditch  beside 
us.  A  young  man  in  a  dark  business  suit 
stepped  out.  "Folks,"  he  said,  "I  just 
stopped  to  hear  if  you  knew  about  Pete's 
hand.  Down  the  road  they  are  saying 
he  may  lose  the  whole  hand.  I  hope  it 
isn't  as  bad  as  that." 

"I  don't  think  so,"  said  the  Dane,  fur- 
rowing his  brow.  "I'm  very  much  afraid 
he'll  lose  some  fingers,  though." 

The  man  in  the  business  suit,  it  came 
out,  ran  a  chicken  hatchery  and  sold 
incubators  and  brooders.  He  was  in  the 
business  in  a  big  way.  He'd  even  been 
as  far  as  Soviet  Russia  before  the  war  in- 
stalling his  incubators.  When  we  asked 
him  how  he  liked  it,  he  said  he'd  come 
back  believing  in  private  enterprise  more 
firmly  than  ever.  Of  course,  he  admitted, 
smiling,  all  he'd  seen  had  been  chicken 
farms  and  chicken  officials  and  he  didn't 
know  any  Russian. 

But  what  about  co-operatives?  we  asked 
him.  What  about  democratically  run 
business?  His  face  darkened.  Hadn't 
we  had  enough  bureaucracy  by  this  time? 
he  asked  with  impatience.  We  were  up 
to   our   necks   in   it.     You   would   think 


542 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


people  would  be  sick  of  it.  ''Frankly  I 
think  business  men  contribute  more  to 
the  community.  That  is  if  you  give  them 
a  chance  to  make  a  profit.  We  pay  better 
wages.  I  don't  mind  a  few  co-operatives 
for  the  little  fellows  but  I'd  hate  to  have 
them  get  their  hands  on  everything. 
That'd  be  as  bad  as  the  federal  govern- 
ment. It's  the  business  men  who  con- 
tribute to  community  projects." 

The  Dane  had  a  thoughtful  look  as  we 
drove  off.  "Now  the  curious  thing  is," 
he  said,  "that  that  man  is  a  leader  in  our 
town  in  every  committee  for  the  public 
good.  He's  one  of  the  most  public- 
spirited  men  we've  got.  How  can  he  be 
so  shortsighted?" 

s  we  drove  further  along  the  highway 
we  could  see  the  flashing  perpendicu- 
lar jaws  of  the  cornpickers  mounted  on 
tractors  moving  down  the  rows.  The 
tall  ragged  cornstalks  fell  trembling  and 
were  swallowed  up.  Yellow  corncobs 
glowed  in  the  sun  as  they  plopped  in  a 
stream  into  the  towed  wagons.  "One 
man  can  do  in  a  day  with  one  of  those 
what  five  men  did  with  a  combine  and 
what  twenty  men  could  do  by  hand.  The 
weather  looks  almost  too  good,"  said  the 
Dane.  "But  the  farmers  are  breaking 
their  necks  to  get  the  corn  in.  Can't 
trust  the  weather  this  late  in  the  year." 

He  had  turned  into  a  driveway  that 
went  to  a  neat  narrow  white  house  that 
sat  up  like  a  jackrabbit  among  smooth- 
boled  walnut  trees.  Their  last  yellow 
leaves  spun  as  they  fell  to  the  grass  of  the 
dooryard.  "You  were  asking  about 
stretching  manpower,"  the  Dane  said. 
"This  lady  runs  a  three-hundred-acre 
farm  all  by  herself.  Let's  ask  her  how 
she  does  it."  As  we  climbed  out  of  the 
car  a  redfaced  buxom  woman  in  a  Mother 
Hubbard  and  a  blue  poke  bonnet  came 
hurrying  toward  us  from  the  barnyard, 
pulling  off'  her  workgloves  as  she  came. 
"I  knew  you  were  coming,  Mr.  Hansen," 
she  screeched,  "but  I  just  had  to  do  some 
work  in  the  garden.  There's  so  little 
time  left.  .  .  .  Do  come  right  in  and  sit 
down."  Panting,  she  fussed  around  us  as 
she  ushered  us  into  her  clean  kitchen  that 
smelt  of  apples  and  milkpans  and  coal 
oil.     "This  friend  of  mine  wants  to  know 


how  you  do  it,"  said  the  Dane  with  his 
broad  disarming  smile. 

She  sat  down  in  a  rocker  facing  us.     As 
she  talked  she  rocked  fast.     Well,  she'd 
been  a  widow  for  sixteen  years  so  she'd 
had    to   manage   her   own    aff'airs.     No, 
she'd  never  had  any  inclination  to  marry 
again.     What  she  did  was  get  a  young 
boy  as  hired  man  and  bring  him  up  right. 
Of  course  people  would  talk  if  she  got  a 
man  her  own  age  living  right  here  in  the 
house  with  her,  but  shucks,  this  way  she 
was  like  a  mother  to  the  boys.     She'd 
been   very  careful  whom  she  picked,  of 
course.     She  picked  clean  steady  young- 
sters who  didn't  use  tobacco  or  anything 
like   that   and   they   certainly   had   been 
marvels.     This  boy  she  had  now  was  the 
third    she'd    had.     The    other    two    had 
grown   up   and   married   and   she'd   lost 
them.     This  boy  she  had  now  was  going 
steady   with   a   girl   but  she   hoped   she 
could  hold  on  to  him  until  the  war  was 
over  anyway.     He  was  a  worker  all  right. 
The  last  two  weeks  he  had  been  picking 
corn  by  day  and  plowing  at  night.     He'd 
rigged  headlights  on  the  tractor.     Had  to 
do  a  little  extra  work  when  the  country 
needed  the  production.     No,  she  didn't 
sell  any  corn.     The  cows  took  it  all.     She 
sold  her  milk.     The  cows  took  a  lot  of 
feeding  and  what  was  left  she  fed  to  the 
hogs   and   the   fowls.     More   profit   that 
way.     She  had  to  buy  feed  as  it  was  and 
my  it  was  scarce.     She'd  done  right  well 
with  her  hogs.     Shipped  them  at  the  end 
of  six  months.     The  last  lot  the  boy  had 
shipped   into  Kansas   City  had   been  so 
fine  the  dealer  had  given  her  a  premium 
on   them.     She   heard   it   over   the   tele- 
phone. ...  "I  slid  down  like  I  was  about 
to  faint.     The  boy  said,  'Let's  shake.     I 
fed  'em.'  .  .  .  That  boy  sure  can  feed 
hogs." 

A  tall  young  man  with  dark  eyes  and 
brov/s  in  a  face  crimson  from  the  outdoors 
stood  pulling  off  his  gloves  in  the  back 
doorway.  When  he  noticed  it  was  he  that 
we  were  talking  about  his  red  face  went 
even  redder. 

"I  bet  your  ears  are  burning,"  the  Dane 
said  pleasantly  as  we  got  up  to  shake  hands 
with  him.  "Maybe  you  can  tell  us  how 
one  man  and  a  tractor  can  take  care  of 
three  hundred  acres." 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND    A    TRACTOR 


543 


"Well,"  the  young  man  said  after  a 
long  pause,  "I  let  the  tractor  do  the  work." 

"How  about  next  year?" 

"Don't  hurt  to  hope.  We  can't  feed 
no  more  stock.  We  got  no  more  stable 
room.  We're  aimin'  to  shift  to  beef 
catde  a  little.  It's  gettin'  so  hard  to  get 
mash  but  we're  aimin'  to  produce  a  little 
more  feed  ourselves.  We  grind  our  own 
corn."  He  showed  a  set  of  broad  white 
teeth  in  a  grin.  "The  tractor  does  the 
grindin'.  .  .  .  Well,  I'm  glad  to  met  you 
folks,"  he  said,  coming  forward  gravely 
to  shake  hands  again.  "I  better  be  goin' 
about  my  business." 


Quaker  Farmer 

AT  the  fresh-painted  white  house  set 
£\^  among  trees  and  broad  lawns  and 
the  rosy  dry  blossom  heads  of  hydrangeas 
they  told  us  he  was  out  in  the  field  picking 
corn.  We  followed  the  ruts  along  the 
edge  of  the  thicket  that  marked  a  winding 
silty  brown  brook  until  we  came  to  the 
first  tall  rows  of  corn.  The  big  ears  hung 
so  heavy  they  seemed  about  to  break  out 
of  their  dry  gaping  shucks.  We  walked 
along  the  edge  of  the  cornfield  toward  the 
roar  of  the  tractor's  exhaust  and  the  whir 
of  metal  until  we  came  out  on  an  open 
space  of  wrecked  and  trampled  stalks 
where  the  picker  had  been  through.  He 
was  coming  toward  us  down  the  rows, 
sitting  up  high  on  the  sqat  of  the  tractor 
while  the  cornstalks  bowed  trembling 
and  crumpled  and  vanished  between  the 
shining  steady  shears. 

Right  at  our  feet  he  stopped  the  tractor 
and  jumped  down  from  the  seat.  The 
roar  of  the  motor  and  the  clatter  of  the 
picker  stopped.  The  cornfield  was  all  at 
once  immensely  quiet.  We  could  hear 
the  cawing  of  crows  along  the  hedgerow. 
Without  looking  at  us  he  knelt  in  front 
of  the  picker  and  began  yanking  pieces  of 
tough  stalk  from  between  the  snappers. 
When  he  got  to  his  feet  again  he  turned 
and  walked  toward  us,  pulling  off  one 
heavy  work  glove  as  he  came.  He 
greeted  my  companion  and  we  shook 
hands. 

He  was  a  tall  grave  man  with  clear  gray 
eyes.  The  stubble  on  his  cheeks  and  chin 
was    gray.     When    he    pushed    back    his 


sweaty  denim  cap  to  look  at  us  better  he 
exposed  a  tall  white  forehead  much  paler 
than  his  ruddy  windburned  nose  and 
cheeks. 

The  Dane,  possibly  to  bring  him  out, 
asked  him  how  he  was  stepping  up  produc- 
tion for  war.  Standing  very  still  and 
straight,  he  looked  at  us  steadily  and  un- 
smilingly  for  a  moment.  Then  he  said 
quietly  and  without  warmth,  as  if  he  were 
answering  the  silly  questions  of  a  couple 
of  children,  "We  know  that  this  thing  is 
not  of  God,  but  it  does  not  go  against  our 
conscience  to  get  production  out  of  the 
land." 

A  smile  almost  flickered  round 
the  corner  of  his  thin  wide  obstinate 
mouth.  "You  can't  make  a  farmer 
happier  than  by  offering  him  a  good 
price  and  telling  him  to  produce.  Now 
can  you?" 

The  Dane  stammered  a  little  when  he 
explained  that  I  was  trying  to  find  out 
how  all  this  effort  for  production  was  going 
to  affect  the  growth  of  the  county  co- 
operative. 

The  farmer  stood  there  straight  and 
tall  with  his  feet  a  little  apart  and  his 
arms  hanging  easily  at  his  sides  for  a  full 
minute  before  he  answered. 

"You  know  very  well  that  it  is  my  opin- 
ion that  we  farmers  should  do  for  our- 
selves what  the  government  is  doing  for  us 
and  doing  very  badly  with  a  political  pur- 
pose," he  said.  "This  is  a  time  of  organi- 
zations. We  farmers  must  develop  organ- 
izations to  protect  our  families  and  the 
things  we  hold  dear." 

"Do  you  think  we  are  succeeding?" 

"You  have  the  figures  in  the  office. 
Why  do  you  ask  me?"  He  pointed  with  a 
long  blackened  forefinger  at  a  cloud  that 
was  spreading  over  the  dappled  sky  above 
the  bare  trees  at  the  end  of  the  cornfield. 
"That's  rain,"  he  said.  "A  little  rain 
will  help  us — the  corn  is  too  brittle  now — 
but  a  long  spell  of  rain  would  spoil  the 
crop.  I'm  too  busy  today  to  talk  of 
politics." 

He  fixed  his  level  gaze  on  my 
face.  "You  must  excuse  me.  We  speak 
plain  here,"  he  said.  "If  you  could 
come  back  when  the  crop  is  in  we  should 
have  time  to  talk."  He  lifted  one  arm  in 
a  gesture  of  dismissal  as  he  turned  and 


544 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


strode  back  to  the  tractor.  The  whirring 
roar  of  machinery  drowned  our  voices 
out.  We  turned  and  walked  back  along 
the  ruts  toward  the  hoii^e. 

"He's  the  best  farrr-^r  in  the  county," 
said  the  Dane  in  an  apologetic  tone  when 
we  were  enough  out  of  earshot  to  hear  our 
voices.     "I  can  see  why,"  I  said. 

Ill 

Westward  the  Course 

THE  train  crossed  the  Mississippi  in  a 
flurry  of  snow.  The  line  curved  onto 
a  levee  along  the  edges  of  a  great  still 
backwater  here  and  there  blurred  with 
snowj  here  and  there  streaked  with  blue 
from  reflected  patches  of  clear  sky;  then 
it  crossed  a  bridge  above  a  swirl  of  muddy 
water;  then  ran  through  a  little  wood. 
Beyond  the  smooth  boles  of  the  trees 
you  could  see  the  river  and  against  the 
pale  bluff  opposite  a  little  town  that 
seemed  to  be  on  an  island  of  green  grass. 
There  was  a  row  of  tall  vase-shaped  elms 
in  front  of  some  stately  old  white  houses 
and  a  church  with  a  slender  pointed 
steeple.  It  was  like  one  of  the  old  un- 
touched towns  left  over  from  the  good 
times  of  New  England.  As  the  train 
lurched  round  another  curve  the  little 
town  vanished  like  something  seen  in  a 
dream. 

Meanwhile  the  heavy-set  man  with 
sunken  eyes  beside  me  was  talking  and 
talking  in  a  deep  husky  voice  in  my  ear. 
"The  man  in  the  White  House  was  all 
right,"  he  was  saying,  "to  tide  us  over  the 
depression.  What  we  needed  in  those 
days  was  compromise,  temporizing,  fina- 
gling. He  gave  the  country  time  to  get  its 
breath  and  to  find  its  way  around  in  the 
modern  age  that  came  on  too  soon  for  us. 
Now  what  we  need  is  conviction,  a  plain 
man  of  conviction.  Such  a  man  will  rise 
up  suddenly  when  the  people  need  him, 
the  way  Lincoln  rose  up  out  of  the  people, 
the  way  Bryan  rose  up  out  of  the  people. 
.  .  .  The  man  this  country  needs  is  living 
today,  doing  his  workaday  work  some- 
where among  the  people  of  the  United 
States.  When  the  need  comes  for  such  a 
man  he  will  rise  up  from  among  the 
people.  I  believe  he's  got  to  come  from 
the  West." 


The  Wisconsin  Drift 

^^W  T^^'^  ^°  ^^^^^  around  here  think 

VV  about?  Why  they  think  about 
corn,  corn  and  hogs,  but  corn  mostly," 
drawled  my  friend  in  his  ingratiating 
singsong. 

He  was  a  large  sandy-haired  man  with 
a  large  frame  loosely  put  together  and  a 
large  belly  and  large  powerful  arms  and 
large  irregular  features  linked  together 
by  thoughtful  lines  in  a  triangular  ruddy 
face.  Sprawling  at  the  table  in  the  lunch- 
room over  his  second  cup  of  coffee  he  had 
the  look  he  often  had  of  being  just  about 
to  wriggle  out  of  the  workclothes  that  hung 
loosely  about  him.  He  had  a  slow  per- 
suasive expository  way  of  talking.  His 
manner  was  between  that  of  a  lecturer 
explaining  the  solution  of  a  problem  at  a 
blackboard  and  that  of  a  lawyer  pleading 
with  a  jury.  There  was  a  disarming 
friendliness  in  his  voice  that  had  a  way  of 
dissolving  objections  before  you  brought 
them  up.  "Around  here  they  are  the 
durnest  folks  for  growing  corn,"  he  said. 
"They  don't  know  about  much  else. 
They  get  out  of  growing  corn  what  other 
folks  in  the  East  get  out  of  country  clubs 
and  the  stockmarket  and  the  international 
situation." 

We  were  sitting  in  a  small  plain  lunch- 
room on  the  short  main  street  of  a  small 
plain  central  Iowa  town  on  a  creek  in  a 
region  of  broad  slow  lazy  hills.  The 
carefully  scrubbed  tables  and  counter 
and  the  chairs  were  plain  and  old.  The 
fittings  were  seedy.  The  middleaged 
waitress  had  a  brisk  homely  healthy  look. 
The  men  hunched  over  coffeecups  at  the 
counter  or  meditatively  dawdling  round 
the  tables  were  all  in  workclothes.  Most 
of  them  wore  high  boots.  The  high- 
priced  cars  parked  in  the  center  of  the 
street  outside  were  splattered  with  brown 
mud.  Everything  was  built  for  use  in 
this  town. 

"You  are  sitting  right  now" — my  friend 
went  on  with  his  lecture — "plumb  in  the 
middle  of  one  of  the  richest  agricultural 
regions  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the  Wis- 
consin Drift  of  black  dirt.  Since  our 
grandfathers  moved  out  here  we've  been 
taking  crop  after  crop  off  it  without  the 
slightest  diminution  in  fertility.     Instead 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND    A    TRACTOR 


545 


of  getting  poorer  the  land  is  getting  richer. 
I'll  tell  you  why  it's  getting  richer.  We 
are  just  starting  to  learn  to  use  fertilizer 
on  this  land.  Hybrid  seed  corn  has  added 
about  twenty  bushels  to  the  yield  per 
acre.  A  number  of  years  ago  we  used  to 
hear  a  good  deal  about  the  Hundred- 
bushel  Club  made  up  of  fellers  who  had 
managed  to  grow  a  hundred  bushels  of 
corn  to  the  acre.  Now  nobody  talks 
about  it  any  more  .  .  .  too  many  mem- 
bers. ...  A  hundred  bushels  isn't  the 
average  yet,  not  by  a  long  shot,  but  it 
might  be.  Then  new  machinery,  better 
tractors,  better  plows,  the  mechanical 
cornpicker,  have  increased  the  yield  per 
man.  .  .  .  Boys,"  he  addressed  the  men 
at  the  next  table,  "how  long  is  it  since  an 
old-fashioned  twenty-mule  combine  was 
seen  operating  in  this  county?" 

"The  last  one  was  laid  away  two  years 
ago,"  piped  up  a  short  blackeyed  man 
with  a  chin  full  of  black  stubble  who  wore 
a  turtle-neck  sweater  and  overalls. 

"Even  then  it  was  an  antique.  Now 
one  good  man  on  a  picker  can  bring  in 
more  corn  in  a  day  than  nine  men  and 
twenty  mules  could."  He  drank  the 
last  of  his  coffee.  "Now  suppose  we  go 
and  take  a  look  around."  He  gathered 
himself  slowly  together  and  rose  to  his 
feet.  "No,"  he  said  gently,  as  I  tried 
to  pull  out  a  dollar  bill,  "your  Eastern 
money  isn't  any  good  here,  is  it,  Ellen?" 
The  waitress,  who  was  standing  beside 
the  table  with  her  hands  in  the  pocket  of 
her  apron,  smiled  brightly  and  shook  her 
head. 

I  followed  him  out  to  his  car  and  we 
drove  slowly  out  Main  Street  and  past  the 
sparse  bare  trees  of  the  little  park  at  the 
end  and  crossed  the  bridge  over  the  muddy 
creek  already  rimmed  with  ice.  "You 
came  just  at  the  right  time,"  he  was  say- 
ing. "I  got  the  last  of  my  corn  in  yes- 
terday. We've  got  plenty  of  time  today 
to  loaf  around  a  bit.  .  .  .  First  we'll 
swing  around  past  the  plant." 

Hybrid  Seed  Corn 

HE  drove  down  a  side  road  past  a  row 
of  small  new  white  houses  that  had 
the  constricted  look  of  the  houses  on  the 
cover  of  a  builders'  supply  catalogue  and 


crossed  the  railroad  tracks  and  stopped  in 
front  of  a  long  gray  galvanized  iron  build- 
ing. Behind  it  next  to  an  elevator  tower 
rose  a  volcano-shaped  mountain  of  yellow 
cobs  laced  with  tangerine  color.  He 
leaned  back  in  his  seat  and  stared  at  the 
pile  with  some  satisfaction.  "What  do 
you  think  of  that  for  a  pile  of  cobs?  .  .  . 
and  they've  been  carting  'em  away  every 
day.  We  burn  'em  in  the  stoves  here. 
.  .  .  When  I  first  went  into  the  hybrid- 
sced-corn  business  eleven  years  ago  folks 
thought  I  was  crazy.  I  had  the  hardest 
time  persuading  the  fellers  around  here  to 
take  a  couple  of  bushels  for  a  trial.  Now 
we  can't  begin  to  fill  the  orders.  .  .  . 
Folks  make  me  tired  when  they  talk 
about  the  frontier  being  gone.  We  are 
on  a  frontier  all  over  this  country.  Even 
back  East  there'd  be  frontiers  if  folks  had 
the  sense  to  look  for  'em — damn  wonder- 
ful frontiers.  .  .  .  You  see,  the  corn  goes 
in  at  the  end  over  there  and  then  it's 
dried  by  hot  air  from  mechanical  blowers. 
Then  it's  run  through  troughs  where  they 
sort  out  the  grades,  then  it's  shucked  by 
machinery  and  shot  up  into  bins.  Then 
we  draw  it  off  in  bags  and  store  it  in  that 
last  building.  That  building  at  the  end 
is  jam-packed  full  of  the  finest  kind  of 
hybrid  seed  corn  right  now.  ...  If  we 
could  fill  a  couple  more  warehouses  like 
that  we  could  fill  all  the  orders  we  get. 
...  I  tell  you  we  have  ourselves  a  time 
out  here  with  our  seed-corn  business." 
He  had  started  the  car  and  was  circling 
back  onto  the  main  highroad  out  of  town 
again. 

Farm  Management 

"-jpNOLiTics,"  he  was  saying.  "The  only 
J[7  time  folks  worry  about  politics 
around  here  is  when  times  are  bad  and 
they  can't  get  a  price  for  their  corn;  other 
times  they  just  naturally  vote  Republican. 
The  way  they're  messing  up  the  corn-hog 
ratio  in  Washington  is  what  is  worrying 
me.  They  are  going  to  bring  about  an 
acute  shortage  of  feed  in  this  country. 
.  .  .  Now  and  then  I  get  on  the  train  and 
go  to  Washington  and  go  around  and  try 
to  lay  down  the  law  to  the  boys,  try  to 
tell  'em  how  things  really  are  out  where 
we  produce  the  stuff.  I'm  working 
against  my  own  interests  at  that,  arguing 


546 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


for  a  low  price  on  feed,  because  it's  to  my 
interest  to  have  a  high  price  for  corn  .  .  . 
but  I  get  something  out  of  it  just  the  same. 
I  get  kind  of  an  idea  of  what  they  are  up 
to  around  there.  That  helps  me  in  my 
business." 

He  brought  the  car  suddenly  to  a  halt 
at  the  corner  of  a  dirt  road  that  cut  across 
the  highway.  His  voice  had  a  streak 
of  impatience  in  it,  unusual  for  him. 
"Now  look  at  this  feller.  See  what  he's 
done,"  he  said  as  he  pointed  to  a  farm 
that  rolled  in  dun  patches  of  pasture  and 
blue-green  strips  of  winter  oats  and  great 
squares  of  wrecked  stubble  of  harvested 
cornfields  up  over  the  gradual  hills. 
"See,  he's  got  a  little  pasture  in  the 
corner  near  the  house  no  bigger  than  a 
nickel.  .  .  .  Now  his  house  lot's  all  right, 
I  don't  mind  that,  but  you  see  he's  got 
some  very  good  land  there  and  he's 
ruined  it  with  nasty  little  crisscross  fences. 
How  can  he  plow  those  fields?  No  place 
to  turn  the  tractor  around.  ...  I  aim 
for  mile-long  rows." 

He  turned  and  drove  up  the  sludgy  dirt 
road  to  the  top  of  a  hill  and  then  he  swung 
out  into  a  field  through  a  gap  in  the  fence 
and  drove  uphill  over  the  bumpy  grass 
that  had  spread  over  the  old  furrows  where 
corn  had  been  planted.  At  the  very 
summit  he  slowed  down  to  a  stop.  "Let's 
get  out  and  stretch  our  legs  a  little." 

We  climbed  out  of  the  car  beside  a 
great  stack  of  oatstraw.  We  were  on  the 
top  of  the  highest  hill  around.  In  front 
of  us  a  small  unpainted  farmhouse  sagged 
black  and  vacant  with  gaping  windows. 
Behind  the  house  the  great  stretch  of  coun- 
try rolled  pale  ochre  toward  blue  hills 
along  the  horizon  moving  in  slow  undula- 
tions like  an  ocean  groundswell  in  a  calm. 
Here  and  there  in  a  deeper  hollow  was  a 
scrap  of  a  bright  blue  pond  or  the  green 
smudge  of  a  swamp.  My  friend  pointed 
vindictively  at  the  house.  "I'll  have  that 
out  of  here  before  long.  You  see  the 
feller  who  lived  up  here  was  starving  to 
death.  ...  I  hate  to  see  that.  .  .  .  No 
decent  well.  No  barn.  It's  quite  easy 
for  folks  to  starve  to  death  on  the  richest 
land  in  the  world  if  they  don't  manage  it 
right.  Now  the  first  thing  I  do  when  I 
get  hold  of  a  piece  of  land  is  pull  out  the 
fences  and  knock  the  houses  down  and 


cart  'em  away.  We  got  to  have  space  to 
operate  our  machinery.  Do  you  notice 
the  roads?  When  this  country  was  laid 
out  years  ago  they  laid  out  roads  a  mile 
apart  each  way.  A  square  mile  ought  to 
be  the  unit  for  growing  corn  in  this  coun- 
try. Then  you  can  cultivate  sixty-five 
acres  a  day  along  mile-long  rows." 

He  turned  and  pointed  in  -the  other 
direction. 

"You  see  over  there  there's  a  gully  be- 
ginning to  wash.  That's  a  bad  business. 
What  we  do  is  to  put  in  an  earth  dam  and 
fix  it  so  that  the  water  comes  up  out  of  a 
standing  pipe  and  flows  over  the  top. 
You'd  be  surprised  how  soon  the  space 
behind  the  dam  will  fill  up  with  mud. 
When  it  has  filled  up  to  the  top  you  raise 
the  dam  and  set  your  pipe  higher  up  and 
in  three  or  four  years  your  gully  is  filled 
up  flat  as  your  hand  and  you've  got  a 
field  you  can  operate  with.  Well,  I 
know  what  you're  going  to  say,  what  about 
the  tenants?  All  you  big-hearted  folks 
back  East  are  worked  up  about  the  ten- 
ants. .  .  .  Let's  move  on.  It's  getting 
chilly.     I'm  going  to  show  you  a  tenant." 

We  drove  down  the  hill  to  the  main 
road  again.  "Now  I'm  going  to  take  you 
to  see  a  tenant  who  has  put  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  in  the  bank  in  two  years. 
I  know  because  he  is  under  my  manage- 
ment. Of  course  I  admit  he's  got  one  of 
the  best  farms  in  the  country.  He's 
somewhat  exceptional,  but  out  here  folks 
don't  have  to  starve  to  death.  Mind  you, 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  was  his 
share  after  the  landlord  was  paid  off  and 
all  expenses  paid.  Of  course  he's  a  lively 
young  feller  who  works  from  before 
dawn  till  after  dark  and  who'll  do  what 
you  tell  him.  We  used  plenty  of  fertilizer. 
Some  folks  would  rather  lose  money  than 
invest  a  couple  of  thousand  dollars  in 
chemical  fertilizer.  One  way  I  keep  the 
boys  interested  is  to  lay  bets  with  'em. 
I  bet  'em  such  and  such  a  piece  of  land 
won't  bring  thirty  bushels  or  forty-five 
or  eighty,  say,  according  to  what  kind  of 
land  it  is,  and  they'll  work  their  heads  off 
to  make  a  monkey  out  of  me.  I  lose  quite 
a  little  money  that  way."  He  looked  at 
me  and  grinned.  "But  it  sure  is  worth  it 
in  bushels  to  the  acre." 

He  turned  ofT  on  another  right-angle 


THREE    HUNDRED    ACRES    AND    A    TRACTOR 


547 


crossroad  and  drove  up  to  a  small  plain 
white  house.  The  l)arn  in  hack  was 
modest  and  the  cowshed  and  outbuildings 
were  in  poor  repair. 

A  mildfaced  li^hthaired  young  man  in 
blue  overalls  came  out  of  the  house  stretch- 
ing. After  we'd  asked  about  his  wife, 
who  had  been  feeling  poorly,  my  friend 
started  off: 

''Joe,  that  feeding  floor's  in  the  wrong 
place.  It's  unsightly.  We  don't  want 
your  wife  looking  down  into  a  hog  trough 
every  time  she  comes  out  the  kitchen  door 
now,  do  we?  Specially  when  she's  got 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  views  over  the 
finest  corn  land  on  God's  green  earth 
stretching  out  as  far  as  she  can  see.  I'm 
goin'  to  tear  that  cowbarn  down  and  cart 
it  away  this  winter  and  build  you  a 
decent  one  and  a  concrete  feeding  floor. 
.  .  .  One  thing  about  farming,"  he 
added  in  an  aside  to  me,  "that  folks  often 
forget  is  that  you  can't  take  out  unless  you 
put  in.  .  .  .  Say,  Joe,  we  were  talking 
about  how  much  land  one  man  could 
handle  if  he  was  the  right  kind  of  a  man 
with  the  right  kind  of  equipment. 
Exactly  how  many  acres  did  you  handle 
yourself  this  year?" 

The  man  pushed  his  denim  cap  back 
thoughtfully  on  his  head  for  a  moment. 
"Let's  see,"  he  answered  quietly.  'T 
had  two  hundred  and  eighty  acres  in  corn 
and  sixty  acres  in  oats  and  then  there 
was  sixty-five  acres  in  flax  and  sixty-five 
acres  in  soy  beans  the  government  asked 
for  and  the  hay  .  .  ."     He  paused  and 


stood  looking  out  over  the  rolling  land 
pallid  with  winter.  Wc  looked  the  way 
he  was  looking.  A  big  red  squirrel  had 
come  out  of  the  tangled  cornstubble  and 
was  venturing  in  a  scries  of  little  quick 
runs  along  the  fence.  Three  bclalcd  blue- 
birds fluttered  up  and  darted  away  into 
the  sky.  "Well,  say  fifteen  acres  in  hay. 
.  .  .  The  wife  takes  care  of  the  garden. 
...  Of  course,"  he  added  in  a  sober 
voice,  "I  did  have  a  hired  man  some  but 
the  custom  work  I  did  for  the  neighbors 
with  the  tractor  plowing  and  with  the 
cornpicker  picking  corn  just  about  bal- 
anced that  up." 

"And  you're  not  worn  out  yet,  Joe?" 
My  friend  burst  out  laughing. 

"I'm  in  pretty  fair  shape,  to  tell  the 
truth." 

As  we  drove  back  toward  town  my 
friend  was  saying,  "And  we  haven't 
begun  to  produce  in  this  country  yet. 
Well,  suppose  we  go  and  have  us  a  cup  of 
coffee  and  see  what  the  boys  have  to  say 
and  then  I'll  take  you  to  see  some  really 
poor  land,  a  farm  I'm  taking  over  nobody 
ever  could  make  a  living  on.  I  have  a 
hunch  that  with  proper  cultivation  and 
plenty  of  fertilizer  I  can  make  that  grow 
corn  just  about  as  well  as  this  good  land. 
.  .  .  I'll  have  me  a  whale  of  a  time  trying 
anyway.  ...  I  know  you  folks  in  the 
East  are  always  saying  the  country's 
going  to  the  dogs.  Maybe  it  is.  But  I 
tell  you  it's  hard  to  convince  us  farmers  it 
is  when  a  man  like  that  can  bank  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  in  two  years." 


This  is  Mr.  Terbfs first  story  in  a  national  magazine.  He  was 
born  twenty-seven  years  ago  in  Augusta,  Georgia.  A  former  col- 
lege instructor^  he  now  works  for  the  Ford  Motor  Company. 


HEALTH    CARD 


A  Story 


FRANK    YERBY 


JOHNNY  Stood  under  one  of  the  street 
lights  on  the  corner  and  tried  to  read 
the  letter.  The  street  lights  down  in 
the  "Bottom"  were  so  dim  that  he 
couldn't  make  out  half  the  words,  but  he 
didn't  need  to:  he  knew  them  all  by  heart 
anyway. 

"Sugar,"  he  read,  "it  took  a  long  time 
but  I  done  it.  I  got  the  money  to  come  to 
see  you.  I  waited  and  waited  for  them  to 
give  you  a  furlough,  but  it  look  like  they 
don't  mean  to.  Sugar,  I  can't  wait  no 
longer.  I  got  to  see  you.  I  got  to.  Find 
a  nice  place  for  me  to  stay — where  we  can 
be  happy  together.  You  know  what  I 
mean.     With  all  my  love,  Lily." 

Johnny  folded  the  letter  up  and  put  it 
back  in  his  pocket.  Then  he  walked 
swiftly  down  the  street  past  all  the  juke 
joints  with  the  music  blaring  out  and  the 
GI  brogans  pounding.  He  turned  down 
a  side  street,  scuffing  up  a  cloud  of  dust  as 
he  did  so.  None  of  the  streets  down  in 
Black  Bottom  was  paved,  and  there  were 
four  inches  of  fine  white  powder  over  ev- 
erything. When  it  rained,  the  mud  would 
come  up  over  the  tops  of  his  Army  shoes, 
but  it  hadn't  rained  in  nearly  three 
months.  There  were  no  juke  joints  on 
this  street,  and  the  Negro  shanties  were 
neatly  whitewashed.  Johnny  kept  on 
walking  until  he  came  to  the  end  of  the 
street.     On   the   corner   stood    the   little 


whitewashed  Baptist  Church,  and  next  to 
it  was  the  neat,  well-kept  home  of  the 
pastor. 

Johnny  went  up  on  the  porch  and  hesi- 
tated. He  thrust  his  hand  in  his  pocket 
and  the  paper  crinkled.  He  took  his 
hand  out  and  knocked  on  the  door. 

"Who's  that?"  a  voice  called. 

"It's  me,"  Johnny  answered;  "it's  a 
sodjer." 

The  door  opened  a  crack,  and  the 
woman  peered  out.  She  was  middle-aged 
and  fat.  Looking  down,  Johnny  could 
see  that  her  feet  were  bare. 

"Whatcha  want,  sodjer?" 

Johnny  took  off  his  cap. 

"Please,  Mam,  lemme  come  in.  I  kin 
explain  it  t  yuh  better  settin  down." 

She  studied  his  face  for  a  minute  in  the 
darkness. 

"Aw  right,"  she  said;  "you  kin  come  in, 
son." 

Johnny  entered  the  room  stiffly  and  sat 
down  on  a  corn-shuck-bottomed  chair. 

"It's  this  way.  Mam,"  he  said.  "I  got  a 
wife  up  Nawth.  I  been  tryin  an  tryin  t 
git  a  furlough  so  I  could  go  t  see  huh. 
But  they  always  put  me  off".  So  now  she 
done  worked  an  saved  enuff  money  t 
come  an  see  me.  I  wants  t  ax  you  t  rent 
me  a  room,  Mam.  I  doan  know  no- 
wheres  t  ax." 

"This   ain't  no   hotel,   son." 


HEALTH    CARD 


549 


"I  know  it  ain't.  I  cain't  take  Lily  t  no 
hotel,  not  lak  hotels  in   this  hcah  town." 

"Lily  yo  wife?" 

**Yes'm.  She  my  shonuff,  honest 
t'Gawd  wife.  Married  in  th  Baptist 
Church  in  Dectroit." 

The  fat  woman  sat  back,  and  her  thick 
lips  widened  into  a  smile. 

"She  a  good  girl,  ain't  she?  An  you 
doan  wanta  take  her  t  one  o  these  heah 
hohouses  they  calls  hotels." 

"That's  it,  Mam." 

"Sho  you  kin  bring  huh  heah,  son.  Be 
glad  t  have  huh.  Reveren  be  glad  t  have 
huh  too.     What  yo  name,  son?" 

"Johnny.     Johnny  Green.     Mam — " 

"Yas,  son?" 

"You  understands  that  I  wants  t  come 
heah  too?" 

The  fat  woman  rocked  back  in  her  chair 
and  gurgled  with  laughter. 

"Bless  yo  heart,  chile,  I  ain't  always 
been  a  ole  woman!  And  I  ain't  always 
been  th  preacher's  wdfe  neither!" 

"Thank  you.  Mam.  I  gotta  go,  now\ 
Time  fur  me  t  be  gittin  back  t  camp." 

"\Vhen  you  bring  Lily?" 

"Be  Monday  night.  Mam.  Pays  you 
now  if  you  wants  it." 

"Monday  be  awright.  Talk  it  over 
wit  th  Reveren,  so  he  make  it  light  fur 
yuh.  Know  sodjer  boys  ain't  got  much 
money." 

"No  Mam,  sho  Lawd  ain't.  G  night. 
Mam.". 

WHEN  he  turned  back  into  the  main 
street  of  the  Negro  section,  the  doors 
of  the  joints  were  all  open  and  the  soldiers 
were  coming  out.  The  girls  were  clinging 
onto  their  arms  all  the  w^ay  to  the  bus  stop. 
Johnny  looked  at  the  dresses  that  stopped 
halfway  between  the  pelvis  and  the  knee 
and  hugged  the  backside  so  that  every 
muscle  showed  when  they  walked.  He 
saw  the  purple  lipstick  smeared  across  the 
wide  full  lips,  and  the  short  hair  stiffened 
with  smelly  grease  so  that  it  covered  their 
heads  like  a  black  lacquered  cap.  They 
went  on  down  to  the  bus  stop  arm  in  arm, 
their  knotty  bare  calves  bunching  with 
each  step  as  they  walked.  Johnny  thought 
about  Lily.  He  walked  past  them  very 
fast  without  turning  his  head. 

But  just  as  he  reached  the  bus  stop  he 


heard  the  whistles.  When  he  turned 
around  he  saw  the  four  MP's  and  the  ci- 
vilian policemen  stopping  the  crowd.  He 
turned  around  again  and  walked  back 
until  he  was  standing  just  behind  the 
white  men. 

"Aw  right,"  the  MP's  were  saying,  "you 
gals  git  your  health  cards  out." 

Some  of  the  girls  started  digging  in  their 
handbags.  Johnny  could  see  them  drag- 
ging out  small  yellow  cardboard  squares. 
But  the  others  just  stood  there  with  blank 
expressions  on  their  faces.  The  soldiers 
started  muttering,  a  dark,  deep-throated 
sound.  The  MP's  started  pushing  their 
way  through  the  crowd,  looking  at  each 
girl's  card  as  they  passed.  When  they 
came  to  a  girl  who  didn't  have  a  card, 
they  called  out  to  the  civilian  policemen: 

"Aw-  right,  Mister,  take  A'nt  Jemima 
for  a  little  ride." 

Then  the  city  policemen  would  lead  the 
girl  away  and  put  her  in  the  Black  Maria. 

They  kept  this  up  until  they  had  exam- 
ined every  girl  except  one.  She  hung 
back  beside  her  soldier,  and  the  first  time 
the  MP's  didn't  see  her.  When  they 
came  back  through,  one  of  them  caught 
her  by  the  arm. 
"Lemme  see  your  card,  Mandy,"  he  said. 

The  girl  looked  at  him,  her  little  eyes 
narrowing  into  slits  in  her  black  face. 

"Tek  yo  han  offn  me,  white  man,"  she 
said. 

The  MP's  face  crimsoned,  so  that 
Johnny  could  see  it,  even  in  the  darkness. 

"Listen,  black  gal,"  he  said,  "I  told 
you  to  lemme  see  your  card." 

"An  I  tole  you  t  tek  yo  han  offen  me, 
w^hite  man!" 

"Gawddammit,  you  little  black  bitch, 
you  better  do  like  I  tell  you!" 

Johnny  didn't  see  very  clearly  what 
happened  after  that.  There  was  a  sudden 
explosion  of  motion,  and  then  the  MP  was 
trying  to  jerk  his  hand  back,  but  he 
couldn't,  for  the  little  old  black  girl  had  it 
betw^een  her  teeth  and  was  biting  it  to  the 
bone.  He  drew  his  other  hand  back,  and 
slapped  her  across  the  face  so  hard  that 
it  sounded  like  a  pistol  shot.  She  went 
over  backwards  and  her  tight  skirt  split,  so 
that  when  she  got  up  Johnny  could  see 
that  she  didn't  have  anything  on  under  it. 
She  came  forward  like  a  cat,  her  nails 


550 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


bared,  straight  for  the  MP's  eyes.  He 
slapped  her  down  again,  but  the  soldiers 
surged  forward  all  at  once.  The  MP's  fell 
back  and  drew  their  guns  and  one  of  them 
blew  a  whistle. 

Johnny,  who  was  behind  them,  decided 
it  was  time  for  him  to  get  out  of  there  and 
he  did;  but  not  before  he  saw  the  squads 
of  white  MP's  hurling  around  the  corner 
and  going  to  work  on  the  Negroes  with 
their  clubs.  He  reached  the  bus  stop, 
and  swung  on  board.  The  minute  after 
he  had  pushed  his  way  to  the  back  behind 
all  the  white  soldiers,  he  heard  the  shots. 
The  bus  driver  put  the  bus  in  gear  and 
they  roared  off  toward  the  camp. 

It  was  after  one  o'clock  when  all  the 
soldiers  straggled  in.  Those  of  them  who 
could  still  walk.  Eight  of  them  came  in 
on  the  meat  wagon,  three  with  gunshot 
wounds.  The  Colonel  declared  the  town 
out  of  bounds  for  all  Negro  soldiers  for  a 
month. 

f^ipsAMMiT,"  Johnny  said,   "I  gotta  go 

II  j)  meet  Lily,  I  gotta.  I  cain't  stay 
heah.     I  cain't!" 

"Whatcha  gonna  do,"  Little  Willie 
asked,  "go  AWOL?" 

Johnny  looked  at  him,  his  brow  fur- 
rowed into  a  frown. 

"Naw,"  he  said,  "I'm  gonna  go  see  th 
Colonel!" 

*'Whut!  Man,  you  crazy!  Colonel 
kick  yo  black  ass  out  fo  you  gits  yo  mouf 
open." 

"I  take  a  chanct  on  that." 

He  walked  over  to  the  little  half-mirror 
on  the  wall  of  the  barracks.  Carefully  he 
readjusted  his  cap.  He  pulled  his  tie 
out  of  his  shirt  front,  and  drew  the  knot 
tighter  around  his  throat.  Then  he  tucked 
the  ends  back  in  at  just  the  right  fraction 
of  an  inch  between  the  correct  pair  of 
buttons.  He  bent  down  and  dusted  his 
shoes  again,  although  they  were  already 
spotless. 

"Man,"  Little  Willie  said,  "you  sho  is  a 
fool!" 

"Reckon  I  am,"  Johnny  said;  then  he 
went  out  of  the  door  and  down  the  short 
wooden  steps. 

When  he  got  to  the  road  that  divided 
the  colored  and  white  sections  of  the 
camp,  his  steps  faltered.     He  stood  still  a 


minute,  drew  in  a  deep  breath,  and  marched 
very  stiffly  and  erect  across  the  road.  The 
white  soldiers  gazed  at  him  curiously,  but 
none  of  them  said  anything.  If  a  black 
soldier  came  over  into  their  section  it  was 
because  somebody  sent  him,  so  they  let 
him  alone. 

In  front  of  the  Colonel's  headquarters 
he  stopped.  He  knew  what  he  had  to  say, 
but  his  breath  was  very  short  in  his  throat 
and  he  was  going  to  have  a  hard  time  say- 
ing it. 

"Whatcha  want,  soldier?"  the  sentry 
demanded. 

"I  wants  t  see  th  Colonel." 

"Who  sent  you?" 

Johnny  drew  his  breath  in  sharply." 

"I  ain't  at  liberty  t  say,"  he  declared, 
his  breath  coming  out  very  fast  behind'the 
words. 

"You  ain't  at  liberty  t  say,"  the  sentry 
mimicked.  "Well  I'll  be  damned!  If 
you  ain't  at  liberty  t  say,  then  I  ain't  at 
liberty  t  let  you  see  th  Colonel!  Git  tha 
hell  outa  here,  nigger,  before  I  pump  some 
lead  in  you!" 

Johnny  didn't  move. 

The  sentry  started  toward  him,  lifting 
his  rifle  butt,  but  another  soldier,  a  ser- 
geant, came  around  the  corner  of  the 
building. 

"Hold  on  there,"  he  called.  "What 
tha  hell  is  th  trouble  here?" 

"This  here  nigger  says  he  wants  t  see  tha 
Colonel  an  when  I  ast  him  who  sent  him, 
he  says  he  ain't  at  liberty  t  say!" 

The  Sergeant  turned  to  Johnny. 

Johnny  came  to  attention  and  saluted 
him.  You  aren't  supposed  to  salute 
NCO's,  but  sometimes  it  helps. 

"What  you  got  t  say  fur  yourself,  boy?" 
the  Sergeant  said,  not  unkindly.  Johnny's 
breath  evened. 

"I  got  uh  message  fur  th  Colonel,  suh," 
he  said;  "I  ain't  sposed  t  give  it  t  nobody 
else  but  him.  I  ain't  even  sposed  t  tell 
who  sont  it,  suh." 

The  Sergeant  peered  at  him  sharply. 

"You  tellin  tha  truth,  boy?" 

"Yassuh!" 

"Awright.     Wait  here  a  minute." 

He  went  into  HQ.  After  a  couple  of 
minutes  he  came  back  out. 

"Awright,  soldier,  you  kin  go  on  in." 

Johnny  mounted  the  steps  and  went 


HEALTH    CARD 


551 


into  the  Coloncrs  office.  The  Colonel 
was  a  lean,  white-haired  soldier  with  a  face 
tanned  to  the  color  of  saddle  leather.  He 
was  reading  a  letter  through  a  pair  of  horn- 
rimmed glasses  which  had  only  one  ear- 
hook  left,  so  that  he  had  to  hold  them  up 
to  his  eyes  with  his  hand.  He  put  them 
down  and  looked  up.  Johnny  saw  that 
his  eyes  were  pale  blue,  so  pale  that  he 
felt  like  he  was  looking  into  the  eyes  of  an 
eagle  or  some  other  fierce  bird  of  prey. 

"Well?"  he  said,  and  Johnny  stiffened 
into  a  salute.     The  Colonel  half  smiled. 

"At  ease,  soldier,"  he  said.  Then: 
"The  Sergeant  tells  me  that  you  have  a 
very  important  message  for  me." 

Johnny  gulped  in  the  air. 

"Beggin  th  Sergeant's  pardon,  suh,"  he 
said,  "but  that  ain't  so." 

"What!" 

"Yassuh,"  Johnny  rushed  on,  "nobody 
sent  me.  I  come  on  m  own  hook.  I  had 
t  talk  t  yuh.  Colonel,  suh!  You  kin  sen 
me  t  th  guard  house  afterwards,  but 
please  suh  lissen  t  me  fur  jes  a  minute!" 

The  Colonel  relaxed  slowly.  Some- 
thing very  like  a  smile  was  playing  around 
the  corners  of  his  mouth.  He  looked  at 
his  watch. 

"All  right,  soldier,"  he  said,  "you've  got 
five  minutes." 

"Thank  yuh,  thank  yuh,  suh!" 

"Speak  your  piece,  soldier;  you're  wast- 
ing time!" 

"It's  about  Lily,  suh.  She  my  wife. 
She  done  worked  an  slaved  fur  nigh  onto 
six  months  t  git  the  money  t  come  an  see 
me.     An  now  you  give  th  order  that  none 

0  th  cullud  boys  kin  go  t  town.  Beggin  yo 
pahdon,  suh,  I  wasn't  in  none  o  that 
trouble.  I  ain't  never  been  in  no  trouble. 
You  kin  ax  my  capn,  if  you  wants  to.     All 

1  wants  is  permission  to  go  into  town  fur 
one  week,  an  I'll  stay  outa  town  fur  two 
months  if  yuh  wants  me  to." 

The  Colonel  picked  up  the  phone. 

"Ring  Captain  Walters  for  me,"  he  said; 
then,  "What's  your  name,  soldier?" 

''It's  Green,  suh.  Private  Johnny 
Green." 

''Captain  Walters?  This  is  Colonel 
Milton.  Do  you  have  anything  in  your 
files  concerning  Private  Johnny  Green? 
Oh  yes,  go  ahead.  Take  all  the  time  you 
need." 


The  Colonel  lit  a  long,  black  cigar. 
Johnny  waited.  The  clock  on  the  wall 
spun  its  electric  arms. 

"What's  that?  Yes.  Yes,  yes,  I  sec. 
Thank  you.  Captain." 

He  put  down  the  phone  and  picked  up 
a  fountain  pen.  He  wrote  swiftly.  Fi- 
nally he  straightened  up  and  gave  Johnny 
the  slip  of  paper. 

Johnny  read  it.  It  said:  "Private 
Johnny  Green  is  given  express  permission 
to  go  into  town  every  evening  of  the  week 
beginning  August  seventh  and  ending  Au- 
gust fourteenth.  He  is  further  permitted 
to  remain  in  town  overnight  every  night 
during  said  week,  so  long  as  he  returns  to 
camp  for  reveille  the  following  morning. 
By  order  of  the  Commanding  Officer, 
Colonel  H.  H.  Milton." 

There  was  a  hard  knot  at  the  base  of 
Johnny's  throat.  He  couldn't  breathe. 
But  he  snapped  to  attention,  and  saluted 
smartly. 

"Thank  you,  suh,"  he  said  at  last,  then: 
"Gawd  bless  you,  suh!" 

"Forget  it,  soldier.  I  was  a  young  mar- 
ried man  once  myself.  My  compliments 
to  Captain  Walters." 

Johnny  saluted  again  and  about-faced, 
then  he  marched  out  of  the  office  and  down 
the  stairs.  On  the  way  back  he  saluted 
everybody — privates,  NCO's,  and  civilian 
visitors,  his  white  teeth  gleaming  in  a  huge 
smile. 

"That's  sure  one  happy  darky,"  one  of 
the  white  soldiers  said. 

JOHNNY  stood  in  the  station  and  watched 
the  train  running  in.  The  yellowlights 
from  the  windows  flickered  on  and  off 
across  his  face  as  the  alternating  squares  of 
light  and  darkness  flashed  past.  Then  it 
was  slowing  and  Johnny  was  running  be- 
side it,  trying  to  keep  abreast  of  the  Jim 
Crow  coach.  He  could  see  her  standing 
up,  holding  her  bags.  She  came  down  the 
steps  the  first  one  and  they  stood  there 
holding  each  other,  Johnny's  arms  crush- 
ing all  the  breath  out  of  her,  holding  her  so 
hard  against  him  that  his  brass  buttons 
hurt  through  her  thin  dress.  She  opened 
her  mouth  to  speak  but  he  kissed  her, 
bending  her  head  backward  on  her  neck 
until  her  little  hat  fell  off.  It  lay  there  on 
the  ground,  unnoticed. 


552 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


"Sugah,"  she  said,  "sugah.  It  was 
awful." 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "I  know." 

Then  he  took  her  bags*  and  they  started 
walking  out  of  the  station  toward  the  Ne- 
gro section  of  town. 

"I  missed  yuh  so  much,"  Johnny  said, 
'*I  thought  I  lose  m  mind." 

"Me  too,"  she  said.  Then:  "I  brought 
th  marriage  license  with  me  like  yuh  tole 
me.  I  doan  want  th  preacher's  wife  t 
think  we  bad." 

"Enybody  kin  look  at  yuh  an  see  yuh 
uh  angel!" 

They  went  very  quietly  through  all  the 
dark  streets  and  the  white  soldiers  turned 
to  look  at  Johnny  and  his  girl. 

Lak  a  queen,  Johnny  thought,  lak  a 
queen.  He  looked  at  the  girl  beside  him, 
seeing  the  velvety  nightshade  skin,  the 
glossy  black  lacquered  curls,  the  sweet 
wide  hips  and  the  long,  clean  legs,  striding 
beside  him  in  the  darkness.  Behold  I  am 
black  but  comely,  oh  ye  daughters  of  Zion ! 

They  turned  into  the  Bottom  where  the 
street  lights  were  dim  blobs  on  the  pine 
poles  and  the  dust  rose  up  in  little  swirls 
around  their  feet.  Johnny  had  his  head 
half  turned  so  that  he  didn't  see  the  two 
MP's  until  he  had  almost  bumped  into 
them.  He  dropped  one  bag  and  caught 
Lily  by  the  arm.  Then  he  drew  her  aside 
quickly  and  the  two  men  went  by  them 
without  speaking. 

They  kept  on  walking,  but  every  two 
steps  Johnny  would  jerk  his  head  around 
and  look  nervously  back  over  his  shoulder. 
The  last  time  he  looked  the  two  MP's  had 
stopped  and  were  looking  back  at  them. 
Johnny  turned  out  the  elbow  of  the  arm 
next  to  Lily  so  that  it  hooked  into  hers  a 
little  and  began  to  walk  faster,  pushing 
her  along  with  him. 

"Whas  yo  hurry,  sugah?"  she  said. 
"I  be  heah  a  whole  week!" 

But  Johnny  was  looking  over  his  shoul- 
der at  the  two  MP's.  They  were  coming 
toward  them  now,  walking  with  long, 
slow  strides,  their  reddish-white  faces  set. 
Johnny  started  to  push  Lily  along  faster, 
but  she  shook  off  his  arm  and  stopped  still. 

"I  do  declare,  Johnny  Green!     You  th 
beatiness  man!     Whut  you  walk  me  so 
fas  fur?" 
Johnny  opened  his  mouth  to  answer  her, 


but  the  military  police  were  just  behind 
them  now,  and  the  Sergeant  reached  out 
and  laid  his  hand  on  her  arm. 

"Cmon  gal,"  he  said,  "lemme  see  it." 

"Let  you  see  whut?  Whut  he  mean, 
Johnny?" 

"Your  card,"  the  Sergeant  growled, 
"lemme  see  your  card." 

"My  card?"  Lily  said  blankly.  "Whut 
kinda  card.  Mister?" 

Johnny  put  the  bags  down.  He  was 
fighting  for  breath. 

"Look  heah,  Sarge,"  he  said:  "this  girl 
my  wife!" 

"Oh  yeah?  I  said  lemme  see  your  card, 
sister!" 

"I  ain't  got  no  card.  Mister.  I  dunno 
whut  you  talkin  bout." 

"Look,  Sarge,"  the  other  MP  said, 
"th  soldier's  got  bags.  Maybe  she's  just 
come  t  town." 

"These  your  bags,  gal?" 

"Yessir." 

"Awright.  You  got  twenty-four  hours 
to  git  yourself  a  health  card.  If  you  don't 
have  it  by  then,  we  hafta  run  you  in.  Git 
goin,  now." 

"Listen,"  Johnny  shouted;  "this  girl  my 
wife!  She  ain't  no  ho!  I  tell  you  she 
ain't  — " 

"What  you  say,  nigger,"  the  MP  Ser- 
geant growled,  ''whatcha  say?'!  He 
started  toward  Johnny. 

Lily  swung  on  Johnny's  arm. 

"Cmon,  Johnny,"  she  said;  "they  got 
guns.  Cmon  Johnny,  please!  Please, 
Johnny!" 

Slowly  she  drew  him  away. 

"Aw,  leave  em  be,  Sarge,"  the  MP  Cor- 
poral said,  "maybe  she  is  his  wife." 

The  Sergeant  spat.  The  brown  to- 
bacco juice  splashed  in  the  dirt  not  an 
inch  from  Lily's  foot.  Then  the  two  of 
them  turned  and  started  away. 

Johnny  stopped. 

"Lemme  go,  Lily,"  he  said,  "lemme 
go !"  He  tore  her  arm  loose  from  his  and 
started  back  up  the  street.  Lily  leaped, 
her  two  arms  fastening  themselves  around 
his  neck.  He  fought  silently  but  she  clung 
to  him,  doubling  her  knees  so  that  all  her 
weight  was  hanging  from  his  neck. 

"No,  Johnny!  Oh  Jesus  no!  You  be 
kilt!  Oh,  Johnny,  listen  t  me,  sugah! 
You'salllgot!" 


CULTURAL    UTOriA 


553 


He  put  both  hands  up  to  break  her  grip 
but  she  swung  her  weight  sidewise  and  the 
two  of  them  went  down  in  the  dirt.  The 
MP's  turned  the  corner  out  of  sight. 

Johnny  sat  there  in  the  dust  staring  at 
her.  The  dirt  had  ruined  her  dress.  He 
sat  there  a  long  time  looking  at  her 
until  the  hot  tears  rose  up  back  of  his  eye- 
lids faster  than  he  could  blink  them  away. 


so  he  put  his  face  down  in  her  lap  and  cried. 

'T  ain't  no  man!"  he  said,  "I  ain't  no 
man!" 

"Hush,  sugah,"  she  said.  "You's  a  man 
awright.     You's  my  man!" 

Gently  she  drew  him  to  his  feet.  He 
picked  up  the  bags  and  the  two  of  them 
went  down  the  dark  street  toward  the 
preacher's  house. 


Cultural  Utopia 

THE  most  literate  country  in  the  world  is  a  very  small  one,  with  only 
130,000  people — about  as  many  as  there  are  in  Chattanooga, 
Tennessee,  or  in  Albany,  New  York. 

Not  only  does  this  small  country  publish  over  100  newspapers  and 
magazines,  but  it  publishes  far  more  books,  in  relation  to  its  popula- 
tion, than  any  other  country — 40  times  as  many  as  does  the  United 
States,  for  example.  In  addition  to  these  books  in  the  native  language, 
there  is  also  a  wide  sale  for  foreign  works;  three-quarters  of  the  people 
are  bilingual  and  about  one-fifth  are  trilingual.  And  the  country  has 
over  70  book  dealers.  (Chicago,  to  be  as  well  supplied  with  book  dealers 
per  capita,  would  need  to  have  1,829  of  them!) 

It  has  its  own  university,  its  own  symphony  orchestra,  a  number  of 
fine  choral  societies,  and  various  amateur  theatrical  groups  which  pro- 
duce locally  written  dramas  and  musical  comedies  as  well  as  plays  in 
translation. 

Its  artists  command  a  ready  market,  for  the  fashion  is  to  buy  con- 
temporary paintings  and  put  them  on  one's  walls;  most  houses  contain 
at  least  one  picture  by  a  local  artist.  Nor  do  the  artists  need  to  depend 
wholly  on  such  sales  for  a  living,  for  the  government  pays  salaries  to  the 
outstanding  painters  (as  well  as  writers  and  composers),  makes  special 
grants  yearly  to  others,  and  has  purchased  some  300  works  of  contem- 
porary art.  And  the  fines  levied  for  infringements  of  the  liquor  laws  go 
to  a  Cultural  Fund  used  to  buy  pictures,  to  promote  research,  or  to  pub- 
lish good  books  at  low  cost. 

If  you  don't  already  know  the  name  of  this  actual  country,  you  will 
find  it  in  the  Personal  and  Otherwise  department.  -*<>-  From  data  sup- 
plied  by  Harvey  H.  Arnason 


''The  Wondrous  West,  1800''  will  form  part 
oj  Mr.  Brooks's  next  study  oj  the  American  liter- 
ary scene,  The  World  of  Washington  Irving. 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,    1800 


VAN    WYCK    BROOKS 


IN  1800  all  roads  led  to  Philadelphia. 
It  was  the  largest  of  the  American 
towns;  indeed,  at  the  time  of  the 
Revolution  it  had  been  in  size  the  second 
city  of  the  British  Empire.  Philadelphia 
was  also  the  gateway  of  the  West,  the 
starting  point  for  Western  traffic;  and  Bar- 
tram's  Garden,  facing  the  Schuylkill,  a 
favored  resort  of  writers  and  artists,  was  a 
microcosm  of  the  wilderness  beyond  the 
mountains. 

There  grew  and  bloomed  the  plants  and 
trees  that  had  been  gathered  by  the  Bar- 
trams,  the  Quaker  botanists,  John  and  his 
son  William,  on  their  wide-ranging  tours 
of  the  prairie  and  the  forest;  and  there  one 
met  the  naturalists  and  the  explorers  who 
were  drawn  to  Philadelphia  as  the  center 
of  thought.  Buffon  and  Linnaeus  had  a 
great  following  in  the  country,  for  the 
study  of  natural  history  was  a  rage  of  the 
time;  and  Frenchmen,  Swedes,  and  Ger- 
mans had  hastened  to  America  in  search 
of  these  great  new  provinces  to  be  con- 
quered for  science.  At  Bartram's  Garden 
they  found  a  foretaste  of  the  world  they 
had  set  out  to  explore,  the  savannahs  of 
Georgia,  the  Florida  rivers,  the  far-flung 
Mississippi  Valley;  and  they  also  found  a 
master  there  with  whom  they  could  discuss 
their  discoveries  and  trophies. 

William  Bartram,  a  painter  of  flora  and 
fauna,  presided  over  the  garden,  his  birth- 
place and  home.  Too  frail  to  travel  any 
longer,  for  he  was  in  his  early  sixties,  he 


had  been  more  adventurous  even  than  his 
father.  He  had  accompanied  John  Bar- 
tram  on  many  of  his  journeys — in  the 
Catskills,  for  instance,  when  he  was  a  boy 
— and  the  two  had  gone  to  Florida  to- 
gether, where  they  had  explored  the  St. 
John's  River.  This  was  in  1766,  and 
William  had  remained  on  the  river  as  an 
indigo  planter.  Later,  in  1773,  he  had 
returned  to  this  earthly  paradise — for  so 
it  seemed  to  both  the  Bartrams — where  he 
lived  five  years  off  and  on.  He  had  ridden 
on  horseback  from  Savannah,  exploring 
Georgia  also  and  pushing  on  to  Alabama 
and  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  observing 
the  Indian  tumuli  and  the  terraces  of 
ancient  towns,  while  he  encountered  all 
manner  of  adventures  in  the  woods. 

He  had  met  a  famous  Indian  murderer 
who  had  taken  oath  to  kill  the  first  white 
man  he  could  find,  and  Bartram,  who  was 
unarmed  at  the  moment,  advanced  and 
held  his  hand  out,  and  the  Indian,  sur- 
prised, made  friends  with  him.  He  had 
met  the  Little  Carpenter,  the  emperor  of 
the  Cherokees,  on  a  grand  progress  to 
Charleston,  with  his  following,  through 
the  forest.  Bartram  stepped  out  of  the 
path  and  saluted  him  gravely,  and  the 
chief,  with  splendid  courtesy,  shook  his 
hand.  He  had  visited  planters,  reclining 
on  bearskins,  on  the  banks  of  flowery 
streams,  with  whom  he  dined  on  venison, 
honey,  and  brandy  under  the  live-oak 
trees.     He  was  present  at  Indian  councils, 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,  1800 


555 


with  Seminoles  and  Creeks — among  whom 
he  was  known  as  Puc-Puggy,  the  flower- 
hunter — dances  of  Cherokee  maidens  and 
Seminole  feasts.*  He  sometimes  joined  a 
company  of  traders,  but  mostly,  during 
these  years,  he  was  alone,  sailing  up  the 
Florida  rivers,  mooring  his  bark  and 
spreading  his  skins,  under  some  hospitable 
oak,  in  a  fragrant  grove. 

Every  night  beside  the  fire  he  had  jotted 
down  the  day's  events  in  a  record  of  these 
excursions  in  the  land  of  flowers.  He  had 
watched  a  flock  of  parakeets  hovering  and 
fluttering  in  a  swamp  that  was  alive  with 
otters,  snakes,  and  frogs,  where  the  long 
moss  waved  from  the  snags  of  the  trees;  or 
he  was  enthralled  by  the  whooping  cranes, 
the  squealing  water  hens,  or  the  mocking- 
birds in  a  towering  magnolia  tree.  This 
native  sylvan  music,  flooding  the  still 
evening  air,  soothed  and  charmed  his  ear 
while  his  eye  was  filled  with  the  colors  of 
the  sunset  streaking  the  embroidered 
savannahs.  He  had  encountered  a  rattle- 
snake, with  eyes  red  as  burning  coals, 
whirring  its  tail  so  rapidly  that  it  looked 
like  vapor,  while  its  body  swelled  with 
rage,  rising  and  falling,  suggesting  a  bel- 
lows, and  its  parti-colored  skin  became 
speckled  and  rough  and  it  brandished  a 
forked  tongue  that  might  have  been  a 
flame.  He  had  observed  in  some  silent 
lagoon  a  sudden  battle  of  alligators,  rush- 
ing forth  in  combat  frorn^  the  flags  and 
reeds,  while  cataracts  of  water  fell  from 
their  jaws  and  the  earth  trembled  with 
their  thunder.  Or  he  had  sailed  day  after 
day  over  the  crystal  springs,  with  innumer- 
able squadrons  of  fish  floating  beneath 
him,  distinctly  seen  through  the  pellucid 
water,  descending  into  caverns  measureless 
to  man,  secret  meandering  rivers  and 
fathomless  fountains. 

Numbers  of  these  images,  which  ap- 
peared in  Bartram's  Travels^  reappeared 
in  some  of  the  world's  great  poems;  for 
when  the  book  was  published,  in  1791,  it 
opened  a  new  scene  for  romancers  and 
poets.  It  passed  into  the  mind  of  Cole- 
ridge, whence  it  re-emerged  in  two  or 
three  splendid  passages  of  Kubla  Khan. 
There  one  found  the  jetting  fountains  and 
the  incense-bearing  trees,  together  with 
other  reminders  of  the  Isle  of  Palms;  and 
Bartram's  wondrous  fishes,  attired  in  gold, 


red,  blue,  and  green,  appeared  in  The 
Ancient  Mariner  as  water  snakes.  Words- 
worth, too,  read  the  book,  and  these 
pictures  of  the  tropical  forest  passed  into 
his  poems,  the  green  savannahs,  the  end- 
less lakes,  the  fair  trees,  the  gorgeous 
flowers,  the  magnolias,  the  azaleas  that 
"set  the  hills  on  fire"  in  Ruth.  There 
one  found  the  Indian  maidens  gathering 
strawberries  in  the  wood,  while  Words- 
worth's Prelude  also  bore  traces  of  Bartram. 
Campbell's  Gertrude  of  Wyoming  was  full  of 
scenes  from  Bartram,  and  more  than  fifty 
passages  in  Chateaubriand's  Les  Natchez 
were  drawn  directly  from  his  pages. 
When  Coleridge  and  Southey,  reading 
Bartram,  thought  for  a  while  of  leaving 
England  in  order  to  live  on  the  banks  of 
the  Susquehanna,  they  took  it  for  granted 
that  they  would  find  there  the  scenery, 
flowers,  and  birds  of  Florida. 

A  MONG  the  visitors  at  Bartram's  Garden 
£\^  was  William  Dunlap,  the  New 
Yorker,  who  called  upon  the  naturalist 
with  Charles  Brockden  Brown.  They 
found  him,  rake  in  hand,  with  his  old  hat 
flopping  over  his  face,  breaking  the  clods 
of  earth  in  a  tulip  bed.  He  was  dressed  in 
a  waistcoat  and  leather  breeches,  and  his 
shoes  were  tied  with  leather  strings,  and 
his  expression  was  benign  and  happy. 
He  talked  with  the  politeness  and  ease  of 
one  of  nature's  noblemen. 

He  had  kept  Alexander  Wilson  at  the 
Garden  for  months.  This  melancholy 
Scotchman,  with  the  long  hooked  nose 
and  the  dreamy  face,  whose  fame  as  ''the 
Ornithologist"  soon  spread  through  the 
world,  had  found  in  Bartram  not  only  a 
friend  but  a  careful  instructor  in  drawing 
and  painting.  Wilson  had  made  crude 
drawings  as  a  youth  in  Scotland.  There, 
as  a  rebel  Paisley  weaver,  he  had  been 
imprisoned  and  forced  to  burn  some  of  his 
satires  in  the  public  square,  for  he  was  also 
a  poet,  and  even  a  good  one.  Indeed,  for 
many  decades  he  was  one  of  the  standard 
poets  of  Scotland.  He  had  roamed  there 
as  a  peddler,  with  a  pack  full  of  muslins, 
silks,  and  prints,  collecting  subscriptions 
for  his  poems;  but  feeling,  as  he  said,  a 
vague  terror  in  the  air,  he  had  made  his 
way  to  America  and  opened  a  school. 
But  teaching  for  him  was  a  prisoner's  life, 


556 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


born  as  he  was  to  ramble;  and  ever  since, 
in  the  Delaware  forest,  he  had  seen  the 
wondrous  woodpecker,'*  he  had  longed  to 
describe  and  paint  th  ^  American  birds. 

Bartram  had  befriended  Wilson,  taken 
him  into  his  old  stone  house,  given  him 
prints  of  flowers  to  copy.  He  soon  drew  a 
picture  of  a  hummingbird  feeding.  Bar- 
tram  in  his  Travels  had  counted  two  hun- 
dred and  fifteen  birds  (as  Jefferson,  in  the 
Notes  on  Virginia^  had  counted  one  hundred 
and  nine,  the  only  list  that  rivaled  his  at 
the  time),  and  he  told  Wilson  all  he  knew 
about  them,  begging  him  to  complete  the 
list  and  undertake  an  ornithology  that 
would  please  the  President  as  much  as 
himself.  Wilson,  who  taught  school  by 
day,  could  draw  only  by  candlelight,  but 
he  made  rapid  headway  with  the  help  of 
Bartram,  who  presently  introduced  him  to 
the  Philadelphia  men  of  science. 

In  1804,  less  than  five  years  before  the 
appearance  of  his  first  volume,  Wilson 
showed  Bartram  his  first  collection  of 
birds.  He  was  eager  for  a  word  of  criti- 
cism, and  he  was  not  yet  familiar  with  the 
names  of  the  birds.  He  asked  Bartram  to 
write  the  names  under  his  pictures.  But 
he  soon  knew  far  more  than  his  master. 
In  this  same  year  Wilson  set  out  for 
Niagara,  a  two  months'  walk  through  the 
woods  and  the  snow,  during  which  he 
crossed  high  mountains  and  dangerous 
rivers.  He  had  never  explored  such  wild 
country,  and,  accustomed  as  he  was  to 
walking — for  in  earlier  days  he  had  covered 
more  than  three-fourths  of  Scotland — this 
was  a  trial  trip  to  prove  his  endurance.  He 
described  it  in  The  Foresters,  a  poem,  and 
on  his  return  he  presented  a  bluejay  to 
Peale's  Museum  and  sent  the  President 
two  drawings  of  birds. 

Jefferson  replied  at  once.  He  was 
deeply  interested,  for  he  had  just  seen  one 
of  these  birds,  which  a  neighbor  had 
killed  and  brought  him,  and  he  urged 
Wilson  to  search  for  another,  resembling 
one  described  by  Buffbn,  of  which  he  had 
caught  a  fleeting  glimpse. 

Then  Wilson  set  out  on  a  longer  journey, 
hoping  that  Bartram  would  join  him,  but 
his  good  friend  and  adviser  was  too  old  for 
this.  Wilson  walked  out  to  Pittsburgh 
and  embarked  in  a  skifl",  which  he  called 
The  Ornithologist,  down  the  Ohio,  reckon- 


ing his  expenses  at  a  dollar  a  day;  and 
before  he  completed  the  journey  he  had 
passed  through  Louisville  and  New  Or- 
leans and  made  his  way  to  Florida  by 
horseback.  Exposed,  in  his  skifl",  to  the 
rain,  he  had  used  his  greatcoat  to  cover  his 
specimens,  together  with  his  fowling  piece 
and  drawings;  and  he  had  passed  Ken- 
tucky boats,  laden  with  muslins  and  shawls 
heaped  on  counters  on  their  decks,  an- 
nouncing their  approach,  as  they  drew  up 
at  a  settlement,  with  a  tin  trumpet  or  horn 
blown  by  the  steersman.  He  slept  on  the 
shore  on  deerskins,  in  Chickasaw  huts, 
with  his  portmanteau  for  a  pillow;  and  he 
plodded  on  foot  or  on  horseback  through 
horrid  swamps  and  sluggish  creeks,  up  to 
his  horse's  belly  in  water  and  mire.  His 
pockets  were  crammed  with  the  skins  of 
birds,  and  a  Carolina  parakeet  was  his  sole 
companion.  To  beguile  his  lonesome 
march  he  played  Scottish  airs  on  his 
flute,  smiling  to  think,  as  he  wrote  to 
Bartram,  that  while  others  were  immersed 
in  schemes,  purchasing  plantations  and 
building  towns,  he  was  entranced  in  con- 
templation over  the  plumage  of  a  lark  or 
gazing  like  a  lover  at  an  owl. 

When  at  last  in  1808  Wilson  published 
his  first  volume,  letters,  drawings,  and 
sketches  of  birds  poured  in  upon  him  from 
every  quarter.  Especially  in  the  North- 
ern states,  he  had  so  many  correspondents 
that  scarcely  a  wren  or  a  tit,  he  said,  was 
able  to  reach  the  Canadian  border  before 
he  had  received  intelligence  of  it.  But  in 
the  South  as  well  he  had  two  hundred  and 
fifty  subscribers.  At  $120  a  set,  for  the 
volumes  still  to  come,  this  was  a  proof  of 
his  triumph.  The  bird  biographies  that 
accompanied  his  pictures,  written  in  the 
woods,  as  often  as  not,  in  the  presence  of 
the  birds  that  he  was  describing,  were 
full  of  exact  observation.  His  writing 
abounded  in  picturesque  detail,  although 
he  had  none  of  Bartram's  felicity  of  style. 
There  was  no  living  American  novelist 
who  could  make  people  as  real  as  Alex- 
ander Wilson  made  his  birds. 

II 

WILSON  and  Bartram  were  only  two 
of  the  many  naturalists  who  were 
exploring  the  West,  the  land  of  marvels,  of 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,  1800 


557 


which  the  Mississippi  was  the  Ultima 
Thulc.  There  were  dozens  of  foreign 
disciples  of  Linnaeus  and  BufTon  for  whom 
their  own  countries  were  a  twice-told  tale 
and  who  were  enchanted  by  this  whole 
new  world  of  flora  and  fauna,  of  humming- 
birds and  mockingbirds,  whippoorwills 
and  orioles,  and  trees,  beasts,  flowers,  and 
insects  unknown  in  Europe.  The  West  at 
no  point  touched  the  Eastern  settlements. 
A  hundred  miles  of  mountainous  country 
lay  between  the  regions,  enough  to  breed 
wonderful  tales  of  the  fabulous  land. 

One  heard  of  watermelons  as  large  as 
houses  and  trees  on  the  Miami  River  in 
which  honey  grew;  springs  of  rum  and 
brandy  that  gushed  from  the  Kentucky 
hills  and  flax  plants  that  bore  woven  cloth 
in  their  branches.  With  these  humorous 
yarns  were  mingled  others  that  might  have 
been  true;  and  how  was  a  credulous 
Easterner  to  draw  the  line?  Was  there 
not  really  perhaps  a  hoopsnake  that  spun 
through  the  swamps  like  a  wheel,  a  whip- 
snake  that  killed  cattle  with  the  lashing  of 
its  tail,  and  a  serpent  that  exhaled  a  fatal 
gas?  These  tall  tales  that  crossed  the 
mountains  were  true  as  intimations  that 
almost  anything  indeed  might  happen  in 
the  West.  The  West  possessed  the  largest 
rivers;  and  were  not  the  storms  more  ter- 
rible there,  were  not  the  bears  more 
dangerous  than  anywhere  else? 

Moreover,  the  true  frontiersman,  whom 
one  sometimes  saw  in  Philadelphia,  strid- 
ing through  the  streets  with  the  step  of  an 
Achilles,  suggested  that  he  could  manage 
the  storms  and  the  bears.  So  felt  the  little 
town  boys  who  observed  the  erect  Ken- 
tuckian,  with  his  brawny  limbs  and  sun- 
burnt face,  with  the  blanket  over  his 
shoulder  and  the  dirk  at  his  waist,  quick  to 
resent,  disdainful  of  control,  the  picture  of 
hardihood,  confidence,  prowess,  and  will. 
With  what  an  air  of  good-natured  super- 
ciliousness he  glanced  at  the  fragile 
butterflies  of  fashion  about  him.  No  tales 
about  the  West  could  ever  seem  tall  to 
anyone  who  saw  him  with  a  rifle.  He 
could  perforate  a  milk  pail  half  a  mile 
away,  he  could  enlarge  the  tin  eye  of  the 
cock  on  the  steeple,  he  could  split  a  bullet 
on  a  razor  and  cut  the  string  of  a  flag  at 
three  hundred  yards.  This  William  Tell 
was  a  walking  and  visible  legend. 


Fabulous  as  the  West  was,  there  were 
untold  thousands  of  people  who  knew  it. 
Indeed,  in  1800,  almost  half  a  milUon  of 
them  lived  already  west  of  the  Alicghenies. 
Pittsburgh  was  a  largish  town,  Kentucky 
swarmed  with  pioneers,  and  Cincinnati, 
Marietta,  and  Ghillicothe  in  Ohio  were 
rapidly  growing  outposts  of  civilization. 
Covered  wagons  crawled  along  the  high- 
ways, heading  for  the  Wabash  or  the 
Scioto,  with  their  furniture,  family  Bibles 
and  Watts's  hymnbooks;  and  the  settlers 
sent  back  lumber,  wheat,  and  potash  in 
exchange  for  molasses,  hoes,  axes,  pots, 
and  clothes.  The  Yankee  peddlers  fol- 
lowed, with  clocks,  knives,  latches,  rib- 
bons, essences,  and  books;  and,  while  the 
ubiquitous  log  cabin  was  the  typical  dwell- 
ing everywhere,  one  never  could  tell  what 
a  year  might  produce  in  the  way  of  an 
architectural  wonder.  There  was  the 
house,  for  instance,  on  Blennerhassett's 
Island,  not  far  from  Marietta,  in  the 
middle  of  the  Ohio,  which  was  built  in  the 
style  of  a  Persian  pavilion,  with  wings, 
walks,  lawns,  and  gardens,  and  had  cost 
about  as  much  as  a  fair-sized  town.  Two 
roads  crossed  Pennsylvania,  and  there  was 
a  highway  through  Virginia  to  Knoxville, 
Tennessee,  with  a  branch  to  Kentucky,  by 
way  of  the  Cumberland  Gap;  and  there 
were  other  trails  through  the  Carolinas; 
while  many  of  the  New  Englanders  went 
west  along  the  Great  Lakes,  passing 
through  Albany  and  Troy.  But  for 
Northern  emigrants  Pittsburgh  was  the 
most  popular  gate  of  the  West,  for  thence 
the  Ohio  flowed  to  the  Mississippi.  The 
shores  of  the  Monongahela  and  the 
Allegheny  that  formed  the  Belle  Riviere 
were  lined  with  keelboats,  flatboats, 
broadhorns,  and  arks,  and  there  one 
heard  already  the  clang  of  hammers  and 
the  winter  snow  mingled  with  the  soft- 
coal  smoke  that  rose  from  forge  and 
furnace.  There,  as  in  other  frontier 
towns,  all  manner  of  human  beings 
gathered,  trappers,  Indian  hunters,  trad- 
ers, boatmen,  together  with  German 
professors,  French  nobles  in  exile,  and  the 
families  of  American  oflficers  of  the  Revo- 
lution. Beyond  the  great  sycamore  groves 
and  the  chimneys  and  coal  hills  lay  the 
unbroken  forests  of  the  Indian  country. 

There  lived  the  novelist  Hugh  Henry 


558 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Brackenridge,  whose  Modern  Chivalry  was 
the  first  work  that  was  printed  west  of  the 
Alleghenies.  A  poor  Scottish  boy,  Hke 
Alexander  Wilson,  Bra^^kenridge  had  been 
brought  to  this  country  at  five.  From  a 
farm  in  Pennsylvania  he  had  found  his 
way  to  Princeton,  where  he  had  been  a 
classmate  of  Philip  Freneau.  An  ex- 
cellent classical  scholar,  he  had  written 
with  Freneau  in  college  a  long  heroic 
American  historical  poem,  and  the  two 
had  opened  a  school  in  Maryland  and 
both  had  edited  magazines  a  few  years 
later  in  Philadelphia.  Then  Bracken- 
ridge had  set  up  as  a  lawyer  in  Pittsburgh, 
where  there  were  hundreds  of  speculators 
in  Western  lands;  and,  like  David  Crockett 
later,  he  defended  the  rights  of  the  small 
settlers  against  the  claimants  who  had 
not  cleared  the  land.  An  ardent  Jeffer- 
sonian,  he  also  defended  the  "whisky 
boys"  in  their  struggle  against  Hamilton's 
excise  law;  for  the  whisky  that  was  distilled 
from  their  grain  was  their  only  medium  of 
exchange,  and  in  these  conditions  the 
excise  was  plainly  unfair. 

But  Brackenridge,  the  democrat,  had 
no  illusions  about  the  people,  and  because 
he  wished  democracy  to  succeed  and 
endure  he  wrote  the  satire  Modern  Chivalry 
to  point  out  the  follies  that  might  lead  to 
its  overthrow  and  failure.  A  satire  alike 
on  demagogues  and  ignorant  voters,  as  on 
dueling.  Billingsgate  journalism,  crudity, 
pretension,  the  work  was  meant  to  educate 
the  gullible  frontier  in  the  interests  of 
honesty,  intelligence,  wisdom,  and  learn- 
ing. And  this  comic  picture  of  society 
was  as  good  as  its  moral.  The  "lack- 
learning  settlements,"  the  village  fairs  and 
tavern  life,  were  described  in  a  clear,  firm, 
eighteenth-century  prose,  with  the  mas- 
culine frankness  of  language  that  charac- 
terized Americans  before  they  began  to 
ask  what  the  neighbors  might  say. 

But  to  be  a  writer  on  the  frontier  was  to 
feel  oneself  an  exile.  The  types  that 
throve  were  the  heroes  of  the  writers  of 
the  future.  At  Pittsburgh,  for  twelve 
years,  lived  John  Chapman  of  Massa- 
chusetts, the  well-known  "Johnny  Apple- 
seed"  of  the  later  stories,  who  had  bought 
an  apple  orchard  in  1798,  while  he  was 
working  in  the  shipyards.  Chapman,  the 
son  of  a  carpenter,  had  been  a  peddler  in 


New  England,  and  he  had  wandered  west- 
ward with  his  pack  and  his  gun,  tending 
orchards  on  the  way.  He  had  stopped  for 
a  while  at  Cooperstown,  when  Fenimore 
Cooper  was  a  small  boy,  and  he  was  to 
follow  the  frontier  far  beyond  Pittsburgh. 
He  carried  apple  seeds  from  the  cider 
presses,  which  he  planted  in  Indiana  and 
Ohio,  and  the  wilderness  bore  flowers  and 
fruit  wherever  he  passed.  As  the  first 
nurseryman  in  the  Ohio  Valley,  he  became 
a  sort  of  orchard  god,  who  sowed  as  he 
went  and  vanished  at  last  into  the  far  new 
West. 

Others  became  mythical  figures  while 
they  were  still  living.  One  of  these  was 
Mike  Fink,  whom  Chapman  knew  in 
Pittsburgh  and  whom  the  novelist  Brack- 
enridge must  have  known.  Born  there  in 
a  log  cabin,  brought  up  on  bear's  meat 
and  venison,  this  frontier  Jack  the  Giant 
Killer  was  "the  King  of  the  Keelboat- 
men."  He  could  drink  a  gallon  of  whisky 
in  twenty-four  hours,  and  he  was  supposed 
to  have  eaten  a  buff*alo  skin.  A  humorist 
and  a  practical  joker,  he  could  outrun, 
outbrag,  and  outfight  all  the  other  salt- 
river  roarers.  From  the  middle  of  the 
Mississippi  he  could  shoot  the  tails  off" 
pigs,  and  he  was  a  champion  gouger  and 
the  terror  of  pirates,  and  his  oaths  were 
fireworks  of  language,  bombs  and  rockets 
of  colored  sound.  Moreover,  as  poleman 
and  steersman  of  keelboats,  of  which  he 
became  the  great  patroon,  he  was  a  won- 
der-worker in  his  daring  and  skill.  There 
was  no  one  like  Mike  Fink  for  dodging 
snags,  bars,  islands  of  driftwood  or  for 
mastering  the  wild  cross-currents  of  the 
Mississippi.  He  was  the  forerunner  of  the 
race  of  river  pilots  whom  Mark  Twain 
was  to  celebrate  in  after  days. 

THERE  were  two  thousand  miles  of  river 
between  Pittsburgh  and  New  Orleans, 
a  serpentine  whispering  gallery  of  fantasy 
and  rumor;  and  there  for  many  years  to 
come  tales  of  border  heroes  and  backwoods 
Jasons  were  told  by  the  swaggering  boat- 
men at  their  forest  campfires.  Mike  Fink 
was  famous  up  and  down  the  rivers,  and  so 
was  Simon  Kenton,  the  Ohio  scout,  the 
paladin  of  countless  exploits,  mythical  and 
real;  while  Daniel  Boone  was  already 
known   in   Europe.     The   Kentucky   his- 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,  1800 


559 


torian  John  Filson,  whose  work  had 
appeared  in  French  and  German,  had 
spread  the  renown  of  this  actual  Robinson 
Crusoe.  Boone,  another  Adam  in  a 
sylvan  paradise,  had  bestowed  names  on 
rivers,  lakes,  and  mountains,  and  he  had 
told  his  own  story  in  Filson's  little  book, 
which  attracted  many  an  immigrant  to 
the  woods  of  Kentucky.  Alone,  without 
bread  or  salt  or  horse,  he  had  emerged  in 
the  bluegrass  region,  a  land  of  running 
waters,  groves,  and  glades,  and  he  had 
roved  the  sunny  valleys,  kindling  his  fire 
by  a  mountain  stream  and  feasting  on  the 
loin  of  a  buck.  Hundreds  of  men  had 
hunted  in  Kentucky  before  Daniel  Boone 
set  foot  there — never  to  be  lost,  though 
once  "bewildered" — but  this  grave  and 
noble  woodsman,  the  prototype  of  Natty 
Bumppo,  "happy  in  the  midst  of  dangers," 
caught  the  world's  fancy.  He  was  the 
"free  forester"  whom  Byron  acclaimed  in 
Don  Juan,  the  "happiest  among  mortals 
anywhere,"  the  personification  of  the  new 
Eden,  innocent  and  serene,  that  many  a 
poet  saw  on  the  wild  frontier. 

Numbers  of  communities  were  to  rise 
along  the  rivers — Rapp's  settlement,  for 
one,  on  the  Ohio — to  realize  this  dream  of 
a  wilderness  Eden.  Some  of  the  French 
settlers  at  Gallipolis  shared  it,  those  exiled 
royalist  artisans  from  Paris  and  Lyons, 
perukemakers  and  coachmakers,  carvers 
and  gilders  to  the  king,  who  were  victims 
of  the  sorry  Scioto  scheme.  This  Galli- 
politan  bubble  had  burst,  but  still,  on  the 
flatboats  and  keelboats,  one  sometimes 
met  a  French  philosopher  in  search  of  the 
primitive  innocence  of  the  forest  children. 
To  Chateaubriand  it  was  symbolized  in 
the  Indian  girls  of  Florida,  fragrant  as  the 
orange  trees  and  flowers,  with  their  oval 
faces  and  long  eyes  and  their  black  hair 
plaited  with  posies  and  rushes,  with  whom 
for  him  the  world  began  anew.  He 
claimed  too  to  have  traversed  the  Missis- 
sippi, which  he  described  in  splendid  prose, 
extolling  the  virtues  of  the  red  men,  and 
his  Atala  captivated  the  French  as  nothing 
had  done  since  Paul  and  Virginia,  that  earlier 
glorification  of  nature  and  freedom. 

THE  woody  wilderness  of  Ohio,  which 
became  a  state  in  1802,  still  witnessed, 
in  the  name  of  Gnadenhiitten,  an  older 


Utopian  hope  in  the  forest  clearings.  This 
was  the  Moravian  settlement  where  the 
Christian  Indians  had  been  so  hideously 
massacred  by  the  whites;  but  Salem  was 
soon  to  be  founded  by  Quakers,  and  Ohio 
was  already  launched  on  its  long  career  of 
a  relatively  peaceful  progress.  Settled  by 
New  Englanders  largely,  it  was  known  as 
New  Connecticut,  or,  as  the  Kentuckians 
said,  the  Yankee  state,  abounding,  as  they 
further  said,  in  the  usual  tricks  of  the 
Yankees,  gin  that  was  made  by  putting 
pine  knots  in  their  whisky,  pit-coal  indigo, 
and  wooden  nutmegs.  Cleveland  was  a 
mere  cluster  of  cabins,  but  the  pride  of  the 
state.  Marietta,  was  a  backwoods  seaport, 
where  ships  were  built  that  sailed  as  far 
as  Russia. 

As  one  approached  the  Mississippi, 
passing  Louisville,  the  signs  of  an  old 
French  culture  multiplied,  and  the  shores 
of  the  turbulent  Father  of  Waters  were 
dotted  here  and  there  with  little  French 
villages  and  towns.  Up  the  river  lay  St. 
Louis  and  Ste.  Genevieve,  and  far,  far 
down  one  came  to  Natchez,  together  with 
Natchez-under-the-Hill,  the  Suez  of  the 
West,  with  its  long  winding  road  that  was 
lined  with  barrooms,  brothels,  and  gam- 
blers' dens.  There  were  no  Ten  Com- 
mandments in  Natchez-under-the-Hill, 
but  beautiful  plantation  houses  were 
scattered  through  the  town  above,  with 
classic  statues  lining  the  drives  and 
gardens  laid  out  by  French  designers.  It 
was  the  ancient  village  of  the  Natchez 
tribCj  with  memories  of  De  Soto,  who 
found  it  here  and  who  was  supposed  to 
have  been  buried  in  the  river  near  by.  In 
all  these  towns  one  found  dim  traces  of  the 
Jesuit  missionaries  who  had  appeared 
there  five  generations  before,  floating  in 
their  bark  canoes  through  unknown  waters 
and  singing  mass  to  the  savages  in  the 
shadow  of  the  forest.  One  heard  old 
French  songs  there,  and  one  found  fine 
cooking  and  dancing  schools,  the  piety 
of  the  French  Canadians  and  the  manners 
of  Versailles;  for  among  the  farmers  and 
fur  traders  there  were  cultivated  emigres, 
"poor,  polite,  and  harmonious,"  as  Meri- 
wether Lewis  called  them.  The  older  in- 
habitants had  never  heard  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  only  remembered  the 
reign  of  Louis  Quatorze. 


560 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


III 


LL  these  towns  ^ill  belonged  to  the 
Louisiana  Terntory,  which  became  a 
part  of  the  Union  in  1803;  and  meanwhile 
Kentucky  was  the  most  advanced  of  the 
Western  regions,  while  Tennessee,  on  the 
southern  border,  was  also  rapidly  taking 
form.  They  had  both  been  admitted  as 
states  in  the  seventeen-nineties.  Ken- 
tucky was  the  thoroughfare  for  the  north- 
ern and  western  settlement  of  southern 
Indiana  and  Illinois;  and  Lexington,  with 
three  thousand  inhabitants,  the  largest  of 
the  Western  towns,  was  sometimes  known 
already  as  "the  Athens  of  the  West." 
There  Transylvania  University  had  been 
established  for  several  years,  and  there  was 
the  oldest  Western  newspaper  and  the  first 
Western  printing  press. 

This  press  had  been  carted  over  the 
mountains  in  1787  and  floated  in  an  ark 
downriver  from  Pittsburgh,  and  copies  of 
the  newspaper  were  distributed  by  post 
riders  far  and  wide  through  the  forest. 
They  were  read  in  hundreds  of  cabins,  and 
the  news  they  contained  was  declaimed 
from  stumps.  The  editor  cut  his  own  il- 
lustrations from  dogwood.  William  Wirt, 
in  the  British  Spy,  mourned  over  the  waste 
of  talent  in  the  Western  regions,  perishing 
there  for  want  of  culture,  and  indeed, 
beyond  the  Bible  and  ^sop's  Fables,  an 
occasional  life  of  Franklin  or  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  broadcast  by  the  peddlers,  books 
were  few.  But  at  Lexington  one  could 
buy  at  the  bookstore,  even  before  1800, 
not  only  most  of  the  modern  authors  but 
Virgil,  Horace,  Ovid,  and  Sallust;  and  in 
the  little  backwoods  papers  that  appeared 
in  all  the  surrounding  regions  there  was 
usually  a  poets'  corner,  "sacred  to  the 
Muses." 

In  Lexington  lived  Henry  Clay,  the  poor 
Virginia  minister's  son  who  had  worked 
as  a  boy  in  a  store  at  Richmond  and  who 
had  moved  to  Kentucky  in  1797.  As  a 
clerk  in  the  ofhce  of  George  Wythe,  with 
whom  Jefferson  also  had  studied.  Clay  had 
grown  up  in  the  Jeffersonian  school,  and 
he  was  to  enter  the  national  Senate  in 
1806,  when  the  fame  of  this  "Harry  of  the 
West"  soon  spread  through  the  country. 
The  most  remarkable  man  in  Kentucky, 
hot-blooded  and  warm-hearted,  generous. 


exuberant,  gay,  with  a  musical  voice,  he 
practiced  his  oratory  in  the  Lexington 
cornfields,  in  the  woods,  and  under  the 
rafters  of  his  big  barn. 

His  Tennessee  neighbor  Andrew  Jack- 
son had  already  been  a  Senator.  He  had 
resigned  in  1798,  and  he  kept  a  store  in 
Nashville,  where  he  had  a  plantation. 
Already  a  large  landowner,  and  also  a 
radical  Jeffersonian,  he  lived  there  in  a 
frame  house  when  even  the  courthouse 
was  a  log  cabin.  A  South  Carolinian  by 
birth  and  a  natural  lover  of  war  and  sport, 
Jackson  was  a  great  hand  at  cards,  cock- 
fighting,  and  raising  colts.  He  was  a 
notable  duelist,  and  this  fiery  and  bellicose 
man  had  a  passion  for  the  turf;  and  he 
thought  nothing  of  riding  to  Washington, 
like  many  another  member  of  Congress, 
whether  from  Georgia,  Kentucky,  Con- 
necticut, or  Maine. 

Another  young  Scotch-Irishman  who 
was  growing  up  in  Tennessee  had  hunted 
"varmints"  there  since  the  age  of  six,  and 
after  his  father  gave  him  a  rifle,  when  he 
was  eight  years  old,  he  went  without  his 
dinner  if  he  missed  his  shot.  This  was 
David  Crockett,  the  Tennessee  Hercules  of 
the  future,  who  was  fourteen  in  1800. 
His  father,  like  Daniel  Boone,  was  a 
keeper  of  one  of  those  backwoods  taverns 
where  hunters  and  trappers  gathered  and 
swapped  their  tall  tales,  and  Davy  not  only 
became  in  time  a  prince  of  story-tellers  but 
he  was  a  great  dancer  all  his  life.  What 
he  liked  at  country  frolics  was  "none  of 
your  straddling,  mincing,  sadying,  but  a 
regular  sifter,  cut-the-buckle,  chicken- 
flutter  set-to."  Davy,  who  had  only  a 
few  months  of  schooling,  had  been  bound 
out  to  a  drover  who  was  taking  his  cattle 
over  the  range.  He  knew  the  lonely  Blue 
Ridge  trail  and  had  traveled  as  far  as 
Baltimore,  and  he  was  already  a  champion 
at  shooting  matches. 

DAVID  Crockett,  famous  later,  was  a 
type  of  the  backwoods  pioneers  who 
were  settling  Tennessee  and  Kentucky. 
Some  of  them  assumed  from  instinct  the 
Indian  dress  and  the  Indian  ways,  others 
for  protection,  others  from  choice.  They 
usually  wore  green  hunting  shirts  v/ith 
fringes,  deerskin  moccasins,  leggings,  and 
coonskin  caps;  and  they  had  pushed  out 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,  1800 


561 


from  the  Carolinas  or  down  through  West 
Virginia,  joining  their  kinsmen  who  had 
crossed  the  Pennsylvania  range.  Among 
them  were  broken-down  aristocrats  who 
were  starting  hfe  anew  in  the  West  and 
who  shared  the  desire  for  a  proud  isolation 
that  characterized  the  Southern  planters; 
and,  as  for  the  pioneers  generally,  while 
many  were  people  of  culture  and  charac- 
ter, others  were  refugees  from  Eastern 
justice.  There  was  one  Kentucky  county 
that  was  called  ^'Rogues'  Harbor,"  where 
murderers,  horse  thieves,  and  highway 
robbers  were  supposed  to  have  formed  a 
majority.  The  frontier  was  tumultuous, 
and  the  freedom  of  this  ungoverncd  coun- 
try demoralized  many  an  exile  from  the 
stable  East;  and  gouging,  gambling,  the 
wildest  vice  throve  in  the  Kentucky  woods, 
together  with  a  measure  of  drunkenness 
that  was  pictured  as  frightful. 

All  this  went  with  a  sort  of  harmless 
showing  off,  as  if  their  unbounded  freedom 
had  gone  to  men's  heads,  and  they  leaped 
on  stumps  and  flapped  their  arms,  crowing 
in  spread-eagle  fashion,  while  they  chal- 
lenged every  comer  to  a  fight.  Their 
frolics  were  uproarious,  and  the  lonely  and 
perilous  frontier  life  was  favorable  to  emo- 
tional religion;  and  Kentucky  was  the 
scene  of  the  first  American  camp  meeting, 
the  Great  Revival  of  1800  that  took  place 
at  Cane  Ridge.  In  this  world  of  pioneers 
who  were  largely  Scotch- Irish  by  descent, 
the  Presbyterian  Church  was  the  cult  of 
the  rich,  but  the  Methodists,  following  the 
Baptists,  appealed  to  the  people,  for  they 
preached  free  will  and  universal  grace. 
In  every  sense  equalitarians,  they  spoke  to 
the  lowly  and  outcast  also,  and  the  Great 
Revival  continued  for  several  years.  A 
team  of  preachers  came  together,  as  many 
as  twenty  or  thirty,  and  preached  for  four 
or  five  days,  by  day  and  by  night,  and 
sometimes  for  three  or  four  weeks,  while 
twenty  or  thirty  thousand  persons  as- 
sembled in  wagons  or  on  horseback, 
emerging  from  their  tents  at  the  sound  of 
the  trumpet.  They  lighted  their  way  with 
blazing  hickory  bark,  and  the  red  glare  of 
the  campfires  was  reflected  from  the  tents, 
surrounded  by  the  blackness  of  the  shad- 
ows and  the  forest;  and  one  heard  the  sobs 
and  shrieks  of  the  downcast  mingling  with 
*he   shouts   of  praise   of  those   who   had 


crossed  the  threshold  of  the  land  of  Beulah. 
A  hundred  victims  would  fall  like  dead 
men  under  one  powerful  sermon,  while  the 
groans  of  the  "spiritually  wounded"  echoed 
through  the  woods,  and  three  thousand 
"slain"  were  laid  in  rows  at  the  first  Cane 
Ridge  meeting  in  order  that  they  might 
not  be  trampled  on.  The  women  cast 
away  their  lockets,  earrings,  and  gold 
chains,  dropping  stiff  and  bereft  of  their 
senses  when  the  preacher  pointed  his  finger 
at  them  or  felled  a  group  or  a  crowd  with  a 
sweep  of  his  arm.  He  set  them  dancing, 
laughing,  barking,  and  jerking. 

Sometimes  the  camp  meetings  were 
broken  up  by  drunken  rowdies,  armed 
with  horsewhips,  dirks,  knives,  and  clubs, 
who  dashed  in  a  v/ild  cavalcade  through 
the  worshiping  throng.  In  general,  they 
were  "holy  fairs,"  the  great  events  of  rural 
society  throughout  the  southwestern  re- 
gions, though  less  in  Ohio.  The  Yankees, 
as  Peter  Cartwright  said,  did  not  like  loud 
and  zealous  sermons,  and  they  brought  on 
their  learned  preachers  to  crush  the  "sons 
of  thunder"  and  put  them  to  shame. 

But  some  of  these  preachers  were  mighty 
men.  They  were  even  remarkable  writ- 
ers, too,  and  a  handful  of  their  journals 
were  perhaps  the  most  interesting  books 
that  arose  from  the  turbulent  Western  life 
of  the  time.  Aside  from  the  dignified 
Francis  Asbury,  who  disliked  all  eccen- 
tricity, the  noble  Peter  Cartwright  was  the 
greatest  of  them,  and  they  all  roamed  from 
region  to  region,  with  or  without  road  or 
path,  with  stools  for  chairs  and  dirt  floors 
for  carpets,  sleeping  on  bear  and  buffalo 
skins.  The  oddest  and  the  most  notorious 
was  the  free-lance  Methodist  holy  man 
"Crazy  Dow" — called,  for  short,  Lorenzo 
— who  jogged  on  his  horse  through  the 
rain  or  trudged  on  foot,  hairy  and  dirty, 
with  his  raiment  flapping  behind  him. 

By  birth  a  Connecticut  Yankee,  Lorenzo 
Dow  was  a  fortune-teller,  a  miracle- 
worker,  a  seer,  an  interpreter  of  dreams, 
who  had  been  converted  in  1793,  when  he 
was  struck  down  by  a  vision  of  prophets 
and  angels.  There  was  scarcely  a  South- 
ern hamlet  in  which  a  boy  did  not  appear, 
announcing  from  his  horse  that  Lorenzo 
was  coming.  Then  the  "eccentric  cos- 
mopolite" would  emerge  from  the  woods, 
melancholy,  tall,  and  cadaverous,  with  his 


562 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


long  black  cloak  and  reddish  beard  and 
the  wild  hair  streaming  over  his  shoulders. 
He  bore  in  one  hand  a  staff  and  a  Bible  in 
the  other. 

Meanwhile,  Peter  Cartwright  remained 
for  half  a  century  the  most  famous  and  the 
grandest  of  the  backwoods  preachers. 
This  naturally  wild  and  wicked  boy,  as  he 
called  himself  in  his  Autobiography,  was  con- 
verted by  a  heavenly  voice  in  1801.  The 
voice  said,  "Peter,  look  at  me,"  and  he 
straightway  gave  up  cards  and  dancing 
and  turned  his  racehorse  over  to  his  father. 
Then  he  set  out  as  the  "boy  preacher," 
living  on  forty  dollars  a  year,  with  what- 
ever food  and  clothing  his  followers  gave 
him.  Preaching,  along  with  weightier 
matters,  decency,  temperance,  and  clean- 
liness, he  had  the  natural  eloquence  of  the 
prophets  of  old.  He  suggested  to  his 
listeners  the  cry  of  the  wildcat,  the  falling 
of  trees  in  the  forest,  and  the  thunderous 
tread  of  the  buffalo  herd  on  the  prairie. 

This  double-barreled  "old  religion,"  as 
people  called  it  in  later  years,  was  to  leave 
profound  impressions  on  the  character  of 
the  West.  Evoked  by  the  life  of  the  pio- 
neers, it  expressed  the  race,  the  place,  the 
moment;  and  its  narrowness  and  grim- 
ness,  together  with  its  joys  and  terrors, 
very  largely  shaped  the  Western  mind, 
which  remained  by  turns  repressive  and 
explosive.  Even  five  generations  later 
the  literature  of  the  Middle  West  was 
colored  and  scarred  by  the  traces  of  this 
old  religion;  while  the  Western  mind  had 
already  assumed  in  other  ways  by  1800  the 
forms  that  later  generations  knew. 

The  pioneers  who  crossed  the  mountains 
soon  lost  all  recollection  of  Europe;  they 
had  no  sympathy  whatever  with  things 
European;  and  they  were  defiant  equali- 
tarians,  sullenly  hostile  to  rank  and  pre- 
tension, who  distrusted  any  kind  of  special 
training.  Largely,  too,  they  distrusted 
education,  for  they  connected  this  with 
aristocratic  ostentation  and  the  claims  of 
superior  persons,  bosses  and  snobs.  More 
than  a  century  later  one  found  the  rem- 
nants of  these  notions  in  many  of  the 
writers  who  came  from  the  Middle  West; 
and  other  Western  traits  were  clearly 
established  by  1804,  when  the  Lewis  and 
Clark  expedition  so  greatly  extended  the 
content  and  conception  of  the  West. 


IV 


Up  TO  that  time  the  Mississippi  had 
virtually  marked  the  Western  bor- 
der, but  when  Jefferson  acquired  the 
Louisiana  Territory  he  added  to  the 
Union  the  area  of  thirteen  states.  Parts 
of  this  country  were  sparsely  peopled  by 
the  men  who  had  settled  the  earlier  wilder- 
ness, and  the  French  could  never  have  held 
it  against  their  advance;  and  both  the 
South  and  the  West  pressed  Jefferson  to 
secure  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  which 
controlled  the  better  part  of  the  Western 
trade.  Jefferson  had  always  longed  for  a 
closer  knowledge  of  the  West — he  had 
dreamed  of  carrying  the  American  flag  to 
the  Pacific — and  he  had  suggested  expedi- 
tions to  John  Ledyard,  Andr^  Michaux, 
and  George  Rogers  Clark,  which  came  to 
nothing.  His  private  secretary  Meriwether 
Lewis  already  knew  much  of  this  farther 
West  when  Jefferson  obtained  the  approval 
of  Congress  for  the  great  expedition  of 
1802.  Lewis,  the  Virginian,  went  to  Phil- 
adelphia to  prepare  for  the  expedition  by  a 
study  of  science,  and  he  set  out  in  1803 
with  a  party  of  forty-five  men  from  Pitts- 
burgh and  joined  William  Clark  at  Louis- 
ville. Clark,  a  brother  of  George  Rogers 
Clark,  had  been  a  comrade  of  Lewis  in 
some  of  the  Indian  campaigns  of  Anthony 
Wayne.  A  number  of  Kentuckians,  "ro- 
bust, healthy,  hardy  young  men,"  joined 
the  expedition  at  St.  Louis,  and  they 
started  in  May,  1804,  to  explore  the  head- 
waters of  the  Missouri  and  find  a  route  to 
the  Pacific.  Then  in  1805  and  1806,  Jeffer- 
son also  despatched  Captain  Zebulon  Pike 
of  New  Jersey  on  two  expeditions.  One 
was  to  explore  the  upper  Mississippi,  the 
other  the  springs  of  the  Arkansas  and  the 
Rio  Grande.  Pike  found  Pike's  Peak  and 
explored  the  vast  vague  country  south- 
ward. His  task  was  to  settle  the  line  of 
the  Mexican  border. 

The  Lewis  and  Clark  expedition  excited 
the  country  as  Raleigh  and  Hakluyt  ex- 
cited the  people  of  England,  for  it  disclosed 
an  unknown  world  of  mystery  and  marvels 
and  opened  it  up  for  enterprise,  settlement, 
and  thought.  Ascending  the  Missouri, 
the  party  followed  the  Yellowstone  River, 
then  crossed  the  divide  of  the  Rockies  and 
descended  westward   till  it  reached   the 


THE    WONDROUS    WEST,    1800 


563 


Columbia  River  and  at  last  the  Pacific; 
and  its  quiet  and  disciplined  progress  was 
a  tribute  to  the  leaders,  their  deep  regard 
for  each  other,  and  their  fatherly  care  of 
the  men.  Lewis  was  instinctively  a  writer 
and  thinker  and  a  well-trained  lover  of 
natural  history.  Now  and  then,  stirred 
by  a  noble  scene,  he  expressed  himself  in 
eloquent  prose,  and  he  often  longed  for  the 
pencil  of  Salvator  Rosa.  Clark,  the 
draftsman  of  the  party,  made  all  the 
maps  and  careful  drawings  of  the  birds, 
fishes,  and  animals  they  discovered  on  the 
way.  Both  wrote  separate  journals,  en- 
couraging the  others  to  write  as  well,  and 
four  additional  journals  were  kept  by  the 
sergeants;  for  Jefferson  had  begged  them 
for  accurate  scientific  data,  and  all  the 
journals  abounded  in  fresh  observations. 

Many  of  the  birds  and  animals  were 
altogether  unknown  to  science,  and  one  or 
another  first  described  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tain rat,  the  mountain  goat,  the  American 
antelope,  a  snail,  and  two  new  kinds  of 
grouse.  They  discovered  the  Lewis  wood- 
pecker and  the  Clark  nutcracker,  and  they 
gave  the  first  adequate  descriptions  of  the 
prairie  dog,  the  coyote,  and  the  Western 
grizzly  bear.  They  preserved  specimens 
of  plants,  observed  the  ways  of  the  wild 
geese,  and  found  a  fish  that  yielded  a  quart 


of  oil.  From  time  to  time  they  made  up 
packages  to  be  sent  to  Jefferson,  antelope 
skins  and  skeletons,  plants  and  roots,  wolf 
skeletons,  deerhorns,  weasel  skins  and 
buflfalo  robes,  a  foxskin,  bows  and  arrows 
and  painted  Indian  robes  and  pottery. 
Some  of  these  were  later  shown  at  Monti- 
cello,  while  others  were  deposited  in 
Peale's  Museum. 

They  also  recorded  the  vocabularies  of 
some  of  the  Indians,  who  had  never  seen 
guns  and  were  frightened  by  the  burning 
glass  which  the  expedition  used  for  making 
fires.  In  camp  they  feasted  on  fine  trout 
and  buff'aloes'  humps  and  marrowbones; 
and  they  dressed  skins  for  their  clothes  and 
danced  and  sang.  Meanwhile,  the  young 
men  were  sometime  fractious  and  mis- 
behaved with  the  tawny  damsels.  Most 
of  the  notes  on  natural  history  were  omitted 
by  the  editor  who  wove  the  various  jour- 
nals together  in  a  readable  paraphrase: 
indeed,  it  was  not  for  a  hundred  years  that 
readers  ever  saw  their  elaborate  and  re- 
markable descriptions  of  the  creatures  of 
the  West.  But  it  was  Nicholas  Biddle's 
version,  a  first-rate  narrative  digest,  that 
revealed  to  the  people  the  travels  of  Lewis 
and  Clark;  and  Americans  could  begin  to 
imagine  the  nation  of  the  future,  stretching 
three  thousand  miles  from  sea  to  sea. 


{Fletcher  Pratt  is  the  well-known  na- 
val expert.  His  newest  book,  The 
Navy's  War,  is  ta  appear  shortly. 


THE   CAMPAIGN  FOR  THE    SOLOMONS 
NO.   3.   DECISION   BY   NIGHT 

FLETCHER    PRATT 


In  the  two  preceding  articles  of  this  series,  ^^ Bloody  Island"*^  and  "  The  Tokyo  Express^"^  Mr. 
Pratt  told  the  story  oj  our  landing  at  Guadalcanal  on  August  7,  1942,  and  of  the  bitter  seesaw 
battles  which  followed  during  the  next  two  and  a  half  months  as  the  Japs  almost  succeeded  in 
dislodging  our  men.  Now  he  comes  to  the  climax — the  decisive  naval  battle  of  mid-November^ 
7942.— The  Editors 


BY  October  28th  enough  information 
about  the  double  Battle  of  Santa 
'  Cruz  had  drifted  in  by  radio  from 
smoking  Guadal  and  by  the  ships  that 
limped  in  from  sea  to  enable  the  Japanese 
admiralty  staff  to  take  stock  of  their  posi- 
tion. Twice  now  they  had  tried  sweeping 
movements  down  from  the  north  with 
battleships,  cruisers,  and  carriers.  Land- 
based  planes  from  Henderson  Field  had 
turned  the  first  brew  sour;  it  had  been  a 
minor  Midway,  only  prevented  from  being 
worse  by  the  (to  them)  inexplicable  un- 
willingness of  the  Americans  to  pursue. 

A  happy  combination  had  kept  the 
American  land  planes  out  of  the  second 
concoction  and  it  was  gratifying  to  know 
that  the  detested  Hornet  had  been  elimi- 
nated not  only  from  this  but  from  all 
future  campaigns.  Yet  the  Japs  had  to 
admit  that  the  sea  fight  at  Santa  Cruz  had 
been  no  better  than  a  bloody  and  violent 
draw.  This  was  unsatisfactory,  since 
Santa  Cruz  ashore  had  become  a  defeat 
for  them  through  the  failure  of  the  high- 
sea  forces  to  intervene.     But  once  again 


the  Americans  had  demonstrated  a  certain 
timorousness,  a  lack  of  moral  courage 
about  using  their  forces  afloat  for  true  of- 
fensive action;  a  desire  to  avoid  narrow 
waters  and  close  contact  save  in  the  neces- 
sary business  of  covering  convoys  to  Gua- 
dalcanal. The  Japanese  torpedo,  as  car- 
ried by  plane,  surface  ship,  or  submarine, 
had  evidently  given  them  the  jitters. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  Japanese' 
opinion  was  correct;  but  that  they  held  it, 
and  based  a  new  campaign  for  the  recov- 
ery of  Guadalcanal  on  exploiting  the 
American  weakness  for  exchanging  left 
jabs  from  across  the  ring.  The  forces 
running  down  the  slot  from  Bougainville  ' 
had  suffered  losses;  but  (if  one  included 
the  August  8th  afi'air)  they  had  given 
about  as  good  as  they  took  on  the  water, 
their  guns  had  put  our  planes  out  of  action 
at  a  crucial  moment,  and  the  troops  and 
artillery  they  had  brought  had  held  us  to 
the  defensive  by  land.  Very  strong  forces 
on  such  a  run  not  only  suffered  no  loss 
proportionate  to  their  size;  they  were  also 
able  to  weaken  the  opposition  by  night 


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565 


gunfire  and  to  make  the  next  day  at  least 
safe  for  movements  that  could  not  other- 
wise be  undertaken.  Besides,  there  were 
now  no  more  Japanese  carriers  that  could 
lead  a  new  attack  from  sea — all  were  spent, 
their  flight  decks  back  for  long  repair, 
their  squadrons  wiped  out. 

Among  the  islands  that  cluster  round 
the  foot  of  Bougainville  the  Japanese  ac- 
cordingly assembled  what  was  to  be  the 
greatest  of  all  the  Tokyo  Express  assaults. 
It  had  four  battleships  in  it,  three  of  them 
the  fast  Kongos,  which  are  battle  cruisers. 
There  is  evidence  that  the  fourth  ship  of 
this  class  had  been  replaced  by  a  slower, 
more  powerful  vessel,  maybe  Ise^  named 
for  the  shrine  of  the  sun  goddess  and 
therefore  a  supremely  lucky  ship.  It  had 
cruisers,  just  which  we  are  not  sure,  save 
that  the  most  indubitable  proof  was  later 
given  that  some  of  them  were  8-inch-gun 
heavies,  some  of  them  the  old  light  cruisers 
mounting  5.5's.  It  had  destroyers,  large 
and  small.  Most  indicative  of  all,  it  had 
as  many  as  twenty  or  thirty  transports,  not 
the  spitkits  that  usually  carried  minor 
reinforcement  parties,  but  big  seagoing 
marus  like  those  that  took  the  major  army 
of  invasion  to  Malaya.  There  were 
enough  of  them  for  three  full  divisions  of 
troops,  maybe  more. 

It  takes  time  to  assemble  a  concentration 
like  this  and  the  staff  work  is  not  light. 
While  the  Japanese  forces  were  gathering, 
the  Americans  were  to  be  pinned  in  their 
poke  around  the  airfield  by  the  old,  tried 
recipe  of  bombings  by  day  and  shellings  by 
night  from  small  cruiser-destroyer  forces 
that  also  landed  munitions  and  some  re- 
inforcement. The  grand  attack  was  set 
for — 

Here  one  suddenly  plunges  from  the 
domain  of  cold  logical  calculation  into 
that  of  wild  fantasy,  with  its  reminder  that 
the  Japanese  are  still  a  medieval  people. 
It  has  been  remarked  that  he  was  a  lucky 
ship  because  of  her  name;  the  fact  that 
she  bore  it  is  one  of  the  reasons  for  believ- 
ing that  she  was  the  vessel  chosen  from 
four  of  her  class  to  lead  the  attack.  Nor 
can  the  curious  repetition  of  dates  in  the 
Japanese  attacks  escape  attention:  August 
24th,  September  24th,  October  24th  for 
the  big  moves  by  open  sea;  August  12th, 
Septeiribcr    13th,    October    12th   for   the 


main  efforts  down  the  slot.  Coincidence, 
the  fact  that  it  took  just  so  long  to  gather 
supplies,  might  explain  such  a  concatena- 
tion once  or  twice,  but  here  it  grows  be- 
yond accident,  and  it  is  not  accident. 

It  is  astrology;  those  were  lucky  days. 
Now  one  of  the  luckiest  of  all  dates  for  such 
an  enterprise  as  was  now  contemplated 
was  the  period  from  November  13  th  to 
November  15th.  These  days  are  sacred 
to  the  willow  and  to  the  sage  Ono-no-tofu, 
who  in  the  immemorial  past  stood  under 
the  streaming  rains  of  November  and 
learned  persistence  by  watching  a  tree 
frog  seven  times  leap  for  a  leaf,  undiscour- 
aged  by  previous  failure.  *  The  gods 
were  being  mobilized  in  support  of  this 
greatest  of  efforts  against  Guadalcanal. 

II 

IN  THE  days  just  following  Santa  Cruz 
the  largest  American  convoy  since  the 
original  landing  steamed  into  "Sleepless 
Lagoon"  and  put  its  troops  ashore.  It 
would  be  about  this  time  that  the  huge 
liner  President  Coolidge  struck  a  pair  of 
mines  and  sank  off  the  island,  without  loss 
but  in  the  midst  of  an  intense  atmosphere 
of  controversy,  for  her  captain  and  several 
of  the  crew  maintained  that  the  mines 
were  American  and  that  the  guiding 
destroyer  had  given  the  ship  her  go-ahead 
into  the  area  where  she  went  down.  The 
point  is  not  important  in  itself — such  acci- 
dents are  as  inevitable  in  war  as  autos 
locking  wheels  in  city  streets — but  it  may 
provide  a  clue  to  why  "Oscar" — the  single 
Jap  sub  that,  earlier  in  the  campaign,  had 
been  a  nightly  visitor — came  no  more  into 
Sealark  Channel  to  surface  and  shell  our 
lines.  A  submarine  in  a  minefield  is  the 
world's  most  helpless  warship.  The  fact 
that  there  could  be  an  American  mine- 
field is  also  an  indication  of  the  increased 
force  we  were  putting  in. 

Japanese  shells  were  still  falling  in  the 
area  as  the  fresh  troops  came  ashore. 
Both  for  the  sake  of  more  elbow  room  and 
to  give  them  a  safe  landing  General  Van- 
degrift  staged  an  offensive  as  of  November 


*  Robert  Bruce  and  the  spider,  yes.  But  as  every 
reader  of  The  Golden  Bough  knows,  the  appearance 
of  a  legend  in  one  country  does  not  prevent  its 
independent  development  in  another. 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


1st.  It  was  a  creejxng  affair  of  strong 
patrols  in  the  underbrush  and  draws; 
when  it  ended  we  had  bridgeheads  across 
the  rivers  both  east  and  west  of  the  airfield 
and  so  much  of  the  ground  that  had  been 
fought  over  in  the  desperate  battles  of  late 
October  that  the  Japanese  dead  could  be 
counted  and  buried.  There  were  over 
2,000.  The  new  Army  men  looked  at 
them  curiously,  asking  a  variety  of  ques- 
tions about  the  Japs  who  spoke  English  or 
fought  tied  to  trees,  but  they  got  little 
satisfaction.  Both  categories  belonged  to 
the  Imperial  Marine  Corps  and  by  this 
time  most  of  the  members  of  that  organi- 
zation on  the  island  were  dead. 

Daytimes  our  men  sunned  themselves  in 
shorts  outside  dugouts,  and  at  night  they 
found  sleeping  easier  than  they  had  been 
led  to  expect;  but  the  idyll  did  not  last. 
On  November  4th  the  Tokyo  Express  ran 
again,  depositing  some  1,500  men,  part 
east  and  part  west  of  the  airfield.  Those 
on  the  east  started  some  fighting  in  the 
brush  which  they  regretted,  for  the  Army 
reinforcements  were  on  that  front,  feeling 
full  of  beans,  and  slugged  them  hard. 
There  were  combats  all  through  the  5th 
and  6th,  with  one  fairly  heavy  Jap  air  raid 
on  the  first  day  that  came  in  so  fast  through 
clouds  our  fighters  could  not  get  to  it. 
More  Flying  Fortresses  arrived,  our  forces 
had  opulent  support  from  the  sky,  and  by 
night  of  the  6th  the  battle  had  become  a 
punch  into  jelly.  There  was  no  more  real 
resistance  anywhere  along  the  line;  scouts 
reported  that  the  remains  of  the  1,500 
new  Japs  had  taken  to  the  hills. 

There  were  eight  motor-torpedo  boats 
now  and  a  base  ship  for  them,  which  had 
been  run  into  a  bay  of  Tulagi  and  dec- 
orated with  potted  palms  till  she  looked 
like  the  lobby  of  a  General  Grant  hotel. 
The  PT's  went  out  every  night,  partly  in- 
to Sealark  Channel  to  keep  the  Japs  from 
landing  at  Taivu,  partly  to  the  "bitch 
patrol"  where  Cape  Esperance  looks  on 
open  sea  and  they  were  rocked  by  the 
waves  of  the  stormy  season.  People 
mostly  have  the  wrong  idea  about  the  PT 
boats.  They  do  not  come  roaring  in 
with  open  cutouts  like  a  charge  of  cavalry; 
they  are  assassins  which  sneak  up  soft- 
shoe  on  throttled  motors,  strike  once,  and 
use  their  speed  on  the  getaway.     On  that 


night  of  November  6th  Lieutenant  "Stilly" 
Taylor's  boat  on  the  bitch  patrol  fired  its 
fish  and  got  an  explosion,  but  it  was  only 
a  possible;  the  missile  may  have  hit  the 
rocks  of  Savo  Island. 

Next  night,  the  7th,  a  Japanese  de- 
stroyer came  down  to  Taivu,  moving  fast. 
One  of  the  expendables  fired  at  him;  his 
lookouts  were  good,  they  spotted  the  tor- 
pedo wakes,  switched  on  searchlights,  and 
changed  course  lightning  fast — to  run 
straight  into  a  fan  of  four  torpedoes  fired  by 
Lieutenant  Lester  Gamble  from  another. 
That  same  night  on  the  bitch  patrol  we  lost 
a  boat,  hit  in  the  bows  by  a  Japanese 
destroyer's  star  shell  and  all  chewed  to 
pieces.  She  made  port  toward  morning, 
having  used  her  smoke  well,  but  was 
pretty  definitely  out  of  the  campaign. 
Three  nights  later  there  was  another  en- 
counter in  the  slot,  with  a  hit  on  a  Jap 
vessel  everybody  took  for  a  destroyer,  but 
two  more  of  our  boats  were  disabled,  one 
by  gunfire,  one  by  engineering  casualty. 
Torpedo  boats  are  like  bombers;  should 
be  used  in  quantity  with  constant  replace- 
ment— only  there  was  neither  quantity 
nor  replacement  to  be  had  and  the  boys 
who  operated  them  began  to  feel  lonely 
and  beaten  down. 

In  the  air  war  the  pace  was  being 
stepped  up  as  the  day  of  Ono-no-tofu  ap- 
proached. Our  planes  on  the  7th  found 
a  big  Tokyo  Express  way  up  near  New 
Georgia,  a  cruiser  and  ten  destroyers  mov- 
ing into  position  for  the  night  run  on  which 
they  clashed  with  the  PT's.  Instead  of 
hiding,  the  Japs  called  up  their  planes  from 
the  new  nearby  air  bases  and  tried  to  fight 
through.  There  was  an  air  battle;  they 
had  the  cruiser  badly  hit  and  lost  sixteen 
planes  against  four,  a  proportion  that 
need  not  surprise,  since  they  brought  only 
float-planes  and  they  fed  those  in  piece- 
meal. 

When  our  planes  came  home  from  mis- 
sion they  found  everyone  at  Henderson 
talking  excitedly  with  an  Army  lieutenant 
named  Dinn,  who  had  just  arrived  by 
canoe.  He  had  flown  an  Airacobra  in  a 
raid  against  Rekata  Bay  on  Santa  Isabel 
on  October  28th  and  had  been  knocked 
down  by  flak.  The  natives  gave  him  a 
portable  throne  when  they  found  out  he 
was   a   birdman,   fed   him   the   honorific 


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567 


oods,  and  made  him  shake  hands  with 
veryone  in  the  villages  through  which  he 
)assed.  He  taught  them  "You  Are  My 
mnshine"  as  an  addition  to  their  one-song 
epertoire,  "Jesus  Loves  Me";  they  cap- 
ured  a  Jap  for  him,  who  was  taken  along 
;o  the  encampment  and  installed  as  fore- 
nan  of  the  gravediggers'  squad. 

Ill  t 

UT  all  this  was  the  overture.  The 
curtain  for  the  big  show  rose  with  day 
on  November  12th,  when  still  another 
American  troop  convoy  steamed  in  under 
a  forest  of  masts  with  the  guardian  arms  of 
warships  around  them.  Norman  Scott 
was  there,  who  had  led  at  Cape  Espe- 
rance,  this  time  flying  his  flag  in  the  new 
anti-aircraft  cruiser  Atlanta.  But  he  was 
not  in  command  of  the  group;  that  office 
belonged  to  Rear  Admiral  Daniel  Cal- 
laghan,  "Uncle  Dan,"  the  former  White 
House  naval  aide,  loved  by  everyone  down 
to  the  meanest  mess  boy,  not  least  by  the 
captains  who  knew  that  more  than  half  of 
tactics  is  in  his  "Follow  Me."  He  was  on 
the  bridge  of  San  Francisco;  there  was  an- 
other heavy  cruiser,  Portland;  there  were 
eight  destroyers,  Atlanta^s  sister  Juneau^ 
and  that  workhorse  light  cruiser,  the 
Helena,  which  went  into  action  at  once. 

For  the  Tokyo  Express  was  a^lso  a  freight 
train.  It  had  brought  a  consignment  of 
6-  and  5-inch  guns  which  the  Japs  had  set 
up  near  the  mouth  of  the  Kokombona 
River  for  just  such  an  occasion  as  this. 
As  the  transports  began  to  unload,  these 
guns  croaked  all  together  and  splash-foun- 
tains rose  among  the  ships.  Helena  steamed 
off'  to  deal  with  them,  the  fastest-shooting 
ship  in  the  fleet,  with  her  battery  of  fifteen 
guns  and  a  file  of  destroyers  to  help  her,  of 
which  Buchanan  got  hit  and  lost  five  men. 
They  put  the  Japanese  batteries  to  silence 
and  moved  along  the  shore,  shooting  up 
Japanese  artillery  positions  where  they  lay 
along  the  reverse  slope  of  ridges  perpen- 
dicular to  the  sea,  and  were  having  a  lovely 
time  with  about  thirty  landing  craft  which 
the  enemy  had  not  had  time  to  hide  under 
the  jungle  edge,  when  TBS  flashed  a  re- 
call— Jap  planes  coming. 

Helena  turned  back.  All  the  ships  had 
steam,    the   transports   were   disposed   in 


lines  parallel  to  the  direction  of  the  Jap 
approach  with  the  warships  circling  around 
them,  and  twenty-eight  Grummans  took 
off  from  Henderson  Field.  Against  the 
bright  sky  over  Florida  Island  they  were 
silhouetted  for  a  moment  like  flies  on  a 
windowpane,  and  then  a  long,  thin  ribbon 
of  Mitsubishi  torpedo  planes  came  pouring 
over  and  down  as  though  they  had  been 
shot  out  of  a  hose. 

As  they  cleared  the  island  they  started 
to  spread  for  the  classic  all-angles  attack, 
but  they  never  made  it.  The  Grummans 
had  ridden  them  hard;  their  fighter  cover 
was  stripped ;  sixteen  of  the  bombers  were 
already  flaming  down  when  the  ships 
opened  with  their  40's  in  a  tumult  of  fire 
that  only  one  of  the  attackers  lived  through. 
But  three  torpedoes  were  dropped  and 
those  in  desperation.  One  fatally  hit 
plane  swooped  in  a  sharp  curve  toward 
San  Francisco,  She  dodged;  the  plane 
missed  the  bridge,  but  hit  Bat  II,  the  sec- 
ondary control  station  that  overlooks  num- 
ber 3  turret.  There  was  a  sharp  explo- 
sion, a  spray  of  burning  gasoline  that  took 
the  lives  of  thirty  men  and  seriously 
wounded  the  exec.  Commander  Mark 
Crouter. 

Ten  minutes  from  the  first  gun  there 
was  no  trace  of  battle  but  the  plume  of 
smoke  from  the  cruiser  and  that  single  Jap 
plane  running  north  with  its  engine  on 
fire  and  a  Grumman  buzzing  angrily  after 
it.  The  Japs  had  lost  thirty-two  out  of 
thirty-three,  the  same  score  as  in  the 
attack  on  South  Dakota  during  the  Santa 
Cruz  battle,  but  that  time  at  least  they  got 
a  bomb  hit  and  on  this  occasion  nothing. 

IV 

THAT  night  our  transports  left  the  bay, 
which  tells  its  own  story  of  how  fast 
and  well  the  Seabees  had  worked  to  un- 
load them.  The  cruisers  saw  them  out. 
Ashore  the  word  went  round  that  Tojo 
was  coming,  and  strong;  he  had  battle- 
ships in  his  train  and  an  NYK  liner  of  18,- 
000  tons,  the  biggest  in  the  Oriental  world, 
besides  other  ships.  Our  planes  had 
tracked  him  all  day  through  changing 
weather.  General  Vandegrift  was  happy 
enough;  our  latest  arrivals,  he  said,  had 
put  it  past  the  power  of  the  Japs  to  land 


568 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


enough  men  for  victory  in  any  single  opera- 
tion. But  the  old  liands,  the  Marines, 
made  themselves  rmall  in  foxholes  they 
dug  deeper  that  day,  and  swore.  "Where's 
our  Navy?"  they  asked. 

They  could  see  San  Francisco  and  Port- 
land, Helena,  the  anti-aircraft  cruisers  and 
destroyers,  riding  into  Sleepless  Lagoon 
after  taking  the  transports  out,  and  it  did 
not  look  to  them  like  the  kind  of  fleet  with 
which  a  man  in  his  senses  opposes  an 
enemy  who  has  battleships.  Perhaps  it 
was  not;  but  it  was  the  fleet  Uncle  Dan 
Callaghan  had  and  would  do  his  best  with. 
He  formed  them  after  dark,  the  destroyer 
Gushing  leading  the  line  with  Commander 
Edward  Parker,  who  had  skippered  an- 
other destroyer  through  that  wild  night 
in  Badung  Strait  off  Java  when  all  the 
Jap  ships  went  down  and  they  fired  at 
each  other.  Behind  Gushing  came  Lieuten- 
ant Commander  W.  E.  Hank's  Laffey, 
O^Bannon,  Buchanan,  then  Atlanta,  San  Fran- 
cisco, Helena,  Portland,  Juneau  and  more 
destroyers — an  arrangement  symmetrical, 
with  the  strong  ships  all  at  the  center  of  the 
line,  whereas  the  schools  of  tactics  teach 
that  they  should  occupy  the  extremities. 
But  what  is  a  strong  ship?  In  the  murk  of 
night,  in  those  close  waters.  Admiral 
Callaghan  judged  it  to  be  a  ship  that 
could  use  the  torpedo  as  its  first  and 
deadly  weapon. 

HAVING  given  his  men  some  rest  the 
Admiral  turned  northwest  along  the 
Guadal  coast,  pointing  toward  the  more 
southerly  of  the  gaps  around  Savo  Island. 
The  planes  had  been  flown  off  and  were 
over  at  Tulagi  to  keep  them  from  burning 
on  the  catapults  in  action  as  they  had 
during  the  August  battle.  It  was  after 
midnight  and  the  rich  voice  of  the  Ad- 
miral came  through  the  speakers  outlining 
the  desperate  venture  of  battle  in  which 
they  were  about  to  be  engaged,  and  ending 
as  Callaghan  always  did  with  "Let's  go 
get  'em."  Then  it  was  one  o'clock,  it  was 
after  one  o'clock,  and  the  ships  passed 
Point  Cruz,  turning  right  angles  in  suc- 
cession to  a  northerly  course.  It  was 
half  past  the  hour  when  the  TBS  from 
Helena  carried  word  to  all  ships,  "Here 
they  come,"  with  something  about  an 
enormous  fleet  south  of  Savo  Island. 


Callaghan  swung  sharp  left  to  close  the 
range,  then  sharp  right  again  to  stay 
across  the  bows  of  the  enemy  rushing  down 
at  top  speed,  and  shouted  "Commence 
firing!  Give  'em  hell,  boys !"  Before  the 
last  words  left  his  lips  Helena'' s  fifteen  guns 
went  off  all  together  and  in  ten  seconds  the 
air  was  full  of  the  glare  of  star  shell  and  the 
water  full  of  level  gun  flashes.  Two  Jap 
scout  planes  had  gone  up  to  cast  flares; 
caught  in  that  first  blaze  of  light  they  were 
targets  for  every  pompom  in  the  fleet  and 
came  crashing  down  as  the  converging  ) 
courses  of  the  two  squadrons  carried  them 
together  into  a  melee  the  like  of  which  had  i 
not  been  seen  since  Jutland. 

It  is  impossible  to  view  that  three-ring 
circus  save  through  the  eyes  of  individual  , 
ships,  and  not  always  then.  At  the  head 
of  the  line  Gushing  found  herself  in  action 
with  two  or  three  destroyers  coming  in  on 
her  port  side;  hit  them  and  was  herself  hit 
almost  at  once.  Commander  Parker  felt 
his  ship's  speed  fall  off  and  could  not  raise 
the  forward  engine  room  by  phone;  or- 
dered a  spread  of  torpedoes  from  number 
3  tube,  but  as  he  did  so  the  torpedoman 
was  hit  and  got  off  only  one  of  his  fish, 
which  missed. 

He  looked  from  the  bridge  wings;  off  the 
port  quarter,   clearly  outlined   against  a 
glare  of  gunfire  and  now-burning  ships, 
was  the  hulking  form  of  a  Jap  battleship—  \ 
not  one  of  your  Kongos  with  their  funnels 
pinched   together  in   a  mass  of  midship 
superstructure,  but  with  tower  distinct,  a  - 
gap,  then  funnel,  then  a  tower  again —  , 
big  game,  Fuso  or  Ise. 

He  gave  his  dying  ship  full  rudder  and 
as  she  came  round  in  a  sharp  curve  he 
noted  how  one,  two  giant  waterspouts 
sprang  up  on  the  far  side  of  that  battle- 
ship, their  spray  turned  red  by  flame 
within  and  behind.  Torpedo  hits.  "Ac- 
tion starboard,"  he  said  and  fired  his 
torpedoes;  there  was  a  hit,  maybe  more 
than  one,  then  Gushing  herself  was  hit 
again  and  began  to  go  down. 

The  hits  Parker  saw  had  been  from  our 
destroyer  Lafey,  which  spotted  the  Jap 
battleship  first  and  charged  straight  for 
her  bows,  firing  her  spread  on  the  run  in. 
They  almost  collided;  the  destroyer's 
wheel  went  down,  she  cut  under  the  fore- 
foot  of  the   monster   by   a   margin   that 


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HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


JAPANESE 

BATTLESMIP 
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JAPANESE 

HEAVY    CRUISER 
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GUADALCANAL 


-I 


The  Battle  of  November  13th.     Third  Phase 


seemed  no  more  than  ten  feet,  shooting 
out  the  Jap's  bridge  with  her  5-inch  but 
in  return  taking  heavy  punishment  from 
secondaries,  turning  left  toward  Savo  to 
get  away.  The  next  flashes  showed  an- 
other battleship  broad  on  the  beam  and 
two  big  Jap  destroyers  off  the  port  bow. 
Both  swung  to  fire  torpedoes;  the  guns 
opened  up  and  tafefs  people  saw  a  flame 
spring  from  the  leading  Jap  forecastle  with 
the  oil-well  pressure  behind  it  that  indi- 
cated a  burning  magazine.  Then  a  tor- 
pedo hit  Laffey  aft,  she  began  to  go,  but 
the  three  guns  still  remaining  tore  at  the 
wounded  Jap  from  a  range  where  misses 
were  impossible.  Down  she  went,  but 
now  Lqffey  was  done  too  and  her  crew 
abandoned  ship  just  as  the  second  Jap 
battlewagon  opened  up  on  them  with 
14-inch  shell. 

Atlanta  was  just  making  the  final  north- 
ward turn  when  her  lookouts  picked  up 
something  on  the  starboard  bow.  As  her 
guns  swung  in  that  direction  the  ship  was 


abruptly  caught  in  a  searchlight  beam 
from  the  other  side.  The  turrets  spun 
fast,  she  fired  six  quick  salvos  at  the  search- 
light ship,  a  three-funneied  cruiser,  hitting 
and  being  hit,  but  getting  all  the  best  of 
the  exchange,  for  the  Jap  had  no  such 
battery  as  this  new  cruiser.  The  search- 
lights went  out,  the  three-funnel  job  heeled 
over  and  began  to  burn,  and  just  then 
three  Jap  destroyers  foamed  across  At- 
lanta's bow  no  more  than  600  yards  away. 
The  first  two  got  past  but  "We  opened 
on  the  third  and  just  went  to  town,  hitting 
her  every  four  seconds  with  all  the  guns 
that  would  bear.  She  blew  up  and  disap- 
peared.    Then  we  were  torpedoed." 

Two  of  the  torpedoes  hit  Atlanta  in  the 
engine  rooms,  killing  all  power,  and  the 
ship  drifted  round  to  a  southerly  course 
away  from  the  action  which  for  her  had 
lasted  something  less  than  a  minute. 
Away  behind,  ships  were  burning  all  over 
the  water  or  blowing  up;  the  waves  of  their 
movement  heaved  the  little  cruiser  around 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


571 


like  those  of  a  full  gale,  though  the  action 
had  started  with  the  lagoon  as  calm  as  a 
bathtub.  It  was  dark;  out  of  that  dark 
astern  to  the  north  suddenly  plunged  a 
heavy  cruiser  which  threw  a  light  on 
Atlanta  and  hit  her  with  nineteen  big  shells, 
all  over,  wrecking  everything.  Captain 
Jenkins  ran  to  the  port  wing  of  the  bridge 
to  see  whether  he  could  get  a  torpedo  off; 
too  many  men  had  been  killed  aft  and  he 
could  not,  but  the  effort  saved  his  life,  for 
one  of  those  big  shells  hit  the  bridge  and 
killed  everyone  on  it,  including  Norman 
Scott. 

San  Francisco  seems  to  have  encountered 
the  leading  Jap  ships  bow  to  bow 
while  still  pointing  west.  The  first  was  a 
cruiser,  and  the  American  flagship  hit  it 
with  six  salvos;  then  Helena  and  the  cruiser 
following  also  hit  it.  It  began  to  burn 
throughout  its  length;  next  San  Francisco 
shifted  to  a  flotilla  leader  and  had  hit 
that  a  couple  of  times  when  the  battle 
glare  threw  up  the  leading  Jap  battleship 
with  Lafefs  torpedoes  exploding  against 
her  sides. 

"Get  on  that  goddam  pagoda!"  shouted 
someone  on  the  bridge.  Cruiser  and 
battleship  fired  together;  at  that  2,500- 
yard  range  San  Francisco'' s  shells  went  right 
through  her  big  antagonist's  armor  and 
must  have  torn  her  all  to  pieces  inside,  but 
she  was  shooting  back  with  14-inch,  and 
though  the  guns  could  not  be  depressed 
enough  to  hit  our  ship  on  the  waterline, 
the  shells  went  off  in  the  bridge  structure 
and  blew  out  that  brain  of  the  ship. 
Lieutenant  Commander  Bruce  McCand- 
less  in  the  port  wing  of  the  bridge  was 
knocked  off  his  feet  and  half  stunned  by  a 
fragment  that  gave  him  a  wound.  As  he 
picked  himself  up  to  find  Captain  Young 
and  Commander  Crouter  dead,  the  conn- 
ing tower  was  hit  by  another  big  shell  that 
killed  Admiral  Callaghan,  and  Bat  II  by 
still  another  that  wiped  out  everyone 
there. 

McCandless  grabbed  a  phone  to  tell 
Lieutenant  Commander  Herbert  Schon- 
land  of  Damage  Control  that  he  was  the 
senior  surviving  officer,  but  Schonland  was 
in  the  midst  of  his  own  desperate  fight  to 
keep  the  cruiser  afloat  against  the  water 
pouring  in  through  shell  holes  in  h^r  side. 


''Con  the  ship,"  he  snapped  back,  and 
McCandless  found  himself  commander  of 
the  ship  and  admiral  of  a  fleet  scattered 
through  the  night. 

Fortunately  the  big  cruiser's  power 
plant  was  intact,  though  one  section  of 
blowers  had  been  knocked  out  and  the 
other  brought  so  much  smoke  into  the 
engine  spaces  that  the  men  there  had  to 
work  in  gas  masks.  McCandless  found 
that  neither  main  nor  secondary  steering 
control  was  working,  but  the  phone  to 
central  station,  far  below,  was  in  order. 
Giving  directions  over  it,  he  kept  his  ship's 
head  west  between  the  double  column  of 
Japs  while  Helena  and  Portland  behind  her 
pumped  shells  into  the  enemy  battleship 
till  it  ceased  fire  and  turned  away  north. 
As  the  tail  ends  of  the  lines  swept  past  each 
other  there  were  stabs  of  gunfire  and  the 
rush  of  more  torpedoes;  Juneau  got  one 
amidships,  Portland  took  one  that  smashed 
her  rudder,  and  two  more  of  our  destroyers 
were  fatally  hit.  Barton  and  Monssen^  but 
not  till  one  of  them  had  soaked  a  torpedo 
into  some  big  Jap  never  clearly  identified, 
probably  the  second  battleship.  Then 
the  enemy  were  away  around  the  north  of 
Savo,  leaving  two  cruisers  and  four  de- 
stroyers on  the  bottom. 

The  action  had  lasted  a  little  better 
than  seventeen  minutes. 


IT  w^As  not  entirely  over.  What  was  left 
of  our  battle  line,  now  under  guidance 
of  McCandless,  came  down  to  the  cover 
of  our  batteries  on  the  northern  shore  of 
Guadalcanal.  Dawn  comes  early  in  those 
waters;  in  the  first  half-light  Portland  spied 
a  Jap  destroyer  trying  to  crawl  slowly  away 
just  this  side  of  Savo  Island,  swung  round 
her  turrets  and  while  the  damage-control 
parties  labored  below,  put  out  six  quick 
salvos  that  sent  the  Jap  to  the  bottom. 
The  shells  passed  over  the  heads  of  hun- 
dreds of  swimmers,  Japanese  and  Ameri- 
can. Higgins  boats  were  already  out  to 
pick  up  survivors  but  the  Japs  fired  at 
them  from  the  water  and  the  rescuers  had 
to  carry  machine  guns.  They  only  got 
twenty-five  live  prisoners  and  they  could 
see  along  toward  the  usual  Jap  landing 
beaches  that  some  new  boats  had  put  in 


572 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


during  the  night,   apparently  while   the 
battle  was  going  on. 

When  the  fliers  went  out  to  look  for  the 
ships  from  which  these  boats  had  come 
they  found  the  pot  of  gold.  The  big  Jap 
battleship  had  taken  a  little  more  than 
even  a  battleship  can  stand  from  the  light 
craft  we  had  in  action;  she  was  just  beyond 
Savo,  making  for  home  at  no  more  than 
five  knots,  low  in  the  water  and  with  five 
destroyers  around  her.  The  news  spread 
electrically  through  the  encampment  where 
the  survivors  of  our  lost  ships  were  finding 
themselves  treated  as  victors  and  saviors, 
with  all  the  little  carefully  hoarded  deli- 
cacies— a  bar  of  chocolate,  a  cigar,  a  hid- 
den bottle  of  Japanese  beer.  All  the  tor- 
pedo and  dive-bombers  on  the  island  were 
hastily  readied  and  took  off  into  the  rising 
sun.  Torpedo  8  was  there,  the  squadron 
whose  carrier  section  had  been  wiped 
out  at  Midway,  now  led  to  revenge  by 
"Swede"  Larsen;  Captain  Joe  Foss  was 
there — the  Marine  fighter  ace  who  had 
just  run  his  score  of  Jap  planes  to  twenty- 
one — and  others,  a  truly  formidable  con- 
centration of  the  best  in  U.  S.  Naval  Air. 

But  it  turned  into  a  singular  and  for 
some  time  an  inexplicable  operation. 
There  was  no  Jap  air  cover  and  the 
weather  was  favorable  to  the  attack,  with 
low  overcast  and  fits  of  rain.  In  the  very 
first  exchange  Marine  Major  Sailer  wiped 
out  one  of  the  Jap  ship's  AA  positions  with 
a  dive-bomb  just  as  it  was  manned  to 
beat  off  a  torpedo  attack  led  by  Larsen. 
Larsen  got  a  hit;  half  an  hour  later  there 
was  another  and  then  two  more,  all  tor- 
pedoes. The  battleship  crept  on.  Two 
more  torpedoes  toward  noon;  she  kept 
going. 

They  were  talking  of  the  "unsinkable 
battleship";  one  pilot  wiped  sweat  from 
his  face  and  ejaculated, 

"The  damn  thing  apparently  will  float 
till  the  war's  over." 

"We've  got  to  sink  her,"  said  another. 
"We've  just  got  to,  or  the  admirals  will 
stop  building  carriers  and  start  building 
battleships  all  over  again." 

The  afternoon  went  by  like  that.  Out 
in  the  channel  they  had  finally  fixed  up 
the  heavy  cruiser's  rudder  and  scuttled 
Atlanta  as  beyond  repair.  What  was  left 
of  Admiral  Callaghan's  fleet  gathered  it- 


self together  and  steamed  out  to  the  south. 
The  returning  fliers  brought  word  that  the 
unsinkable  ship  was  still  moving,  just 
barely,  down  by  the  stern  now  and  with 
only  a  couple  of  guns  working. 

It  is  said  that  a  Marine  major  solved 
the  mystery,  suddenly  clapping  his  hand 
to  his  forehead.  All  those  torpedoes— 
they  had  been  set  for  shallow  runs,  to  take 
the  bottom  out  of  a  Jap  destroyer  or  one 
of  their  light-draft  transports,  and  with 
that  battleship  down  deep  they  must  be 
exploding  against  her  armor  belt,  piling 
up  damage  but  not  killing.  The  last 
flight  of  the  day  went  out  with  torpedoes 
in  deep  settings  and  got  three  hits.  The 
battleship  stopped  in  the  twilight,  its  whole 
stern  red  from  internal  fires,  with  men  be- 
ing taken  off.  In  the  morning  there  was 
nothing  on  the  spot  or  near  it  but  a  two- 
mile  slick  of  iridescent  oil.     Sunk. 

We  had  a  loss  too,  in  the  last  act  of  the 
day  when  our  fleet  pulled  southward  with 
the  cruisers  all  pretty  well  smashed  and 
the  remaining  destroyers  in  company  so 
much  abused  that  their  sound  gear  was 
out  of  commission.  They  were  making 
twenty  knots,  which  is  too  fast  for  sub- 
marine approach,  but  luck  or  clever  cal- 
culation by  the  Japs  would  take  the  col- 
umn right  into  an  area  where  they  had  a 
U-boat  waiting  to  pick  on  cripples.  The 
men  on  our  other  ships  heard  a  violent 
explosion  and  saw  a  column  of  oil  go  up  at 
the  side  oi  Juneau,  opposite  the  point  where 
she  had  taken  the  torpedo  in  the  night. 
Under  it  the  ship  simply  disintegrated. 
"I  saw  a  piece  of  the  mainmast  coming 
down  and  doubled  up  to  protect  myself. 
I  remember  a  sharp  pain.  A  second  later 
I  dropped  over  the  rail  to  the  main  deck, 
twenty  feet  below,  but  I  was  already  in 
water  up  to  my  chest."  The  other  ships 
had  to  steam  on  out  of  the  danger  area; 
all  planes  were  fighting  and  so  without 
good  rescue  there  were  only  thirteen 
survivors. 

A  bad  end  to  a  good  day,  but  it  turned 
worse  by  night,  when  the  Japs  poured  an- 
other whole  division  of  their  fleet  down  the 
slot  where  there  were  now  no  American 
ships  to  oppose  them  and  gave  Guadal- 
canal a  thorough  shelling.  "The  worst 
one  ever,  with  all  that  14-inch;  it  just 
drives  you  crazy,"  commented  one  man 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMONS 


573 


vho  lay  beneath  it.  In  some  of  the  shell 
loles  men  were  crying  or  talking  about 
low  to  make  cofTee,  or  Rita  Hayworth's 
cgs,  or  anything  to  give  a  sense  of  human 
:ompanionship  and  existence  under  that 
;torm  of  steel.  But  in  the  technical  sense 
t  was  nervous  exhaustion  more  than 
damage.  Unlike  the  October  shellings 
this  one  caused  few  casualties — only  three 
planes  smashed;  and  though  seventeen 
nhers  were  damaged,  they  were  in  the  air 
ocfore  night  of  November  1 5th  and  the 
j  motor-torpedo  boats  raided  the  Jap  ar- 
mada as  it  whirled  past,  getting  a  fish  into 
a  fine  cruiser. 

VI 

PERHAPS  that  torpedo  hit  sent  the  bom- 
barding squadron  away  before  it  in- 
tended to  go,  before  it  had  accomplished 
its  purpose  of  crippling  the  Henderson 
Field  planes.  If  so,  it  can  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  decisive  minor  events  of  the 
campaign. 

There  are  military  advantages  in  the 
Japanese  system  of  politico-religious  fanat- 
icism; it  produces  in  the  subject  a  self- 
sacrificing  devotion  which  keeps  him  at 
the  guns,  as  cool  as  at  target  practice,  with 
the  world  collapsing  around.  It  permits 
the  home  authorities  to  concentrate  pro- 
duction on  pure  fighting  equipment  with- 
out having  to  bother  with  such  details  as 
life  jackets  for  warship  crews  or  parachutes 
for  those  of  airplanes.  But  the  cool  as- 
sumption that  all  lives  are  forfeit  in  war 
leads  to  the  forfeiture  of  many  that  might 
be  saved  for  use,  and  that  is  what  hap- 
pened on  the  morning  of  November  1 5th. 
On  the  previous  day  the  scouting  planes 
that  stumbled  over  the  unsinkable  battle- 
ship had  flown  on  into  the  upper  Solo- 
mons. It  will  be  remembered  that  their 
mission  was  to  look  for  transports.  They 
found  them — not  the  small  craft  from 
which  landing  boats  had  presumably 
reached  the  beaches  during  the  battle,  but 
something  much  more  important,  the 
NYK  18,000-tonner  with  seven  others  of 
which  the  smallest  was  10,000  or  12,000 
tons,  and  four  cargo  vessels  of  similar 
dimensions.  Their  decks  were  black  with 
men,  at  least  two  divisions,  maybe  more. 
They  spent  all  that  day,  the  14th,  jigging 
around  just  beyond  bomber  range.     Dur- 


ing the  night  they  began  to  move  in,  for 
even  a  fast  transport  is  slower  than  a  war- 
ship and  the  run  through  the  American 
bomber  belt  would  have  to  be  made  at 
least  partly  by  daylight. 

According  to  Japanese  calculation  there 
should  have  been  no  effective  bomber  belt 
left  by  the  15th.  Henderson  Field  would 
have  had  one  massive  shelling  on  the  night 
of  the  13th  and  another  on  the  14th.  A 
single  bombardment  of  much  less  intensity 
had  left  the  field  practically  without 
planes  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of 
Santa  Cruz,  three  weeks  before.  But 
Admiral  Callaghan's  death  ride  had  alto- 
gether canceled  the  bombardment  of  the 
13th  and  that  of  the  14th  had  been  turned 
into  a  half-baked  performance  by  the  at- 
tack of  the  motor-torpedo  boats.  We  had 
planes;  they  were  in  the  air;  and  when  the 
Japanese  expeditionary  force  was  located 
only  150  miles  from  Guadalcanal  shortly 
before  noon,  our  planes  went  hunting. 

Some  officers  thought  they  detected 
evidence  of  a  small  Jap  carrier,  an  auxil- 
iary, somewhere  in  the  background.  It 
could  not  have  amounted  to  much,  for 
when  the  fighters  with  which  our  attack 
force  was  liberally  provided  had  shot  down 
eight  Zeros  at  a  cost  of  only  one  of  their 
own,  any  remaining  Jap  planes  ran  away 
and  the  transports  were  stripped  of  air 
cover.  Their  protecting  warships  (all 
small)  also  cleared  out  like  good  Oriental 
realists,  leaving  those  ships  and  all  the  men 
they  contained  with  no  protection  but  the 
ordinary  armament  of  vessels  not  in- 
tended to  fight. 

IT  was  massacre,  it  was  horrible,  it  was 
war.  Our  pilots  came  back  calling 
themselves  "buzzards,"  hating  themselves 
a  trifle,  to  tell  how  in  the  first  attack  two  of 
the  big  ships  had  gone  down  to  leave  the 
water  for  half  a  mile  around  full  of  little 
men  in  khaki  uniforms  who  gradually  dis- 
appeared; how  the  bombs  went  down 
through  decks  and  the  ships  burned  inside 
till  the  details  of  their  machinery  were 
picked  out  as  though  with  magenta-col- 
ored paint.  The  convoy  had  its  orders; 
it  crept  remorselessly  toward  Guadalcanal 
into  the  flame.  Our  bombers  went  back 
to  refuel  and  took  ofl"  again;  our  fighters 
came  down  and  tore  their  decks  to  pieces 


574 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


UNtTEO  STATES    PATTLESHIPS 
CIRCLE    5AVO   ISLAND 
BEFORE   BATTLE-—^ 


The  Battle  of  November  1  5th.     First  Phase 


with  .50  caliber  machine-gun  fire.  Ship 
after  ship  went  down  till  the  sun  sank  and 
a  crescent  moon  rose;  and  when  the  ex- 
hausted pilots  staggered  to  their  dugouts 
for  a  rest  only  four  of  that  convoy  were  left, 
two  of  them  burning. 

But  we  were  not  out  of  the  woods;  we 
were  far  from  it.  Under  that  early  moon 
word  of  the  destruction  of  more  than  20,- 
000  Jap  troops  was  accompanied  by  other 
and  more  ominous  tidings.  One  of  the 
last  scouts  in  had  spotted  the  Jap  battle- 
ship force  that  had  given  the  encampment 
so  dreadful  a  shelling  on  the  previous 
night,  sliding  down  the  slot  toward  Gua- 
dalcanal for  another  blow.  "Where  the 
hell  is  the  goddam  Navy?"  asked  angry  men 
and  men  tired  to  the  limit  of  endurance. 

They  heard  the  news  over  at  Tulagi  too, 
where  the  PT's  were  based.  Some  of  the 
boats  had  been  injured  on  the  night  of  the 
1 4th  and  two  had  been  in  collision.  There 
were  just  three  left  that  could  move;  and 
they  moved  out  to  the  area  of  the  bitch 
patrol  to  tackle  a  Jap  battle  fleet  with  the 


air  of  Sydney  Carton  going  to  the  scaffold. : 
They   were   still    there    with    throttled : 
motors  after  eleven  o'clock  when  darker 
shadows  among  the  shades  round   Savo 
Island  told  them  the  Japs  were  on  the  way. 
Just  at  that  moment  a  voice  not  heard  be-  : 
fore  came  through  their  speakers: 

"This  is   Ching   Chong   Lee,"   it  said. 
"Get  out  of  the  way;  I'm  coming  through." 

Ching  Chong  Lee  was  that  half-fabu-  ( 
lous  admiral  who  had  spent  so  many  years  5 
on  the  China  coast.  He  commanded  : 
battleships.  ^ 

VII  ' 

WILLIS   Augustus    Lee,    b.    Natlee, 
Kentucky,  1888.     Expert  rifleman  : 
at  Annapolis,  in  charge  of  the  U.  S.  rifle  ^ 
team  at  the  Belgian  Olympics  in  1920,  set  ■ 
a  lot  of  records.     Graduated  from  small 
guns  to  big,  a  student  of  shooting  in  all  its 
aspects,  and  spent  most  of  his  time  at  it 
after  his  period  in  China  aboard  the  old 
gunboat  Helena  with  the  high  stack,  that 
rolled  eighty  degrees.     A  small  man,  quiet 


THE    CAMPAIGN    FOR    THE    SOLOMOiNS 


575 


JAPANESE 

TORPEDO   COUNTERATTACK 
DESTROYS    Preston. 


\    \    JAPS  LOSE  Ok^  DESTROYER 

^  %.  -A  ->. 


^ 


0^' 


GUADALCANAL 

- im 


y 


(>-  ©JAPANESE 

lyj?  CRUISERS 


CRUISERS 

BREAK    IN  TWO 

AND  GO  DOWN 


W 


V% 


,XD 


^\ 


\' 


^> 


©U.S. 

BATTLESHIPS 

SINK  "KONGO 

CLASS"  SHI  P. 


.i; 


©JAPANESE 

BATTLESHIP  HITS 
South  Dakota  AND 
IS  SEVERELY  HIT  BY 
U.S.  PLAGSHIP 


The  Battle  of  November  15th.     Second  and  Third  Phases 


and  reserved,  with  glasses,  whom  few 
knew;  the  type  who  could  come  into  a 
room  and  go  out  again  without  anyone 
being  aware  of  his  presence. 

Now  he  stood  on  the  bridge  of  a  battle- 
ship running  along  the  Guadal  capes. 
Behind  him  moved  another — 16-inch-gun 
battleships,  fast  new  battleships.  The  sec- 
ond was  South  Dakota  with  Captain  Gatch, 
still  wound  around  with  bandages  from 
the  wound  he  had  received  at  Santa  Cruz. 
The  name  of  Lee's  flag  is  not  given,  but  by 
her  official  picture  she  was  either  Wash- 
ington or  North  Carolina;  there  are  only  two 
Hke  that  in  the  world.  Eleven  o'clock. 
"It  was  very  quiet"  as  the  battleships 
circled  Savo  from  the  south  side  of  Guadal- 
canal, turned  down  into  the  passage,  then 
back  on  a  northwest  course.  "The  gar- 
denia smell  came  so  strong  from  Florida 
Island  that  I  thought  it  was  a  gas  attack 
and  started  to  put  on  my  mask."  Eleven- 
twenty  and  here  they  come,  one  Jap  ship 
round  the  north  flank  of  Savo,  two  more 
around  its  southern  rim,  a  scouting  group, 
big  flotilla  leaders,  half-cruisers. 


"You  may  fire  when  you  are  ready," 
said  Willis  Augustus  Lee  on  TBS,  and  at 
that  same  moment  the  flagship's  guns 
ripped  out  such  a  flame  as  had  never  been 
seen  in  battle  before. 

South  Dakota  joined;  both  hit  with  the 
first  fire.  From  the  flagship's  bridge, 
from  the  mountain  stations  on  the  island, 
they  could  see  the  two  enemy  ships  "begin 
to  glow  like  the  end  of  a  cigarette."  Black 
smoke  billowed  out  under  the  futile  star 
shells  they  fired  too  short,  the  glow  spread 
until  it  engulfed  the  ships  entire,  and  with 
reports  that  would  have  been  deafening 
but  for  the  thunder  of  the  guns  they  blew 
apart.  The  third  Jap  turned;  the  flag- 
ship's guns  caught  him  on  the  turn  and  he 
slid  into  the  rocks  of  Savo,  a  flaming  wreck. 

All  the  radio  receivers  bore  a  sudden 
wild  flood  of  Jap  appeal  and  chatter; 
out  from  under  cover  of  the  island  rushed 
a  group  of  Jap  destroyers  with  a  cruiser  to 
lead  them  for  a  torpedo  counterattack,  and 
Lee's  covering  destroyers  charged  to  beat 
them  off",  with  the  battleships  firing  sec- 
ondaries over  their  heads.     One  of  the 


576 


HARPER'S    MAGAZINE 


Japs  burst  into  flame;  so  did  Preston, 
Benham,  and  Walkeof  ours,  and  on  an- 
other of  ours,  a  sailor  who  came  through 
picked  a  piece  of  8-mch  out  of  his  helmet 
with  the  remark  that  he  had  served  twenty 
years  in  the  Navy  during  the  last  two 
minutes. 

The  35,000-ton  battleships  sidestepped 
the  torpedoes  like  dancers  and  rushed  on 
past  Savo.  There  was  a  five-minute  lull, 
in  which  must  have  fallen  that  incident 
described  by  Chairman  Byrnes  of  War 
Mobilization:  "In  the  night  of  November 
15th  off  Guadalcanal  there  lay  a  Jap 
battleship.  Eight  miles  away  was  a  ship 
of  our  fleet.  With  the  use  of  radar  our 
ship"  laid  her  guns  on  the  Jap  as  the  latter 
thrust  inquiring  searchlight  beams  across 
the  water.  The  American  battleships 
opened  up  together;  six  salvos,  108  shells 
of  over  a  ton  apiece  poured  into  the  Jap 
rapid  fire,  and  the  watchers  on  the  hilltops 
caught  their  breath  at  the  most  awe- 
inspiring  sight  in  naval  history,  for  that 
formidable  mechanism  spouted  a  huge 
flame  amidships,  then  turned  over  on  her 
side  so  rapidly  that  the  last  unchecked 
shells  went  through  her  bottom  to  explode 
among  the  decks  as  she  vanished.  That 
would  have  been  one  of  the  Kongos, 

BUT  she  was  not  the  only  Jap  ship  in  ac- 
)  tion;  it  was  a  fleet  larger  than  the 
fleet  of  the  13th.  There  was  another 
battleship  in  the  background,  shooting  at 
and  hitting  South  Dakota  with  shells  that 
sent  up  fountains  of  sparks  and  ringing 
steel.  One  hit  her  belt;  it  did  not  pene- 
trate. Another  struck  the  base  of  number 
3  turret  and  put  a  dent  in  its  armor  steel 
that  it  was  past  the  art  of  the  dockyard 
men  to  remove.  It  did  not  penetrate 
either.  The  American  flagship  was  duel- 
ing fiercely  with  this  vessel,  hitting  her 
again  and  again,  so  hard  that  our  people 
to  this  day  insist  she  ceased  fire  because  she 
went  down,  nor  could  our  fliers  find  any 
trace  of  her  the  following  morning;  but  the 
Navy  makes  no  claims  beyond  damage. 

It  does  make  claims  on  the  other  mem- 
bers of  that  fleet,  the  cruisers  that  rushed 


to  support  their  battleships,  plastering 
South  Dakota'' s  upper  works  with  5.5-  and 
8-inch  shell,  first  by  the  glare  of  the  search- 
lights which  they  threw  on  her  when  their 
battleships'  lights  went  out,  then  by  light 
of  the  fires  that  broke  out  on  our  ship. 
"The  Santa  Cruz  air  attack  had  been  a 
holiday  by  comparison";  the  sky  control 
was  knocked  out,  everyone  there  killed  or 
wounded,  there  was  a  fire  beneath  Bat  II 
that  made  the  deck  red  hot,  a  steam  line 
was  cut  and  the  upper  spaces  of  the  ship 
were  filled  with  it. 

But  on  the  Jap  cruisers  it  was  worse. 
One  broke  in  two  and  went  down,  bow 
and  stern  sticking  from  the  water,  another 
oddly  collapsed  in  the  opposite  direction, 
bow  and  stern  under,  the  torn  midships 
section  spouting  crossed  fires.  Then  South 
Dakota  twisted  out  of  the  last  searchlight 
beam,  it  was  dark  all  around,  the  fires 
extinguished  and  the  battle  over.  Half  an 
hour;  of  all  those  Jap  radio  babblings  only 
three  or  four  voices  were  left,  one  of  those 
identifiable  as  a  Guadalcanal  shore  station. 

"  np^EY  set  a  trap  for  foxes,  but  we  didn't 
JL  think  it  would  hold  bears,"  said 
Captain  Gatch  later.  The  Japanese  South 
Pacific  fleet  had  in  fact  ceased  to  exist  as  a 
military  entity,  and  Guadalcanal  was  ours. 

The  enemy  had  ships  left  and  men  and    i: 
planes;  there  were  many  weary  weeks  of 
fighting  still  ahead,  ships  to  sink  and  men 
to  die.     The  Japs  would  not  surrender, 
but  then  neither  would  an  army  of  rats 
attacked  by  cats;  there  was  no  more  ques- 
tion about  the  result,  no  more  doubt  in 
anyone's   mind.     Their   officers   knew   it  i 
and  no  longer  led  attacks,  not  even  by  way 
of  honorable  suicide.     They  waited  to  be   ' 
picked  up  in  the  slow  advance  across  the  . 
ridges.     Their  artillerists  knew  and  from  • 
the  batteries  that  bore  on  our  encampment 
fired   exactly   eighteen   shells.     The   bat- 
teries were  not  there  long,  for  our  men  , 
had  no  doubts  either  now;  the  next  morn- 
ing they  began  the  attacks  that  carried 
them  to  the  limits  of  the  island  and  beyond 
into  the  upper  Solomons  and  to  every- 
thing that  flowed  therefrom. 


For  information  concerning  the  contributors  to  this  issue, 
see  Personal  and  Otherwise  among  the  following  pages. 


TODAY    AND    TOMORROW 

Today,  tomorrow  and   until   the  war  is  won  every  Allison   engine 

is  built   to   a  standard  that  embraces   five  ''must"  qualities:   • 

Performance  that  helps  our  fighters  win  battles.  •  Reliability 

on  which  our  pilots  can  depend.    •     Smoothness  to  lessen 

pilot  fatigue.    •    Economy  for  greatest 

fighting    range.     •     Durability    for 

maximum  fighting  readiness.  • 

Vital    nov    for   our   flyers,   these 

are     also     characteristics     you 

will  want  in  engines  that  will 

power  postwar  planes. 


POWERED  BY  ALUSQN 

The  more -than -^0,000  Alli- 
son engines  built  for  the  U.  S. 
Army  Air  Forces  power  the  foU 
lowing  planes  :  P-^8  —  Lightning 
P-39  —  Airacobra,  P-40  —  IVarhawk 
A -36  and  P-^i  —Mustang 


LIQUID-COOLED    AIRCRAFT    ENGIN 


DIVISION     OF 

Indianapolis,  Indiana 


PERSONAL  AND  Otliervvisc 


ii 


^> 


MR.   RODELL  AND   MR.  WILLKIE   AGAIN 


I  AST  month  Wendell  Willkie  replied  to  Fred 
J  Rodell's  article  about  him  in  the  March 
issue  in  a  letter  which  arrived  too  late  for  us 
to  permit  Mr.  Rodell  an  opportunity  to  rebut. 
He  now  does  so  in  the  form  of  an  open  letter 
to  Mr.  Willkie: 

Dear  Mr.  Willkie: 

In  answering  my  article,  "Wendell  Willkie: 
Man  of  Words,"  you  conclude  by  quoting  a  letter 
written  to  you  by  the  late  William  Allen  White: 

"And  please  don't  take  too  seriously  the  insults 
of  the  cowardly  and  solemn  asses  who  never  have 
the  courage  to  really  fight  for  anything  worth 
while  but  find  pleasure  and  pretense  of  liberalism 
in  maligning  others  who  do  have  the  courage  to 
fight." 

For  that  I  am  grateful,  and  I  thank  you.  Ob- 
viously, you  meant  to  exclude  me  from  Mr.  White's 
category  of  "cowardly  and  solemn  asses,"  since 
you  took  my  article  sufficiently  "seriously"  to  fill 
almost  four  pages  of  Harper'' s  with  a  reply. 

Nevertheless,  I  am  going  to  be  so  ungracious  as 
to  make  a  few  comments  on  your  letter,  in  the  light 
of  your  charge  that  my  article  was  a  "distortion," 
full  of  "inaccuracies  and  misrepresentations." 

To  begin  with,  you  describe  me  as  one  who 
"represents  that  cult  of  thinking  which  finds  excuse 
or  artificial  rationalization  for  the  many  illiberal 
acts,  both  foreign  and  domestic,  of  the  present 
national  Administration  or  is  sure  that  there  is  a 
patent  on  liberalism  and  insists  that  anyone  who 
opposes  the  Administration  or  the  patent  is  either 
of  illiberal  mind  or  insincere."  Nor  is  your  claim 
that  I  am  merely  an  Administration  stooge  con- 
fined to  this  one  flat  statement;  it  underlies  and 
colors  your  entire  letter. 

Yet  it  so  happens,  Mr.  Willkie,  that  I  am  no  more 
a  supporter  of  Franklin  Roosevelt  than  you  are — 
although  I  was  once  his  supporter,  as  were  you,  and 
although  I  stayed  with  him  longer  than  you  did. 
In  fact,  I  was  recently  described  by  a  friend  of 
the  President  (in  a  protest  against  another  article  of 
mine)  as  "one  of  the  most  articulate  and  bitter 


t 

writers  against  Roosevelt."  In  The  Progressive  for 
August  16,  1943,  there  is  an  article  by  me  entitled 
"The  New  Deal  Is  Dead"  which  ends  as  follows:ij 
"And  all  the  wishful  thinking  in  the  world  will  not 
wipe  out  the  stark  fact  that  American  progressives 
can  no  longer  fight  for  the  things  they  deeply 
believe  under  the  banner  of  a  leader  who  is  lost  to 
them,  a  President  who  has  betrayed  them.'* 
Again,  in  The  Progressive  for  September  20,  1943, 
you  will  find  me  saying:  "I  repeat  that  the  pro- 
gressive cause,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  will  best  be. 
served  by  the  defeat  of  Franklin  Roosevelt." 

Although  it  seems  to  me  that  your  blithe  mis- 
statement of  my  political  position  is  in  itself  enough" 
to  discredit  your  entire  letter,  particularly  in  view, 
of  the  emphasis  you  lay  upon  it,  I  am  nevertheless 
going  to  choose,  out  of  the  score  or  more  of  distor- 
tions,   evasions,    and    tortured    explanations    em-» 
bodied  in  your  letter,  three  other  examples  and^ 
expose  them  in  full  detail.     I  choose  them,  not 
because  they  are  the  easiest  to  expose,  for  they  are 
not.     It  would  be  easier  (to  take  one  instance  out 
of  many)   to  counter  your  denial  that  you  took 
part  in  the  eflforts  to  block  Congressional  investi- 
gation of  the  utilities — simply  by  reminding  you 
that   the  law  firm  of  which  you  were   a  senior 
partner,  Mather,  Nesbitt,   &  Willkie,  was  one  of? 
the  signers  of  the  utilities'  outraged  petition  to  the 
Senate  against  the  Walsh  resolution,  and  that  you 
yourself  spent  some  time  in  Washington  during 
that  period,  much  of  it  in  the  company  of  Bernard 
F.  Weadock,  who  was  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
utility  lobby. 

But  I  choose  from  among  the  many  vulnerable 
points  in  your  letter  the  following  three  for  rebuttal 
because  you  yourself  make  them  the  three  major 
points  of  your  reply: 

1 .  You  concede  that  the  story  of  Central  Illinois 
Light  and  the  $700,000  bond  profits — which  I 
cited  as  illustrative  of  your  financial  naivete — is 
one  which  you  used,  along  with  others,  many 
times.  "But  Mr.  Rodell  seems  to  have  missed  the 
point.  I  cited  them  not  as  examples  of  magnani- 
mous dealing.     That  would  have  been  the  height 


dl 


^'^mMtmk^ 


;3fff      ^^^If 


;ir*^i%% 


sw  ■'5Ti££gaS^^_^^^^ 


Landing  troops  on  a  hostile  shore  is  war's  most 
dangerous  operation.  Enemy  guns  open  up  on 
transports.  Bombers  get  busy.  Landing  barges 


feel  their  way  in  through  mined  waters.  Men 
wade  through  waist-high  surf  to  cut  barbed 
wire.  Enemy  machine  guns  spit  death. 


What  it  takes  to  launch  an  invasion  .  .  . 


invade  Europe  (or  Japan), 
)usands  of  barges  carrying  men 
d  equipment  must  land  at  spec- 
jd,  widely  separated  points 
th  split-second  timing. 

Silence  and  darkness  are  es- 
ntial.  No  guide  lights,  no  ra- 
D,  no  shouts. 


Months  before,  our  Armed 
orces  must  have  solved  thou- 
inds  of  difficult  problems.  But, 
ice  the  invasion  begins,  every- 
ling  is  up  to  the  skill  of  the  offi- 
2rs  and  men  of  the  Navy  and 
oast  Guard,  aided  by  the  com- 
ass  in  each  landing  craft  they 
lan. 

The  compass  must  be  non- 
magnetic .  .  .  unaffected  by  elec- 
rical  machinery,  ship's  struc- 
ure,  or  cargoes.  The  Gyro-Com- 
>ass  is  such  a  compass,  but . . . 


The  regular-size  Sperry  Gyro- 
compass, used  by  the  Navy  since 
19 12,  is  too  big  for  small  invasion 
craft.  Fortunately,  experts  in  the 
Gyro-Compass  office  of  the  Navy 
Department  foresaw  this  diffi- 
culty back  in  1940,  and  gave  spec- 
ifications to  Sperry. 

Using  new  techniques,  includ- 
ing the  application  of  electronics, 
'Sperry  engineers  had  a  functional 
model  operating  in  3  months. 


Thanks  to  Navy  foresight,  quan- 
tities of  these  small  Gyro-Com- 
passes are  in  use  today  in  inva- 
sion craft  and  Submarine  Chasers. 

Our  engineers  and  production 
experts  not  only  got  these  Gyro- 
compasses rolling  in  the  Sperry 
plant,  but  they  assisted  one  of 
the  Navy's  prime  contractors, 
Package  Machinery  Company,  of 
Springfield,  Mass.,  in  tooling  up 


and  in  training  personnel  to  pro- 
duce additional  Gyro-Compasses. 

Sperry's  part  in  all  this  has 
been  small  compared  with  the 
whole  vastly  complex  opera- 
tion. We  could  help  the  Navy 
solve  this  problem  only  because 
for  32  years  our  business  — in 
war  and  peace  — has  been  to 
solve  difficult  technical  prob- 
lems through  research,  inven- 
tion, and  precision  engineering. 

But  all  Sperry,  or  any  other  com- 
pany, can  do  is  mighty  small  po- 
tatoes stacked  up  against  the  job 
of  the  fellows  who  splash  ashore 
and  do  the  fighting  that  clears  the 
invasion  beachheads! 

Let's  All  Keep  Backing  fhe  Attack 


CORPORATION 
30  Rockefeller  Plaza,  New  York  20 


FORD  INSTRUMENT  CO.,  INC. 

SPERRY  GYROSCOPE  CO..  INC 

ViCKERS,  INC. 

Waterbury  Tool  Division.  ViCKERS.  INC. 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


of  naivete.  I  cited  them  as  obvious  examples  of 
good  business  and  as  an  answer  to  the  charge 
frequently,  and  sometimes  justly,  made  at  that 
time  that  holding  companies  milked  their  operating 
companies."  '^ 

I'm  sorry,  Mr.  Willkie,  but  someone  else  seems 
to  have  missed  the  point — and  strengthened  the 
charge  of  naivete.  I  said  that  the  transfer  of 
$700,000  from  Commonwealth  &  Southern  to 
Central  Illinois  Light  was  a  straight  business  in- 
vestment, and  a  good  business  investment,  by  your 
company  (just  as  though  you  had  invested  the 
money  in  an  unaffiliated  corporation  or  in  United 
States  bonds)  and,  further,  that  you  had  never 
completely  understood  this  fact.  Apparently,  you 
do  not  understand  it  yet. 

For  in  your  letter  itself  you  say:  "Instead  of 
keeping  the  S700,000,  as  it  would  have  been 
entitled  to  do"  (but  of  course)  "it  turned  the  whole 
profit  over  to  the  Central  Illinois  Light  Co." 
That  is  approximately  your  old  phraseology,  al- 
though you  used  to  add  "every  dime  of  it."  Per- 
haps now  I  can  make  my  point  clear  to  you  by 
asking  whether,  if  the  S700,000  had  instead  been 
invested  in  United  States  bonds,  you  would  have 
announced  to  your  stockholders  that  you  had 
"turned  the  whole  profit  over"  to  the  federal 
government. 

2.  In  my  article  I  said  that  "it  was  New  Deal 
competition,  or  the  threat  of  it,  that  taught  C.  &  S. 
the  highly  lucrative  lesson  that  lower  electric  rates 
mean  greater  consumption  of  electricity  and  bigger 
net  profits."  In  your  reply,  your  own  chief 
defense  of  your  record  as  president  of  C.  &  S.  lies 
in  the  lowering  of  rates  and  extension  of  use  during 
your  tenure.  You  add:  "Furthermore,  though 
this  may  be  upsetting  to  Mr.  Rodell's  conception 
that  this  condition  was  brought  about  by  TVA 
competition,  the  decrease  in  rates  and  the  increase 
in  use  were  greater  in  the  Northern  companies  of 
the  system,  unaff'ected  by  TVA  competition,  than 
in  the  Southern  companies. 

"That  these  accomplishments  were  in  part  due 
to  my  predecessor  ...  I  publicly  pointed  out 
many  times." 

Here  you  clearly  mean  to  imply — although, 
somewhat  characteristically,  you  do  not  directly 
state  it — that  reduction  of  C.  &  S.  rates  was  not 
brought  about  by  TVA  competition  but  was 
instead  merely  the  result  of  the  company's  long- 
term  overall  policy. 

In  order  to  scotch  this  old  half-truth  of  yours 
once  and  for  all,  I  am  going  to  quote  at  length  from 
one  of  a  series  of  articles  I  wrote  for  the  Chicago 
Times  in  1940.  This  particular  article  was  in- 
advertently (and  you  can  check  the  adverb  with 
Editor  Richard  Finnegan)  omitted  from  the  pub- 
lished series;  and  so  the  combination  of  facts 
reported,  every  one  of  which  was  checked  and 
double-checked,  appears  here  in  print  for  the  first 
time: 


"Willkie,  in  trying  to  deny  the  obvious  inference 
that  the  threat  of  TVA  competition  had  a  lot  to  do 
with  the  cutting  of  C.  &  S.  rates,  has  insisted  that 
he  was  merely  carrying  on  a  policy  of  rate  reduc- 
tion that  had  been  steadily  in  eff'ect  since  C.  &  S. 
was  founded.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  the  average 
home  rates  of  both  Alabama  Power  and  Georgia 
Power  dropped  almost  twice  as  far  between  1933 
and  1934  as  they  dropped  in  the  three  preceding 
years  taken  together.  As  for  Tennessee  Electric 
Power,  the  other  member  of  C.  &  S.'s  big  Southern 
triumvirate,  its  average  home  rate  fell  more  than 
two  and  a  half  times  as  far  in  the  single  year  as  in 
the  three  years  before.  In  short,  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  TVA,  C.  &  S.'s  Southern  rates,  which 
had  been  creeping  down,  suddenly  shot  down. 

"On  this  point,  the  actual  chronology  is  inter- 
esting: 

May  18,  1933 — President  Roosevelt  signs 
statute  setting  up  TVA. 

Sept.  14,  1933 — Low  TVA  rate  schedules  an- 
nounced. 

Oct.  1,  1933 — Alabama  Power  Co.  drasti- 
cally cuts  domestic  rates. 

Jan.  1,  1934 — Georgia  Power  Co.  drasti- 
cally cuts  domestic  rates. 

Feb.  1,  1934 — Tennessee  Electric  Power  Co. 
drastically  cuts  domestic  rates. 

"As  the  chief  engineer  of  a  New  York  committee 
to  investigate  utilities  put  it,  in  his  report  to  the  | 
state  legislature:  'It  is  virtually  certain  that  these 
reductions  would  not  have  taken  place  had  it  not 
been  for  the  threatened  competition  by  the  TVA 
and  its  planned  and  announced  low  rates.'  The 
formal  opinion  of  the  U.  S.  Circuit  Court  of 
Appeals  in  the  'nineteen-company  suit'  against  the 
TVA  referred  to  'the  economic  necessity  forced 
upon  the  complainants  of  lowering  their  rates  to 
meet  the  competitive  rates  of  the  Authority.' 
Even  Fortune  magazine,  in  its  lyrical  report  on 
Tennessee  Electric  Power,  admitted:  'Perhaps 
T.E.P.  should  thank  TVA  for  prodding  it  into  this 
salubrious  rate  cutting.' 

"But  this  is  not  the  whole  of  the  story.  For  the 
domestic  rates  of  Willkie's  Northern  companies 
also  came  down  considerably  during  his  term  as 
president  of  C.  &  S.  And  there  was  no  TVA  in 
the  North. 

"What  happened  was  that  the  more  the  South- 
ern companies  reduced  their  rates,  the  more 
electricity  they  sold  and  the  more  money  they 
made.  Tennessee  Electric  Power,  which  cut  its 
rates  farthest  of  all,  serves  as  a  perfect  example. 
In  1933,  its  average  rate  was  5.77  cents  a  KWH 
and  it  made  a  net  profit  of  $1,944,168.  By  1938, 
its  average  rate  had  gone  down  to  2.75  cents  a 
KWH  and  its  net  profit  had  gone  up  to  $2,739,201 . 
Thus,  it  gradually  dawned  on  C.  &  S.  that  from  a 
purely  business  standpoint,  it  might  be  a  good 
idea  to  chop  down  the  Northern  rates  too. 


Washington,,, 


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WASHINGTON   {THE  STATE) 
HAS 


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The  fabulous  Pacific — with  its 
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products  .  .  .  with  its  hillion  peo- 
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trial empire  in  the  Pacific  North- 
west. 

The  swift  covered  wagons  of  in- 
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at  the  threshold  of  the  new  fabu- 
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Oceania,  Mexico,  Central  and 
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markets  of  tomorrow. 

They  are  yours  if  your  industry  is 
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PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


"Willkie  has  always  resented  this  explanation  of 
C.  &  S.  rate  cuts,  whereby  the  Northern  ones 
followed  the  Southern  ones  down.  Yet  he  can 
scarcely  deny  that,  between  1933  and  1934,  while 
Alabama  Power's  average  rsite  was  dropping  over 
^  of  a  cent,  while  Georgia  Power's  was  dropping 
more  than  a  cent,  while  Tennessee  Electric  Power's 
was  dropping  more  than  a  cent  and  a  half,  the 
average  rate  of  Consumers  Power,  biggest  of 
G.  &  S.  Northern  companies,  came  down  exactly 
^  of  a  cent.  And  the  reductions  of  other  North- 
ern companies  were  similarly  small — and  slow — ■ 
by  comparison. 

"Moreover,  in  protesting  the  North-followed-the- 
South  explanation,  Willkie  has  made  a  couple  of 
very  curious  claims  which,  in  themselves,  throw 
considerable  doubt  on  his  protest.  For  example, 
when  testifying  before  a  Senate  Gommittee  in  1935, 
he  insisted:  'I  am  saying  to  you  that  our  rate  in 
Ohio  is  the  same  or  a  lower  rate  than  the  Southern 
rate,  and  yet  in  Ohio  the  rate  is  not  as  high.'  The 
fact  is  that  the  rate  of  G.  &  S.'s  one  Ohio  company, 
Ohio  Edison,  was  4.18  cents  a  KWH  in  1935, 
whereas  the  average  rates  of  the  three  big  G.  &  S. 
Southern  companies  were  3.54  cents,  3.63  cents, 
and  3.63  cents." 

So  I  rather  think,  Mr.  Willkie,  that  I'll  stick  to 
the  statement  I  made  in  the  Harper's  article. 

3.  In  your  efforts  to  minimize  the  importance 
of  your  notorious  "campaign  oratory"  statement, 
you  do  two  curious  things.  First,  in  quoting 
Senator  Nye's  remark  which  opened  this  particular 
exchange  between  you  and  him,  you  quote  it 
incompletely  and  give  no  indication  whatsoever 
that  any  words  have  been  omitted.  Suppose  I 
quote  it  back  at  you,  with  the  omitted  words 
italicized : 

"Senator  Nye:  One  more  assertion  of  yours,  that 
of  October  30:  'On  the  basis  of  his' — that  is,  Roose- 
velt's— 'past  performance  with  pledges  to  the  peo- 
ple, you  may  expect  we  will  be  at  war  by  April, 
1941,  if  he  is  elected."' 

Did  you  perhaps  omit  the  Senator's  introduc- 
tory phrase  (and  substitute  for  it  an  unnecessarily 
long  explanation  of  your  own)  because  his  charac- 
terization of  that  "bit  of  campaign  oratory"  of 
yours,  as  an  "assertion,"  did  not  quite  gee  with 
your  own  characterization  of  it — in  your  reply  to 
me — as  an  "illustrative  example"  of  a  "logical 
expectancy"? 

Even  more  curious  is  your  indignant  insistence 
that  the  "bit  of  campaign  oratory"  "had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  any  pledge,  policy,  or  prin- 
ciple of  my  own."  I  never  said  it  did,  Mr.  Willkie. 
Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  a  man  in  your  position  can 
and  should  be  held  to  a  standard  of  responsibility 
of  public  utterance  which  is  not  restricted  to  pledges, 
policies,  and  principles.  Suppose,  to  take  an  extreme 
example,  you  had  stated  in  a  campaign  speech 
that  the  President  was  losing  his  mind  (as  some  of 
your  supporters  were  whispering  it  about).    This 


too  would  have  had  "nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
any  pledge,  policy,  or  principle"  of  yours.  It 
would  nevertheless  have  been  an  irresponsible 
assertion,  for  which  you  might  properly  have  been 
criticized — and  then  criticized  again  if  you  had 
tried  to  laugh  it  off  as  "a  bit  of  campaign  oratory." 

The  assertion  which  you  did  make,  on  its  face 
and  in  its  context,  predicted  war  by  April,  1941,  if 
Roosevelt  were  re-elected.  It  was  a  bid  for  votes 
for  yourself,  based  on  the  universal  abhorrence  of 
war  and  the  implication  that  ii you  were  elected, 
we  would  not  be  at  war  by  April,  1941.  When 
you  later  dismissed  what  you  had  said  as  "a  bit 
of  campaign  oratory,"  you  revealed  your  intellec- 
tual processes  just  as  clearly  as  if  you  had  similarly  \ 
tried  to  dismiss  a  pledge,  a  statement  of  policy,  or  a  fi 
statement  of  principle. 

In  my  article  about  you,  I  made  only  one  really 
serious  charge  against  you:  "That  meticulous  re-  ■ 
gard  for  words  that  men  call  'intellectual  honesty'  a 
has  sometimes  seemed  to  Willkie,  bent  on  bigger 
things,  an  unnecessary  indulgence." 

May   I   refer   you,   in   closing,    to   the   middle 
clause  of  the  first  sentence  of  the  twenty-second 
verse  of  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  St.  Luke. 
Most  sincerely, 

Fred  Rodell 

MR.  Rodell's  rebuttal  arrived  while  Mr. 
Willkie  was  campaigning  in  Wisconsin, 
but  we  sent  on  a  copy  of  it  and,  just  as  this 
department  was  going  to  press,  we  received 
our  answer  from  Mr.  Willkie — with  which 
we  declare  the  discussion  finally  closed: 

I  appreciate  your  thoughtfulness  in  giving  me  the 
opportunity  to  reply  to  Mr.  Rodell's  reply  to  my 
reply  t6  his  original  article.  Frankly,  most  of  what 
he  has  written  in  rebuttal  seems  to  me  mere  quib- 
bling and  needs  no  answer.  He  has,  however, 
cited  figures  in  an  attempt  to  disprove  my  statement 
that  the  lowering  of  rates  and  the  building  up  of 
increased  use  of  electric  energy  was  a  definite  Gom- 
monwealth  &  Southern  policy,  not  the  urgent  re- 
sult of  TVA  competition.  Inasmuch  as  I  answered 
Mr.  Rodell  in  the  first  place  in  order  to  correct  some 
hoary  mistakes  that  had  got  into  the  record,  I'd 
like  now  to  "scotch"  the  "old  half-truth"  repre- 
sented by  these  figures  "once  and  for  all." 

I  am  dictating  this  letter  from  Wisconsin,  where 
I  am  engaged  in  a  primary  campaign,  and  have  no 
time  or  opportunity  to  check  figures.  I  assume, 
however,  that  Mr.  Rodell's  figures  are  correct. 
But  his  interpretation  of  them  is  at  fault,  because 
he  fails  to  consider  Gommonwealth  &  Southern 
against  the  economic  background  of  its  time  and 
does  not,  apparently,  comprehend  utility  rate 
structures. 

It  was  no  news  to  me  in  1 933,  as  Mr.  Rodell  seems 
to  think,  that  "lower  electric  rates"  meant  "greater 
consumption  of  electricity  and  bigger  net  profits.'- 


1 


Remember  ufhen  you  saidl  IPo , .  T 


To  have  and  to  hold .  .  .  to  love  and 
to  cherish  .  .  .  /or  richer,  jor  poorer 
.  .  .  remember? 

The  liallowetl  words  were  few  and  simple,  but 
their  meaning  shone  like  gold  in  your  heart. 
And  thus  for  you  and  your  beloved  began  new 
lives  .  .  .  thinking  and  working  for  each  other 
in  glorious  partnership. 

The  husband  who  fulfills  the  obligation  im- 
plicit in  his  vows  plans  not  only  for  the  present, 
but  for  the  future  of  his  beloved  as  well.  To 
guard  against  the  final  emergency  which  may 


cut  off  his  vital  income,  a  fundamental  protec- 
tion for  every  family  is  life  insurance. 

Whether  he  be  "richer"  or  "poorer",  a 
Prudential  policy  may  be  obtained  wliicli  will 
be  designed  to  his  own  needs  and  circum- 
stances and  will  provide  security  for  his  family 
which  he  can  guarantee  in  no  surer  way. 

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THE     FUTURE     BELONGS     TO     THOSE     WHO     PREPARE    FOR     IT 


PERSONAL    AND    OTHERWISE 


Nor  did  I  learn  it  from  TVA  competition  or  the 
threat  of  it.  It  was  a  well-considered  part  of  Com- 
monwealth «&  Southern's  policy.  And,  as  Mr. 
Rodell  admits,  before  even  the  "threat"  of  TVA 
competition,  Commonwealth  &  Southern's  South- 
ern rates  had  "been  creeping  down."  The  slow- 
ness of  the  process  was  due  to  a  fact  that  Mr.  Rodell 
fails  to  take  into  account,  the  fact  that  1932  was  the 
very  bottom  of  the  depression  and  that  there  was 
little  chance  to  do  anything  but  "creep"  during 
that  time. 

By  the  fall  of  1933,  however,  when  I  became  chief 
executive  of  Commonwealth  &  Southern  Corp., 
with  final  authority,  things  were  looking  better 
and  I  pushed  the  policy  of  lower  rates  and  higher 
use  steadily.  Our  Southern  rates  "shot  down," 
not  because  of  TVA  competition  but  because  of  the 
greater  use  of  electric  energy  made  possible  by  the 
general  economic  recovery  in  the  United  States. 
And  our  net  income  increased,  as  Mr.  Rodell 
points  out.  Incidentally,  during  the  years  of  up- 
turn between  1933  and  1935,  practically  every  ma- 
jor utility  in  the  country  showed  as  great  or  greater 
percentage  of  increase  in  its  net  income,  irrespec- 
tive of  rate  or  price  policy. 

Mr.  Rodell  claims  that  the  Northern  Common- 
wealth &  Southern  companies  also  reduced  rates 
under  the  influence  of  TVA.  The  Southern  pol- 
icy, he  says,  forced  by  TVA  competition,  proved  so 
successful  that  Commonwealth  &  Southern  de- 
cided to  apply  it  in  the  North  as  well.  As  evi- 
dence of  his  contention  he  cites  the  fact  that  rate 
reductions  in  the  Northern  companies  followed  and 
were  slower  than  those  in  the  Southern  companies. 

A  better  knowledge  of  utility  rate  structures 
would  have  prevented  this  second  misinterpreta- 
tion of  figures. 

Commonwealth  &  Southern's  rates  were  what 
are  spoken  of  in  technical  terms  as  block  and  ob- 
jective rates,  the  block  being  a  unit  of  kilowatt 
hours.  The  greater  the  average  use  in  units  of 
kilowatt  hours,  the  lower  the  rates.  But  it  took 
much  longer  to  build  up  the  use  of  the  individual 
customer  in  the  North  than  in  the  South,  for  a  very 
simple  reason.  The  large  electrical-energy-con- 
suming appliances,  such  as  refrigerators  and  ranges, 
were  less  readily  acceptable  in  the  North  than  in 
the  South,  because  of  climatic  conditions — the 
refrigerators  for  obvious  reasons,  the  ranges  because 
people  in  the  North  preferred  to  cook  by  gas,  inas- 
much as  gas  also  helped  to  warm  the  house. 

Consequently,  though  the  number  of  families 
using  electricity  was  larger  in  the  Northern  area 
than  in  the  Southern,  and  the  total  use  was  greater, 
the  average  use  was  less.  Therefore  average  rates 
were  higher,  though  the  rate  structure  was  lower. 
It  was  to  this  that  I  testified  in  the  case  of  Ohio 
Edison.  I  commend  to  Mr.  Rodell  in  his  re- 
searches a  more  careful  reading  of  the  record. 

But  I  have  no  desire  to  relive  the  days  of  the 
TVA  controversy.    The  TVA  is  now  an  accom- 


plished fact  and  although  I  have  not  followed  its 
operation  closely,  I  have  a  distinct  impression 
that  under  Mr.  Lilienthal's  capable  direction  it 
has  been  well  administered. 

With  kindest  regards,  and  appreciation  of  your 
editorial  courtesy,  I  am 

Faithfully  yours, 

Wendell  L.  Willkie 


©«y0 


&  O  ESSAY 


THE  long  letters  from  Mr.  Rodell  and  Mr. 
Willkie,  following  Mr.  Willkie's  reply  to 
the  original  Rodell  article — "Wendell  Will- 
kie: Man  of  Words" — reduce  the  space  avail- 
able for  Personal  &  Otherwise  comment. 
And  since  we  inaugurate  this  month  the  prac- 
tice of  identifying  the  author  on  the  fiirst  page 
of  his  article,  we  shall  content  ourselves  this 
time  with  a  brief  series  of  observations. 

•  •  •  "If  the  American  people  want  me  for 
this  high  office,  I  shall  be  only  too  willing  to 
serve  them,"  said  DeWey.  "Since  studying 
this  subject  I  am  convinced  that  the  office  of 
President  is  not  such  a  very  difficult  one  to 
fill."  But  it  was  George  "Fire- When-Ready, 
Gridley"  Dewey  and  not  Thomas  Blue-Serge- 
Suit  Dewey  who  made  these  famous  remarks. 
Still  .  .  . 

•  •  •  On  the  23d  of  January,  1943,  Alex- 
ander Woollcott  had  a  heart  attack  while  par- 
ticipating in  a  broadcast  of  The  People's 
Platform.  A  few  hours  later  he  was  dead. 
The  most  celebrated  sentimentalist  and  sharp- 
tongued  meanie  of  his  time,  he  was  a  fabulous 
figure.  At  one  time  or  another  he  had  been 
an  editor  of  The  Stars  and  Stripes;  a  dramatic 
reviewer  ("This  is  something- Owen  Davis  ran 
oflf  on  a  sewing  machine  while  he  was  thinking 
of  something  else") ;  a  traveler  ("Oflf  in  a  cloud 
of  lust,"  he  remarked  as  he  set  forth  for 
China);  a  columnist — conducting  ''Shouts 
and  Murmurs"  in  The  New  Yorker  until  he 
fell  out  with  Harold  Ross;  author  and  editor 
of  best  sellers — While  Rome  Burns  and  The 
Woollcott  Reader  and  The  Second  Woollcott 
Reader;  a  merciless  jiber  at  the  well  known — 
"I  should  have  pushed  her  down  the  elevator 
shaft,"  he  said  of  Mrs.  Roosevelt  after  she 
had  come  to  cheer  him  up  when  ill;  the 
inspiration  of  dramas — The  Man  Who  Came 
to  Dinner;  and  a  dramatist  himself — The 
Dark  Tower.  He  was  tolerably  successful  as 
an  actor  in  parts  written  for  him  by  S.  N. 
Behrman  in  Briej  Moment  and  Wine  of  Choice. 
He  had  a  long  and  successful  career  as  a  radio 
spieler  and  was  featured  as  the  Town  Crier